Councilman New Drafts Construction Management Ordinance, Says Size, Complexity Exceed City’s Ability Or Will To Control

by Glen Richardson

Denver is undergoing its largest construction boom in modern times with Cherry Creek North at the epicenter. Like a jackhammer the excessive construction is causing serious detrimental effects to surrounding businesses, residents and visitors. Moreover, the construction trend is on the rise in adjacent neighborhoods plus sections of downtown.

“The lack of support and assistance to small business retailers and neighborhood residents by development owners, construction management, construction workers and Denver Public Works justifies the need for stronger construction management policies by the City,” concludes City Councilman Wayne New. Council members Albus Brooks with his similar construction problems in RiNo and Paul Kashmann with the same issues in his neighborhoods have been supportive to the proposed changes.

The first term councilman, who is also a Cherry Creek North resident, say he has determined that “a City Council ordinance is required to enhance existing Public Works construction management policies that will manage construction projects more efficiently and effectively.” He tells the Chronicle it is his hope such an ordinance will mitigate the trials and tribulations businesses and residents in Cherry Creek have experienced for the past three years. “The ordinance will give Public Works greater flexibility to manage projects of varying size and complexity.” While the focus is on Cherry Creek construction he adds, “these recommendations can and should be applicable to construction project in all city areas.”

Collapse At Public Works

The number of Cherry Creek North construction projects that have been initiated simultaneously and in a relatively short period of time is staggering: The district has seen four major projects completed, 10 are underway, plus two to three new projects are set to begin within the next 12 months. Those construction projects don’t take into account rhe ones completed or under construction in the contiguous Cherry Creek East and Golden Triangle areas.

Impact of the Cherry Creek construction volume has been a serious blow to district parking. Moreover, New notes that the implementation of paid parking at the Cherry Creek Shopping Center has increased district customer and neighborhood parking concerns.

“There is no doubt now that the problems have resulted from Public Works’ inability to require pre-permitting and pre-construction planning and construction management agreements regarding area traffic flow, street closures, parking meter management, defined offsite parking arrangements, noise mitigation, trash prevention and collection.”

Sending Wrong Message

The lack of routine and timely construction meetings with the involvement of all parties has also hindered critical discussion on construction project issues and plans, according to New.

Such meetings, he believes, “would have prevented or mitigated problems and difficulties for businesses and residents before they occurred.”

The inability of construction companies and city officials to address these problems and issues has discouraged the desire of shoppers and business customers to visit areas where construction is underway. Furthermore, New bemoans, “It has sent a citywide message to avoid Cherry Creek and its construction problems.” The impact, he says is clear: “Small business retail sales have declined, residential quality of life disrupted and neighborhood parking hindered.”

Many small businesses have either closed or are struggling to stay in business. Cherry Creek residents are questioning whether the traffic congestion, traffic flow disruptions and parking limitations will decrease or can be managed. Thus many residents are contemplating if remaining in the neighborhood will be possible or desirable.

Steps To Improvement

The ordinance being drafted by Councilman New has more than a dozen recommendations for improvements. They are being created now because as New asserts, “It is very apparent they are required to strengthen current City construction management policy and provide additional policies for improvement.”

Top of the list is the issue of Excessive Construction within a Defined Area. Reason: The compounding effects of excessively large volumes of work have caused extreme hardships on surrounding businesses, residents, visitors and others within the area. Recommendation: When multiple projects are initiated that impact pedestrian safety and traffic management Public Works will strictly enforce policies and procedures to balance and mitigate effects on commercial and residential communities. This includes strict sidewalk protections; limit the permitting of street-lane closures and temporary one-way streets that grant favorable treatment to construction projects.

The Councilman also believes that Planning, Communication & Notification must be compulsory. Reason: Business and community leaders are not involved in project discussions. Moreover, there is insufficient notification to all parties when activities affecting business operations and traffic flow will occur. Recommendation: Full street closures for an extensive time period will not be allowed. Closure of a street for up to three days may be considered for safety reasons. A graduated fee per day would be imposed on contractors failing to end approved closures.

