Welcome back to this biweekly meeting of the South Platte River Committee of Denver City Council.

Join us for the discussion as the South Platte River Committee starts now.

No, I think that's right.

Hi, everyone. Thank you for joining us.

We're at the South Platte River Committee for Wednesday, January 14th.

And Councilwoman Jamie Torres, honored to represent West Denver District 3.

We have a great agenda coming up today.

Go to the other side, okay.

And before we focus in on that agenda, let's do introductions.

I will start in the room and then go online, and I'll start to my left.

Good afternoon.

Darrell Watson, representing Fine District 9.

Good afternoon, Amanda Sandoval, Northwest Denver District 1.

Flora Alvarez, Lucky District 7.

Chris Hines, Denver's Perfect Ten.

Thank you.

And do we have any council members on Zoom?

Nope.

Okay.

None yet.

We will introduce them when they join on.

Today we've got an action item, a rezoning property, and then a briefing about parkland

and open space.

So thank you for joining us.

And Fritz, welcome to the table.

Thank you.

Hello, my name is Fritz Claussen, planner with Community Planning and Development.

Here to present on 2001 South Ocoma Street, a rezoning request from URH-215 to CRX5.

We'll go through the request, location and context, process, review criteria for rezoning application,

and finally staffs recommendation. So the request before us is to rezone 2001

South Tacoma Street from the current URH 2.5 to CRX 5. Property is a 6,250

square foot residential property currently containing a single-family

residence. The intention is to rezone to allow residential additional

residential and limited mixed-use options allowed by the CRX5 zoning. Next

location context we are here in Council District 7 in the Overland

statistical neighborhood. Again the existing zoning is URH 2.5. There's a

variety of zonings in this area. We're fairly close to the Evans light rail

station immediately to the north is CMX5 to the west another CRX5 property to the east CMX5

and to the south more of the current URH 2.5 also industrial zoning generally to the west

and once you get on to the east side of past the east side of Broadway transitions to single unit

zoning. The proposed zoning is CRX5, a residential mixed-use zone district, which allows the

townhouse and general building forms. The current land use on the property is single-unit

residential. It's adjacent to a variety of other land uses, including multi-unit residential

to the north and also to the south in the form of a town or a duplex, a variety of industrial,

commercial retail, and other multi-init properties in the area as well.

We see to the top left the current property as seen from the corner of Acoma and Asbury,

and to immediately below that recent residential development

immediately to the north along Acoma.

And on the lower right, that's across the street,

an industrial use property at the other side of the corner of Acoma and Asbury.

Next we'll talk about the process.

The informational notice for this rezoning application

first went out on August 25th of last year. Planning board notice went out on 1223 of last

year. I'm sorry, there's a typo there. It had gone on 2026. There have been two planning board

public hearings for this rezoning. We had one originally on November 19th of last year.

We discovered after that took place that the email notice to RNOs did not go out properly.

So we kicked it back in the schedule to send out the notice properly, and the application was reheard on January 7th.

Both times passed through planning board, recommended for approval.

We're here today, January 14th, 2026, and looking at a tentative council hearing date of February 23rd.

In terms of public comments, we've received two comments in support of the application

and in support of additional residential density in the station area and the neighborhood more generally.

One comment in opposition, sort of taking the opposite view,

wanting to preserve the single-family residential nature of this pocket of single-family residences in the area.

Alright, review criteria, this is where we get into the plan recommendations.

Of course there are three criteria for rezoning in the Denver zoning code.

First consistency with adopted plans, second public interest, and third consistency with

the neighborhood context zone district purpose and intent in the Denver zoning code.

So there's a whole bunch of plans that apply here from ComPlan 2040 through blueprint to

some more specific and older plans including the Evans Station Plan from 2009, the Shattuck

District Plan from 2003, and the Overland Neighborhood Plan from 1993.

Looking at Comprehensive Plan 2040, we think that this rezoning is consistent with the

number of goals of the Comprehensive Plan 2040 under the Equitable, Affordable, and

Inclusive heading that includes ensuring Denver residents have access to services and amenities

including development of housing units that are close to transit, also creating a greater

mix of housing options in all neighborhoods, and using our land use regulations to enable

and encourage development of missing middle and mixed income housing close to transit.

