The yearlong battle over S.R. DeBoer’s south Denver property came to an unsatisfying conclusion last Monday night when the Denver City Council voted 10-2 to designate a portion of the property as a historic district.
The Hatfield-and-McCoy-like battle between the property owners – DeBoer’s descendants – and the neighbor who filed the historic designation application, Leigh LaFon, became apparent as the saga unfolded. Any hope for an amicable agreement or an informed discussion of the property’s significance to DeBoer’s legacy as one of Denver’s most influential landscape architects failed to meet rigorous standards that should accompany regulatory practices.
I am not suggesting that rules were broken, laws skirted or protocols denied. I am saying that this unfortunate episode illustrates flaws in Denver’s ordinance, as well as sloppiness and confusion over the roles of two key city commissions: the Denver Planning Board and the Landmark Preservation Commission.
This litany includes the failure of Denver’s ordinance to require immediate notification of property owners when an application to designate a historic district is filed.
The LPC’s role is stated clearly in statute. Commissioners, aided by staff and public input, determine the merits of an application. If a property or a district is found worthy of designation, the recommendation is advanced to the council for public hearing and a decision.
The role of the Planning Board in historic designation is less clear. This body is charged with ensuring land-use decisions conform to Denver’s Comprehensive Plan 2000. The board has no authority regarding historic designation. Its voice is one in a chorus of opinions. Its role, always advisory to the council, should be clarified as advisory to the LPC in its recommendations to the City Council.
There were a great many conflicting messages from these commissions. The chaos was magnified by the actions of two individuals: the LPC’s Elizabeth Schlosser and Richard Delanoy, a Planning Board member.
Schlosser, in a well-intended but thoroughly misguided effort to preserve the integrity of the DeBoer site, offered to buy the property from the owners. As a mayoral appointee, she is subject to Denver’s very transparent ethics code. The code strictly prohibits any action that creates a perception of conflict of interest.
Delanoy, acting as a citizen, testified at the council’s public hearing Monday night. Though not strictly a conflict, his action was inappropriate given the various hats he wears: Planning Board member, chair of the Board of Realtors’ public affairs committee and neighborhood association leader.
Finally, if we are to reach a successful outcome to the debate regarding neighborhood character as it pertains to the long-awaited zoning code update, we must understand and define the elements of landscape as more than grass, trees, flowers and shrubs.
We must learn to recognize and articulate how the thorough integration of building and landscape combine to reveal places that we care about, want to preserve and replicate. Public meetings, regulatory procedures and code modifications will do nothing to enhance the livability and beauty of Denver if we fail to understand the influence of context.
The real importance of Saco DeBoer’s land on East Iliff Avenue was the manner in which the gifted designer crafted a private park estate. He designed public and private spaces – rooms – around the City Ditch and its lush vegetation. He scaled and modulated building form to landscape, pathways and a cul-de-sac, using plantings and building orientation to define public and private.
Each was a signature of his style as revealed in Denver’s parks, parkways and in the Botanic Gardens.
These elements, taken together, establish character. Neither one building nor a single planting nor bosque of trees captures the meaning or importance of the whole. It is the context, the full integration of building and setting, scale, mass, void and connection that defines place and character.
If those relationships continue to be as illusive as they were in this effort, more than Saco DeBoer’s remarkable estate is at stake.
Susan Barnes-Gelt (bs13@qwest.net) served eight years on the Denver City Council and was an aide to former Denver Mayor Federico Peña. Her column appears on alternate Sundays.