Added Reform Measures

These additional reforms, condensed for publication, are included in the ordinance being drafted by New:

Pedestrian Sidewalks: If construction occurs on a block, one side of the street must be open. When construction occurs on both sides of the street, a wooden covered walkway must be installed on at least one side of the project. Walkways must be sturdy, waterproofed and adequately lighted for nighttime use.

Construction Worker Parking: A defined plan for every project must be submitted to Public Works prior to receiving a building permit. Contractors must provide an agreement for contracted offsite parking with financial incentives, and penalties for non-compliance. Plan to be forwarded to businesses, neighborhood organization and Council member.

Patch Parking Problems

Parking District Development: Proposed district would operate and fulfill all prescribed City regulations and requirements but would not be responsible for parking meter collections. Management of City parking activities is not currently coordinated and managed by a single City division.

Parking Meters: Use of parking meter bags for construction purposes must be included in pre-construction planning discussions in order to make business and neighborhood leaders aware of any pending disruptions. Meter bagging would not be allowed for more than a continuous three-day period.

Parking Enforcement & Signage: Parking enforcement and ticketing must be performed in all neighborhoods on a regular 2-hour basis. Signage that informs parkers of the proper distance for alley entrances and street intersections must be installed. An implementation and budget plan must be developed for a five-year completion time frame.

Noise, Trash & Traffic

Noise & Trash: Contractors must provide construction site trash and cigarette butt receptacles directly outside of construction sites. Contractors must pay local business organizations for the offsite area collection and removal of trash and cigarette butts daily.

Traffic & Pedestrian Signage: Contractors must remove all traffic and pedestrian management signs, cones and barricades from the public right-of-way within 24-hours when not in use.

Coordination With City & Business Guidelines: Recommendations for improvement must be coordinated with existing construction mitigation plans and business area guidelines. Differences should be reconciled and final improvements guided by their efficiency, effectiveness, balance and greatest positive impact.

Construction Epicenter: Towering cranes over Cherry Creek hint at the number of construction projects that have been initiated. The district has seen four major projects completed, 10 are underway, plus two to three new projects are set to begin within the next 12 months.

Denver City Councilman Wayne New

Street Shutdown: Cherry Creek North street closures are damaging business operations and disrupting traffic flow. One block of Saint Paul St. where a bank and other businesses are located was closed for two months.

Lack Of Planning: By not communicating and coordinating construction activities Public Works contributes to the lack of community notice and inability to mitigate business operational problems.

Gotta Go Other Way: Temporary one-way street arrangements give favorable treatment to construction projects and have a negative effect on businesses, residents and visitors.

Closed Sidewalk Epidemic: Booming development should bode well for people who walk. In Denver, nevertheless, people are encountering more and more closed sidewalks in construction zones.

Will Proposal ‘Activate’ East Virginia Village Neighborhood Or Help ‘Destroy’ It

by Mark Smiley

Old Headquarters: CDOT moved its headquarters from this location pictured to a new $70 million building southeast of the West Colfax Avenue and Federal Boulevard interchange.

The recent departure of the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) from its headquarters located at 4201 E. Arkansas Ave. has left neighbors and surrounding businesses wondering what the City and County of Denver will do to their neighborhood. Initial indications are they are planning the usual — massive high density and crippling traffic.

The City of Denver is uniquely in charge of the large 13.2-acre parcel as the plan to purchase the old CDOT headquarters, between Louisiana and Arkansas Avenues east of Colorado Boulevard, as well as a second 11.5-acre CDOT-owned property at 2000 S. Holly Street (Holly and Evans) for $19.25 million. State law mandates that the CDOT properties were first offered for sale to other government agencies.

Developer: Dimitrios Balafas of Kentro Group will oversee the development of the old CDOT property at 4201 E. Arkansas Ave and 2000 S. Holly Street once the sale is complete.