Under strong and authentic neighborhoods, we see this as part of building a network of

well-connected, vibrant, mixed-use centers and corridors, and encouraging quality infill

development and enabling development that contributes to neighborhood culture and quality

of life.

Finally, under Environmentally Resilient heading of Com Plan 2040, our plans want us to promote

infill development where infrastructure and services are already in place and encourage

mixed-use communities and focus growth around transit stations and transit corridors.

Blueprint Denver. This is an urban neighborhood context currently and in

Blueprint Denver. Homes in this context vary from single unit development to

multi-unit development to compact single unit homes. I do want to note here and

I'll get in more into the details of this. We do see this as consistent with

with Blueprint Denver recommendations.

It does have a different letter at the front.

The current Blueprint Denver recommendation for context is urban.

The context that's specified in the zoning code designation

for this is urban center.

Blueprint Denver has specific guidance to help us work

through a situation like this.

It tells us to pay attention to neighborhood context, place type,

street types, building heights, our growth strategy,

and says that the boundaries of the context

can be interpreted with some flexibility

if the request furthers the goals of Blueprint Denver

and is consistent with the overall intent

of the neighborhood context map.

Considering the surrounding context

of what already urban center designated areas

to the northeast and west of the property

and the consistency with the place type recommendations,

including building height, that we'll

get into in just a second, we do see this

as consistent with the adopted plans in that it follows specific plan guidance about allowing

a mix of uses and building forms that contribute to street activation and aligns with the land

use and building height guidance and is compatible, we think, with the emerging mixed-use character

of the station area as it transitions away from industrial uses.

One further note on this, there is an ongoing Southwest Area Plan that this is in the domain of.

Obviously, we have to go off of the adopted and existing Blooper Denver plans.

I can tell you that one of the recommendations that the team has proposed in draft form for the Southwest Area Plan is to redesignate this area as Urban Center.

So we have to look at the recommendations as they are.

That is just to let you know that the recommendation may be changing in the near future.

To look at, oh yeah, I'm sorry, there's more information on this comparing urban and urban center.

I already said all that stuff.

To talk about the specific place types, this is where Blueprint Denver gets more specific on things like building heights and uses.

Community center, and this is consistent between community centers in urban context and urban center context.

Community centers provide a mix of office, commercial, and residential uses.

They can be larger in scale.

Buildings are typically larger in scale than local centers and orient to the street.

We want to see public building, continuous building frontages that define the public realm.

We want to see heights generally up to five stories and a transition of building intensity

from the center to the surrounding residential areas.

This is in a growth area.

It's in a community center and corridor area.

These areas are intended under Blueprint Denver to absorb 20% of job growth and 25% of housing

growth by 2040.

Additional strategies that we think are applicable here in Blueprint, similar to Complan

2040 we want to promote and anticipate planned growth in centers and corridors in an areas

connected by rail service.

We want to incentivize or require efficient development in land in transit rich areas.

And we want to capture 80% of new housing growth in areas that include community centers and

corridors.

Right.

Moving on to the Evans Station Plan.

The Evans Station Plan sees this as a mixed-use residential area with building heights up to

five stories.

The Shattuck District Plan recommends that we put underutilized commercial or industrial

parcels to more productive uses and create a good mix of land use types.

Overland Neighborhood Plan is a bit antiquated at this point from 1993.

think potentially recommendation to have reinvestment in the neighborhood applies including beautification

and cleanup. Second public interest we see this as being within the public interest it

furthers our plans and creates new opportunities for housing development in a transit use area

potentially with neighborhoods serving commercial uses enabled by the CRX zoning as well.

Well, third, consistency with neighborhood context, zone district purpose and intent

statements.

The requested zone district is in the urban center neighborhood context.

That generally consists of a mix of multi-unit residential commercial office uses.

We think that this is an appropriate designation for the site.

The requested zoning is intended to provide for residential mixed-use development at a

maximum height of five stories and it's within the walking distance of a light rail station

and is located in an area recommended by station area plans and our blueprint plan

for five-story development. I do want to sort of zero in on some really specific things. We had a,

we kind of got into the weeds in planning board and I'm happy to get into the weeds with you here.

I do want to mention in particular that this is more to highlight the differences between

the CRX zoning and the equivalent in URX zoning.

