Denver’s planning board is expected to approve plans today for a senior adult community in downtown’s Riverfront Park, despite the objections of residents in neighboring buildings.
The $110 million Cosmopolitan Club being developed by Balfour Senior Living will include a seven-story tower built 20 feet from the Promenade and Riverfront Tower condominium buildings. Residents say the tower will block their views and reduce property values.
They’ve hired attorney Cecil Morris of Pendleton, Friedberg, Wilson & Hennessey PC to help make their case before the city’s planning board at a 3 p.m. meeting today.
“I do not want to go to court over this,” said John Armstrong, president of the Promenade homeowners association. “We just want to put on the brakes and look at it more closely. If this is allowed to go as it is, the people on the south side, except for the top floor or two, will never see the sun.”
The developer and a previous landowner say the residents are crying foul over development they knew was coming. They were told when they purchased the property that the land surrounding it would be developed, said Mark Smith of East West Partners, which developed the Promenade and Riverfront Towers.
“When those condos were sold, they were sold with explicit representations that there would be buildings there, and they were priced accordingly,” Smith said.
Balfour founder and chief executive Michael Schonbrun said he’s sorry the project will block the view, but that was always part of East West’s plan for the valley.
“We paid $7.7 million for the land to be able to put the kind of density on it the project required,” he said.
Balfour plans to develop 214 independent- living apartments and 50 assisted-living apartments. It purchased the property a year ago from Archstone-Smith, which had planned more than 400 apartments on the site.
Staff writer Margaret Jackson can be reached at 303-954-1473 or mjackson@denverpost.com.