So Denver owns and will do all the planning on this critical piece of the East Virginia Village neighborhood property. Councilman Jolon Clark has stated that Denver needs, and wants, to expand and improve its inner city park system as “green spaces are getting too crowded” and is proposing an increase in the sales tax which would provide over $45.9 million for such purposes.

Cynics suggest that the Clark proposal is little more than Denver overpaying for property owned by those close to City Hall that developers nor anyone else wants. However, they note the CDOT property is one in a beautiful neighborhood setting that could be exploited for a great deal of profit by a developer and thus perhaps not the type of property which would be covered by the proposed project.

In turn, Denver will buy the land and immediately flip it to the politically connected Kentro Group, a local developer of such projects as Trader Joe’s at 8th and Colorado Blvd., the new TMobile store on Colorado Blvd. and Kentucky Avenue, the development at Cherry Street and Leetsdale in Glendale, and the Colfax Collection at York and Colfax and Josephine and Colfax.

But it will only do so after getting it rezoned for massive high density which, of course, the City controls through the Denver Planning Board and City Council.

Kentro Group has held a series of community meetings dating back to January 25, 2018, laying out their plans for the 13.2-acre property where CDOT once stood. Some neighbors who attended for the first time the July 12, 2018, meeting at Infinity Park in Glendale claimed it is the first notice of any meetings held by the group. And, some were not pleased with what they saw.

One neighbor said, “Don’t bring the tech center to our mid-century neighborhood.” And, Shelley Stuart-Bullock said, “Picture multiple 110+ foot buildings; 11,200 more cars daily on residential streets. I chose to live here in 1989, but would need to leave. I am greatly saddened by the prospect.”

The traffic along Colorado Boulevard and in and around their neighborhood is what neighbors are most concerned about. Some say adding 11,000 more cars along Colorado Boulevard will cripple the corridor between Alameda and Evans, rendering it next to impossible to drive a car.

I’m all for drive-by traffic. Many businesses, including ours, survive on eyeballs seeing your business every day while driving by — but let’s face it, it [Colorado Blvd.] already has plenty of traffic, said Sean Sutton, owner of SleepNation which is

Neighbors Activated: Kentro Group and CRL & Associates have held a series of community meetings to inform the public of their plans for the old CDOT property. This July 12 meeting held at Infinity Park in Glendale sparked a lively discussion about the increased traffic along Colorado Blvd. and the surrounding neighborhood.

situated directly on the corner of Colorado Boulevard and Arkansas, two blocks from the old CDOT property. “What you don’t want is for it to end up having so much traffic, and cause so much congestion that people eventually take alternate routes and stay away from you. People who live in surrounding neighborhoods that pass through on Colorado Blvd. and see our sign every day may take a different route to avoid traffic.”

“We are trying to help minimize the impact,” said Chris Viscardi, Director of Development for Kentro Group. “My concern is that what ends up on that property enhances rather than overwhelms it,” said Denver City Councilman Paul Kashmann. However, it is difficult to imagine how the impact can be minimized when that many more cars will be planted on the busiest street in the state. Denver Public Works will weigh in on the traffic impact later in the process.

Kentro Group began the process of inspecting the old CDOT property in February 2018 and has 150 days to continue inspections. And, since the property at 4201 E. Arkansas is zoned for campus and not retail, they will need to get approval from the Denver Planning Board and eventually City Council to be able to build a mixed-use development of housing and retail.

And those plans currently call for buildings as tall as eight stories with an additional 150,000 square feet of commercial retail space. The overall project will also include 150 units of affordable housing according to representatives from the Kentro Group. The mixed-use development is “to create diversity and for Kentro, to create a destination,” said Stacey Weaks, Principal of Norris Design who is drawing up plans for the property.

