Mr. S.R. DeBoer was a landscape architect who designed many of Denver’s parks. When he passed away, he left a 2-acre property near Harvard Gulch Park as an inheritance to members of his family, to sell or develop as they saw fit. But the neighbors view it differently – not as private property, but as a community asset to be preserved for their enjoyment.
The DeBoer property was one of two that Denver government recently has considered in so-called “hostile” historical preservation applications, a troubling development to anyone who values individual property rights.
Denver Post reporter George Merritt reported last month that the city’s Landmark Preservation Commission recently heard from neighbors who want the DeBoer property tagged for preservation. That would kick in a host of restrictions on how it could be used. If approved at a Sept. 19 meeting, the hostile takeover will go before the City Council.
In another instance, the West Highland Neighborhood Association applied for landmark designation for a home that had belonged to former Denver Mayor W.F.R. Mills, a move that scared away a potential buyer. A compromise was forged in which the landmark application was dropped in exchange for the current owners agreeing that house will not be destroyed for at least two years after it is sold.
Hostile designations are rare in Denver, if not unprecedented. It’s a practice that the city would be wise to discourage.
It’s one thing for preservationists or city planners to seek to preserve the special qualities of an old neighborhood. The city has dozens of such historic districts, such as the East Seventh Avenue district near Congress Park. But for neighbors or neighborhood associations to pinpoint individual properties over the objections of owners is a slippery slope that moves historical sensitivity a step toward greed and piracy.
In Colorado and across the country, ballot initiatives have been proposed that would allow individual landowners to seek compensation from governments that take regulatory actions that decrease their property value. Some of the ballot questions – modeled after a 2004 initiative passed in Oregon as Measure 37 – are wrapped into proposals that would limit governments’ powers to forcibly buy private property through the exercise of eminent domain.
A California question has attracted national attention for November.
The Colorado measure would give property owners recourse if regulatory actions diminished their property value by 20 percent or more.
A host of people, including planners and environmentalists, are worried that these measures are an attempt to abolish land use planning or wilderness designations.
No one is sure how it will play out. But it would be wise for government to rein itself in before citizens take matters into their own hands.