They're fairly equivalent except for the differences in building forms that are allowed.

The proposed CRX-5 allows townhouse and general building forms.

URX-5 allows townhouse and shop front.

Either way, there is a 10-foot side interior setback to protected districts.

If we went back to the zoning map, all the area that's currently URH 2.5 is a protected district.

So it would be adjacent to a protected district.

It would have a 10-foot minimum set back to the south.

Yeah.

Following all that, staff's recommendation, we do recommend that based on the criteria for review in the zoning code

that you move this application forward for consideration by the full city council.

Happy to engage in discussion or answer any questions.

The applicant is also online if you have any questions for them as well. What's the name Fritz?

The name of the apple. Oh, I'm Andy or excuse me Andy Andy already already. Yeah

Pretty sure if you can look for that name. Thank you so much

we do have a

Couple of council members in queue if you'd like to join you just let me know we'll start with councilwoman. I'll be this

Thank you committee chair. I do have a question

for you first, which is how did you decide which context,

when it comes to the urban, the different urban context

that you considered?

Yeah.

Oh, did you decide?

No.

No.

Did you give a suggestion of which one?

We, well, the process that a rezoning application goes

through, the applicant first comes to us with a general idea

that we discussed plan recommendations

with them in a pre-application meeting.

And then they make their choice of requested zone district,

and they proceed from there.

I think the intention of that was to sort of match

what is emerging as the sort of zoning for the area.

The property immediately to the west had a recent rezoning to CRX5.

There's also CMX5, or actually CMX8, I believe, to the north,

and CMX5 to the east.

And I think the applicant, as an architect, also saw benefit in the flexibility of the general building form that is available in the CRX 5 zone district.

Okay, great.

I would like to talk to the applicant, Andy, if you're online.

Andy, are you there?

I'm here.

Can you guys hear me?

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Thank you so much for being here.

I'm looking at this.

And February 2024 was quite a long time ago.

I'm curious what took so long and why now are you bringing this forward?

Because I don't remember that far back.

Sure.

I remember a lot of things, but, well, I'll do my best.

One, when we initially bought the property, the market was in a different place than it was last year.

So because of the change in market, the sense of urgency on our end became lower.

We have a current tenant that had a lease and still is under lease.

So the combination of those two things delayed our sense of urgency.

Then also we had to restart the process because we inadvertently had let it expire when we did our initial, I'll call it concept meeting.

I know that's not the right term, but we had our initial consultation with staff.

We had started that process, but we had not followed through for the various reasons I just described.

And then because of that, we had to start the process over.

So that also adds to the length of time.

And then the city, when we were just getting the postings and dates, those things add a little more time than what we had thought initially as well.

So it's just a combination, not one factor, but just a combination of all those factors brings us to the date we're at today.

Okay, great.

I did speak to the RNO, and they said they did respond and have some questions, particularly around such a high density on such a small lot even being feasible to go up five stories.

I'm curious, one, why you didn't get back to them, and two, what your plans are for the property with this zoning.

So my wife had the majority of correspondence with Jen Grieving.

She's the contact person that we had for the Overland Neighbor Association.

And I apologize if I don't have their exact name right, but that's...

That's her name, yep.

Okay. She exchanged multiple phone calls and emails from April 24 through June of 25.

It seemed like a couple of times they had a meeting and then the meeting was canceled.

We didn't have a lot to present because we don't have a specific design for the project at this time.

We're at the rezoning and have not fully determined the direction we're going to go, whether that be a more townhome style project or a more apartment style.

As Fritz had mentioned, I as an architect like the flexibility of the general zoning building form.

And a lot will depend just on the current market.

We have development partners that we're discussing the best opportunity or the best direction to go.

I could, if I had the available to share my screen, show you some examples.

We are actually working with a developer down the block at the corner of Acoma and Evans on the opposite corner where we are in site development plan review.

That's for a four-story apartment, 24 residences above a level of parking.

Have some layouts on similar projects we've done.

If we did a townhome style, it would be a four to five townhome style project.

And like I said, I could show some examples if you'd like.

And with respect, again, to the Neighborhood Association, it just seemed that they didn't really have a set meeting ever.

We exchanged, my wife and her exchanged a lot of conversation verbally.