A person associated with the Denver Planning Department indicated that what that actually means is: “The Virginia Village neighborhood is filled with older middle-class whites who are generally despised by City Hall. They want a City with young hip kids who don’t drive cars and do what they are told. According to Channel 9 families with younger kids are actually moving in to the Virginia Village area which City Hall believes has to be stopped. These people are not welcomed in the new City and County of Denver. Only the young hipsters, the undocumented, the very wealthy and the existing poor are officially welcomed. The rest are welcomed to move out to the god-forsaken suburbs as soon as reasonably possible.”

For those familiar with the yet to be completed 29-acre project at 9th and Colorado Boulevard, Dimitrios Balafas, co-founder and managing partner of Kentro Group admitted this project can be seen as “9th and Colorado Junior.” But, he views this project as activating a neighborhood that desperately needs it.

“I think we will come up with a design that will activate the Virginia Village neighborhood  which is what this neighborhood lacks now,” said Balafas. “We’re local, we care about the community, and we want to build a good project. We’re listening.” Balafas has been in the community since the early ’80s and some attendees of the July 12 meeting appreciated that this project would not be in the hands of an out of town developer.

One attendee who did not wish to be identified remarked, “What is this ‘activate’ b.s. that Kentro tells us we want? Virginia Village neighborhood is a wonderful quiet residential area, but we are only a few blocks from either Colorado Boulevard or Leetsdale Drive. What do we need? More crime, more muggings, more homeless vagrants, more heroin needles strewn on sidewalks?”

Her companion noted, “Why doesn’t Kentro first ‘activate’ the Country Club area where Dimitrios Balafas lives. I am sure he and his neighbors would love it.”

The scope of the project may tip the $100 million mark and may take two to three years to complete. To put it in perspective, the 9th and Colorado project, which is not complete, has been on the clock for five years. The buildings on this parcel reach as high as 12 stories which is what Kentro Group originally proposed. They recently scaled it down to a maximum of eight stories.

Skeptics wonder if this was the plan all along. One neighbor who pr

Crippling Traffic: Colorado Blvd. is already the busiest street in the state. It is feared that the development at 9th and Colorado Blvd. and the old CDOT property will bring traffic to an unbearable crawl during certain hours of the day.

eferred not to be identified said, “This is what developers do. They initially propose something they know the residents will oppose and then scal

Lobbyist: Sean Maley of CRL Associates, Kentro Group’s lobbying firm, fielded tough questions from the audience at the July 12, 2018 meeting at Infinity Park in Glendale.

e the project back to make it seem that they have listened to our concerns. It is a complete smokescreen and we are not buying it.”

CRL and Associates is the lobbyist for Kentro Group on this proposed rezoning and development. Sean Maley, Partner & Chief Business Development Officer for CRL, was at the July 12 meeting and claims they are listening to the needs and concerns of the neighborhood. We are “working our best to work with the neighborhoods,” said Maley. “We are pleased with the level of input at these meetings.”

Maley’s appearance was not welcomed by many in the crowd. “I know that CRL and the Brownstein law firm owns the City Council, but do they have to make it so obvious,” stated one attendee.

The next step in the process is the consideration of the rezoning application submitted by Kentro Group. The Denver Planning Board is predicted to consider this at o

Redevelopment Plans: The plans for the old CDOT headquarters property include eight-story residential buildings. These are approximately the same height as the Empire Park office buildings across the street at 1325 South Colorado Blvd.

ne of their September meetings (either September 5 or 19). The meetings are held in the Parr-Widener Community Room (#389), City and County Building, 1437 Bannock St. Meetings are also broadcast live on Denver’s Channel 8 and online at www.Denver8.TV.

The communication tower on the east side of the property is not included in the acquisition and the State of Colorado will retain ownership.

The matter will then be considered by Denver City Council at what will most likely be a November 2018 meeting. For more information about how to become engaged with the neighbors who plan to oppose the project, visit their Facebook page at “Help Oppose CDOT Redevelopment.” For more information about Kentro Group and this specific project, visit www.kentrogroup. com/arkansas.