Quote:
Originally Posted by Agent Orange
Was the lot zoned for anything besides townhomes or SFH?
Speaking of this part of town, whenever I spend time in the Jeff Park/Sloans/West Colfax area I am astonished at the number of upscale townhouses recently or currently constructed. IANAUP, but it seems like a wasted opportunity due to overly conservative zoning. With its proximity to downtown, this would be a great area to achieve a more Cap Hill-esque density and diversity of housing type. With higher densities, it seems logical that displacement would happen much more slowly, too. Shame that this corner of town is on its way to exclusively housing upper income families. I'm not on the FUGLY bandwagon by any means, but I don't think these lego-house developments look great when there's no contrasting buildings around.
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I actually think we're on the same page with this - I was about to say "no, MU zoning." But after doing a quick check on the Denver zoning map, the answer is in fact YES - it has main street zoning. So now I'm wondering if it's even legal to build rowhomes here - doesn't MS require ground-flood retail?
And I was being snarky with my first post, but in all seriousness, I too would like to see more retail integrated into our denser neighborhoods. This is, afterall, one half of the promise of density - that dense neighborhoods have services within walking distance. It would be interesting to have a sincere conversation about what exactly is causing this to be an issue in Denver. My friends who I visit often down near Speer and Downing are in a neighborhood that SHOULD be able to support plenty of neighborhood-scale retail, but end up driving for nearly every errand because there isn't even close to enough retail integrated into the neighborhood.
I, at first, blamed this on zoning. Anything in their neighborhood that isn't a historic corner store (these have MS zoning) has multi-unit residential zoning instead that won't allow for additional ground-floor retail.
But recently, I keep hearing that Denver actually has an excess of empty retail space (though perhaps just in the wrong locations - I don't know), and this results in the "active street-front" zoning requirement manifesting as sales offices and apartment community/workout rooms rather than retail space. So even when the zoning
does allow or even encourage retail, we aren't always getting it. Bottom line - there seems to be a disconnect on a couple levels, and I'm not entirely sure how to explain it.
Edit: I actually really am curious now what the deal is with that lot. It is zoned G-MS-3. According to page 6.3-5 of the
General Urban (G-) Neighborhood Context, allowable forms include Drive-Thru Services, Drive-Thru Restaurant, and Shopfront. How are they getting away with building townhomes here? Is the businessden article simply calling them "townhomes" when in fact it will be more of a mixed-use "shopfront" type structure??