Then it was, well, let's just meet for coffee and discuss.

And then it just, for whatever reason, never ended up happening.

Okay.

And then for, if you were to do townhomes, what would be the difference between townhomes

you could do under this current zoning of RH 2.5 and the type of townhomes you'd be

able to do under the zoning you're requesting?

Height restriction and setback are the two major differences. So the current zoning is two and a

half story. We would be allowed to go up to five story. On a townhome, that's not really feasible.

So if we were in a townhome, we would be in the three to four story range, whether that be a

three-story with a rooftop-type patio to take advantage of the beautiful views to the west

and downtown from the site. Even on the apartment style, because of the

setback from a protected district, which is the property to the south,

It limits the amount once you get above a certain height.

So there's nothing in between the five-story and the two-and-a-half.

And so in the early discussions with the staff at the city, the five-story zoning to the north, west, and east was the logical conclusion.

Okay. And the event producer said that they sent you an invite to be a panelist so you

could share your screen. Did you get that? Let me look here.

So you may not have video share option on your device.

It says join webinar.

I don't see him.

I received an email at 1.30.

There's nothing on that email that says that I can see that says I could share my device.

Okay.

No worries.

I'll just, that's all I have for the moment.

I'll jump back in the queue at the end.

Thank you.

Okay.

If you guys can send me another email or the person who's in charge of that to where I could, I'd be happy to do so.

Okay.

If we're able to do that in the meeting time, we will.

But let's go to Councilman Flynn, who's up next in the queue for questions.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Fritz, could you elaborate a little more deeply on the change in context from urban to sea?

And I understand that Blueprint says we have flexibility in changing context depending on other plans and whatnot.

but I'm always a little hesitant to change the context that has been laid out in Blueprint.

So if you go a little more deeply into what are the justifying reasons for going from urban?

Right. Well, the guidance in Blueprint, when you have a proposed on district with a different neighborhood context

from what's recommended in Blueprint,

it says we should consider neighborhood context,

place type, street type, building heights, growth strategy,

and that it should be consistent with the overall intent

of the neighborhood context map.

Considering that we have urban center designated areas

to the north, east, and west of the subject property,

as well as a pretty one-to-one consistency with the specific recommendations of land use and

building height, as well as the blueprint growth strategy and other blueprint plan policies and

strategies, as well as station area plan guidance. We thought that no matter the letter

in the first. We look more at the specific regulations that the zone district would bring

here. And when we're looking at the proposed CRX-5, we see the regulations of CRX-5 as

consistent with what's recommended in the place type, the growth strategy, the station area plan,

all the other applicable guidance that we have in our plans.

Could you, at the time of the public hearing at council, could you be prepared to go more

deeply into specifics on this?

Because it's just this little finger of urban context that's surrounded by the urban center

context.

And it'd be nice to understand what specific things are present in the urban, that little

I think it's only one block wide because eventually we would, it seems if this were the case,

we'd be doing away with that entire urban context there along a coma and just basically

go to the urban center with everything, just piece by piece, parcel by parcel.

So I'd like to hear more of that at the public hearing.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Those are all the folks that I have in queue. Councilman will be that is. Did you want to jump back in? Yeah. If I could, Andy, I, are you still there?

Same right, Andy. Yeah, absolutely. They mute me in between. Oh, no worries. Yeah.

No worries. Yeah. You know, I did talk to Jen and the Overland Park Neighborhood Association,

and I think they would be supportive of this, but I am going to ask you please to make contact

with them before you come to the floor. Okay. Yeah. If you can just provide those images that

you mentioned, I think it'll make a lot of sense, but it's a little confusing of why you would go

to five stories on this being such a small lot, and it would go a long way, and we really need

to make sure that we're engaging the neighbors when these things come up.

Sure. When you say share the images, share them with you, share them with Jen?

With Overland Park Neighborhood Association, which Jen grieving is the president. So if you

could just make that coffee and meeting happen, I think that would go a long way for the neighborhood.

And I generally think that they would be supportive of something like this. So that

would be very, very helpful. I don't want to postpone this. I would rather have it move along

but I am asking you to please meet with them.

Okay.

I will say, like I said, I didn't have my wife took care of most of that.

And there would be a long gaps between email responses.

We're having to do whatever we can to meet with them.

