When a developer started tearing down a house at West 20th Avenue and Newton Street recently, Ardis Roheuer got mad.
She asked workers several times what they were doing to alleviate the dust and the noise but never received a satisfactory answer.
“I’m for downzoning,” said Roheuer, a resident of the Sloan’s Lake neighborhood in northwest Denver. “The destruction, the noise and pollution at 20th and Newton. … They just tore it down.”
Roheuer has joined with other neighbors to request a change in the city zoning code that would lower the number of residences that can be built nearby. The change would affect three different squared-off sets of blocks in the Sloan’s Lake and Highland neighborhoods.
Most of those blocks are currently zoned R-2, which allows houses, duplexes and triplexes to be built, depending on the lot size. Roheuer’s group is requesting R-1 zoning, which allows only single-family homes.
A couple of blocks away, Mike Crawford and his wife are buying a home in the 2200 block of Newton and the lot next door, which has a carriage house on it. Their Realtor, Rick Flanagan, estimates that the proposed zoning change could cause a 30 percent decrease in the current value of the combined property.
He bases his estimate on similar properties with lower zoning codes near Crawford’s house and in Platt Park, south of Interstate 25 and east of Broadway.
“It was unfortunate that this whole thing surfaced when it did,” said Jennifer Joyce, who owns the Newton property with her husband, John. “It impacted our bargaining position.”
The proposed zoning change has pitted neighbor against neighbor, with the Denver planning commission trapped in the middle.
“A lot of folks are very emotional about this, but we have applications that have been submitted by folks in the neighborhood,” said Peter Park, manager of community planning and development for Denver. “We have to respond. We can’t just tell them to go away.”
City planners are trying to follow Blueprint Denver, a plan approved by the city in 2002 after hundreds of residents gave their input. It identifies “areas of stability,” where planners try to keep the current neighborhood character, and “areas of change,” where the character can evolve, Park said.
Sloan’s Lake/Highland is an “area of stability.”
Many of those against the downzoning plan say it would lower property values. They say their neighbors and city officials have no right to regulate what they can do with their land and homes.
Based on current R-2 zoning, one property owner got an offer of $410,000 for a lot on which a triplex is currently allowed, for example, said Daniel Markofsky, a real estate lawyer who lives in the neighborhood. If zoning changes to R-1, the small house that currently sits on the lot would sell for about $250,000, he said.
“This proposal of downzoning is bad for the city, and it’s based on false assumptions,” Markofsky said. “One of those assumptions is that this is a neighborhood of detached single- family homes. This neighborhood has a high proportion of multi-family homes.”
On the other side of the argument is zoning- change proponent Shirley Schley, who said the neighborhood is being “polluted by developers. My neighborhood is changing.”
But in general, the more people who want to live in urban areas near where they work, the healthier the environment is, said James Van Hemert, executive director at the Rocky Mountain Land Use Institute.
“Greater density in Denver is really what we need. This attitude of downzoning is one of the major contributors to sprawl,” Van Hemert said.
Any zoning change must go through several city committees and be approved by the City Council before it can take effect, a process that usually takes about six months, said Deirdre Oss, a senior community planner.
Other Denver neighborhood groups have considered asking for lower zoning, including Congress Park and West Washington Park. So far, those plans do not appear to be as contentious as the Sloan’s Lake/ Highland plan.
In the case of Congress Park, proponents want to change R-3 zoning, which allows high-rises such as those built around the park, to R-2 zoning, said John Van Sciver, a resident who is leading the charge. “It stabilizes the neighborhood,” he said. “The houses we are zoning are as big as you can build under R-2, so you can’t tear them down.”
