The future of the dormant Park Hill golf course in northeast Denver is headed back to the ballot.
That 10-3 vote binds Westside and any future owners it might sell pieces of the property to an agreement that mandates 25% of all housing built there is income-income restricted affordable and that 100 acres of the land be donated to the city as parks and open space including 80 acres immediately upon the passage of the ballot measure lifting the easement.
If the ballot measure does not pass, the agreement dictates Westside must file a rezoning application to turn the property back into open space and then reopen it as a golf course. “This development agreement is about the city listening to community, empowering community,” said Councilman Chris Herndon, whose district encompasses the golf course. The city can enforce the agreement through means including rejecting permits if Westside or other groups its sells to are not keeping up on building income-restricted housing, city staff remembers said. More than 100 people spoke during the cluster of public hearings. The core arguments around the property have remained largely unchanged since the 2021 ballot fight in which Westside ran a competing ballot measure that was defeated while 301 passed with more than 63% of the vote. Opponents to redevelopment say that paving over even a portion of the 155-acre property would further damage the city’s environment at a time when Denver is slipping in rankings of. Redevelopment would also be a detriment to the surrounding Northeast Park Hill neighborhood, which is already at high risk of gentrification, by driving up property taxes and would create traffic burdens on neighborhood streets, they argue. “Why would we ever dispense with the easement when we have a growing population and shrinking park land?” resident Jeff Harbaugh said. Harbaugh and many other opponents to the redevelopment accused the city and Mayor Michael Hancock specifically of steering discussions about the future of the property to an outcome where it will be redeveloped.in 2018 and 2019, campaign finance records show. The company also donated to campaigns for Flynn, Herndon, Sandoval and Councilwoman Stacie Gilmore. For people favoring redevelopment, leaving the property as is under the rules of a conservation easement that dictates it must have a regulation-length, 18-hole golf course is the biggest threat to the community. Years of disinvestment has left Northeast Park Hill without job opportunities while gentrification drives up housing prices and increases the risk of low-income people slipping into homelessness. “As far as I’m concerned, Denver does not have an open space crisis, Denver has a housing and homelessness crisis that needs to be addressed right now,” neighborhood resident Shareef Aleem said.
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