The Lower Highlands neighborhood, with its proximity to downtown, suddenly took off a few years ago, bringing urban-chic amenities and serious parking headaches.
“You see cars parked on medians and on sidewalk areas,” said Marcia Mueller, president of Westbrook Real ty, who owns a building at the epicenter of 15th and Boulder streets.
“It’s now almost incurable,” she said. “We can’t solve the issues that need to happen.”
There’s lots of finger-pointing:
At developers, for not including enough parking spaces with new lofts and restaurants.
At the city, for not anticipating the problem soon enough.
At residents, for complaining about a problem common to city life.
LoHi is a microcosm of the American urban experience.Many city neighborhoods around the country have struggled to balance the needs of various stakeholders, from restaurants and retailers to residents and developers.
In cities such as New York and San Francisco, residents never expected there wouldn’t be a problem. They just learn to work around it.
But in LoHi, especially for residents who have lived there for decades, the area has morphed from a wasteland into a trendy neighborhood vibrant with eateries, boutiques, lofts and street life.
“In terms of development in the past few years, there’s been a rapid pace of change,” said Denver senior city planner Cindy Patton.
As tensions rose, City Councilwoman Judy Montero began holding stakeholder meetings. Now there is an official task force, with city officials and a specially trained community mediator.
Still, among many residents, there is great frustration.
“There’s almost a feeling that the city doesn’t care about us,” said Christina Maher. “Sort of like, ‘Yeah, parking is bad. We’re working on it.’ But nothing is happening.”
When she and her husband moved into an 1886 row house with no garage in 2004, life was different.
“I somehow didn’t expect this huge expansion of restaurants,” she said. “Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, coming home from work, it’s pretty impossible to find a place on the street.”
City officials say they are doing the best they can with a tough situation.
There are about 1,000 on- street parking spots in the neighborhood, Patton said, “which is very limited when we’re talking about a lot of retail, commercial and residents.”
Sean Mackin, parking-operations manager for the city, said, “Developers have a choice to build more parking, but they choose to do the minimum requirement.”
Parking experts and planners say they’re working on solutions. They have added 50 on-street spaces, extended street restrictions until 10 p.m., and started a program where lots restricted to office parking by day can be rented to valet services or kiosk parking vendors by night.
The city also has a “Strategic Parking Plan” to address smart- growth needs of the future.
It looked at 11 urban neighborhoods, including LoHi, to analyze the needs of different areas: main streets, town centers, school campus districts, shopping districts, business centers and a residential high-rise district.
As this gets slowly worked out, people in LoHi experience fast-paced development.
“I’ve heard the complaint frequently from customers: ‘Oh, I barely found a place to park,’ or ‘I really like coming here, but there is no place to park,’ and that’s definitely a concern,” said Leo Bortolotto, a business owner who opened the boutique wine store Amendment XXI in 2009.
Bortolotto, who is on the task force, says he thinks a solution is possible.
“We want to solve this,” he said. “The problem is there is increasing tension between the residents and the city.”
Although some people have gotten residential parking permits, that doesn’t guarantee a parking spot — only giving more time before they have to move their car to escape ticketing.
Some have made arrangements with local businesses to rent a space from them. Others circle endlessly, looking for red tail lights that indicate a car is ready to move out.
Neighborhoods throughout Denver have struggled with similar problems. Many point to Old South Gaylord Street and South Pearl Street as examples. But parking experts say they are not the same.
“Those are embedded commercial areas within residential areas,” Mackin said.
A few blocks of commercial buildings on the same street run through these residential neighborhoods, he said, unlike LoHi, which is “a mixed-use area where each block has both residential and commercial.”
Still, there are battles, such as last summer in the South Gaylord neighborhood when neighbors disagreed over whether to add Brown Dog Pizza to about seven other businesses with liquor licenses in a one-block area.
After a hearing, the pizzeria was denied a license, but “it split the neighborhood in a pretty contentious way,” said Maureen Hanrahan, who lives in the neighborhood and fights to find parking Wednesday through Saturday evenings.
In LoHi, parking challenges have created lots of savvy strategies.
Sam Whittaker and his wife are a two-car couple who have a single parking spot at their condo. The first one home from work grabs a spot on the street, and the other gets the parking garage.
Parking in the area is expected to get worse with two road- improvement projects and a new 130-unit apartment proj ect — with 190 parking spaces and a 3,300-square-foot commercial space.
Denver Public Works spokeswoman Ann Williams inherited her LoHi home from her aunt and uncle. It was “a wasteland” when they moved there, and she and her husband complain when they have to park blocks away from home.
“But we want our neighborhood to be this great place,” she said. “If we push out all the businesses or don’t allow any compromise, then our great neighborhood will decline again.”
Colleen O’Connor: 303-954-1083 or coconnor@denverpost.com