Well, I mean, I reached out since this came on the agenda last year and now,

and they've been very responsive.

I'm happy to, if you want to copy me on the email

so I can see that you're reaching out.

But I was going to ask if we were allowed to do.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

Thank you, Andy.

Yeah, not a problem.

Appreciate it.

Thank you.

Okay.

Okay.

Super.

Thank you so much.

I don't have anyone else in the queue.

Can I get a motion in a second?

Thank you.

Second by Councilwoman Alvarez.

Everybody good with this moving forward?

Great.

Okay.

Thank you.

Thank you for joining us today.

Thank you, Prince.

Appreciate it.

Take care.

We will move on to our briefing and presentation.

And I'm really excited to welcome Rocky Pirro.

Thank you so much for joining us.

And he's joined by Frank Rowe.

Please join us at the table.

And Melissa is getting us set up with your presentation.

But take a minute to introduce yourselves.

And maybe anyone who's joined you in the seats.

And go right ahead.

Okay, well, thank you so much.

I'm Rocky Puro.

I'm a native.

I'm like a second-generation Denverite here.

I have a love affair with this city.

And one of my loves has always been the park system in the city.

I think the park system in the neighborhoods really define Denver and make it a unique place.

I've worked my career as a professional planner.

I'm retired now.

I'm a professional grandpa now, hanging out with grandkids.

and worked as planning director here in the city,

and more recently served as the director of the Colorado Center for Sustainable Urbanism at the CU Denver campus.

I've also worked nationally and internationally on various planning boards and committees here.

But today we want to talk about some of the challenges that we've been made aware of in terms of deficits and gaps in our park system.

So I'll let Frank introduce himself.

And I'm Frank Rowe. I'm the co-founder and executive director of the Denver Park Coast.

We're a nonprofit partner of Denver Parks and Recreation.

We work to expand and enhance parks with a focus on our historically under-resourced neighborhoods.

and I've had the opportunity to work in every council district at this table in a project

and closely with many of the offices, too.

One of my founding board members is sitting next to the councilwoman Sandoval.

And I also want to recognize Ryan Aids, who is the executive director of Greenway.

We've partnered on a couple of different things, and he's a real leader on some of the things we're talking about.

And John Desmond retired from the downtown Denver Partnership.

It kind of helps me figure out things.

And then Critter Thompson is with us too and has worked with Rocky.

So that's all of us.

Okay, yeah, that's it.

Great.

So, yeah, we'll move forward.

We'll try to keep this brief so that we have time for some discussion and questions from you.

So we're basically tagging on two things today.

So the citywide park deficit as well as looking at opportunities within the river corridor here.

I've had an opportunity to meet with a lot of you one-on-one and present some of this information.

Last spring, we had a meeting with a subgroup of this committee as well, and a very rich meeting.

We got a lot of great ideas on that and made some adjustments to the presentation based on that.

Part of what got us involved with the river corridor issue is the rezoning that's taken place citywide on gas stations

and concerns that some of you had that if industrial areas are going to be primary sites for gas stations,

we don't end up with the river just aligned with fueling stations.

So we'll talk about both of those things,

and we'll talk about the partnerships that have been evolving and continue to evolve,

and then leave you with some concluding thoughts here.

So back in 2019, game plan identified a gap right now of 1,300 acres.

in the city. This was an issue that came up in campaigns, both the mayoral campaign and

some of the council campaigns at that time. And so there was an interest in trying to

do a little deeper dive in terms of what that meant. Game plan also identifies if we just kind

of stay with status quo, we'd end up with like a 3,800 acre gap in subsequent decades here.

National average among cities, according to the Trust for Public Land, is 13 acres per thousand people.

Denver's average has dropped to nine acres per thousand people.

And you can see we've listed quite a few cities there that either meet the national average or exceed it.

You know, Denver used to be really well known for its park system.

We know we've had a couple of decades of development, which has really grown our population.

We have not kept up with open space and parks commensurate with that growth that has taken place.

We have a lot of information that's in the hands now.

The Park Trust University also has this information.

But part of our analysis was to look district by district at what the deficits are.

And again, I've met with some of you to discuss this with your own districts here.

The only district that really exceeds the 13 acres is District 8 in northeast Denver.

District 4 comes pretty close, Frank's district here.

And then I just am showing you, since this is a river subcommittee here, what to be looking at district by district there.

So you can see District 1 at 9.7 acres, District 3, 4.4.

quite a ways short of that 13-acre aspiration.

3.3 in District 2.

District 9, 9.5, so kind of comparable with District 1.

District 10, 2.5, which is not perfect,

but a lot of opportunity there, council member.

And then, of course, District 7 we've got there,

which is maybe about half of what we'd aspire to.

We're not, I'm just showing you our methodology here quickly.

So what we did is go through district by district.

We cataloged all the parks according to information that the parks department has, both designated parks, partially designated parks, non-designated parks.

I mean, just a simple exercise of adding that all up and then applying that population figure,

the 13 acres per 1,000 to figure out, 2,000 people to figure out the deficit.

So for example, here in District 1, right now there's 860 acres.

So that particular district would need about 200 more acres to get to the nationwide average.

We've also done a little exercise, and Critter's been our master here with helping with mapping here,

where we've had some deeper conversations with some council people on where there might be opportunities to add some park and open space.

I would say I'm being very conservative about this.

My opinion is this should be a community exercise and be done through, you know, authentic public participation and so on here.

So I've kind of stuck to just identifying where there's vacant lots or underutilized properties as some opportunities here.

All right, so that's just kind of a quick overview citywide.

If any of you want the detail for your particular districts, we can get that to you.

The river has a lot of challenges, and I know you've worked with other groups, interests.

You've done a lot of phenomenal research as well.

I'll just highlight a few key issues here.

In Englewood and Littleton, the water quality is much healthier than it is in Denver.

So in 2021, we saw a contaminant level for E. coli at like 137 times the federal safety standard.

So we've got some challenges there.

Much of the embankment in vegetation needed for the river to be healthy has been compromised over the years.

And then I think of particular interest to this group is the adjacent land uses and infrastructure.

And are they compatible?

Many times right now they're conflicting with maintaining the health and healthy function of the river.

There are a lot of vacant, partially vacant, and underutilized lands along the river.

So these present some opportunities here.

And then, again, I already mentioned the challenge of the new provisions the city has for gas stations here.

So we started a little conservatively with CRITR just trying to identify what we're talking about

in terms of what should be examined with regard to kind of river-sensitive areas along that corridor.

I think Critter, we started with like 100 feet on either side first just to be conservative,

and then we went up to 100 feet after we talked with some of you.

We're now at a half mile on either side here.

So that just gives you some context as we look at that issue now.

So we provided you with some information just on what could happen.

I mean, we can come up with some strategies and opportunities to create more river-supportive land uses along the corridor, including zoning and regulations.

Take advantage of the buildable lands analysis, which you're now required to do under state legislation in 2024.

Actually, some of that work was already done by DU, CU, working with Green Latinos.

they've done a region-wide analysis of buildable lands.

Their focus was on station areas that had vacant land

and what the health levels were at those station areas,

so how much land pollution, water pollution,

exposure to air pollution at those station areas were.

But, you know, there is rich information there as well.

We've talked with some of you about establishing a district,

an area, whatever terminology you'd like to use here.

And, you know, we could consider something like area-wide rezoning,

action plans specifically to address parks and open space,

an overlay area.

The city already has some overlay districts in other parts of the city.

So there's a lot of different ways you might want to move forward

in terms of addressing that.

And I've just touched on those here.

I'll just show a couple of examples there are ones I love.

City of Albuquerque has maintained the cottonwood canopy along the Rio Grande River there

and not encroached right up to the river's edge.

And then you see just south of us in Littleton,

just kind of a generous treatment of letting the river be the river as it passes through that city here.

So I'm going to turn it over to Frank now to chat about issues that we consider when we look at parkland and open space.

Thanks, Rocky.

And yes, Rocky approached us.

You know, our mission is to add parks where none exist.

And the 10-minute walk or roll gap and five minutes downtown is very important to the Denver Park Trust and aligned with game plan, as we talked earlier.

are and when the denver park trust looks at an opportunity like this we want to see how we can

strategically be involved and suggesting that the river may have some opportunities when we look at

council president sandoval's district and say we need to add 200 acres she's thinking where

and it's hard it's hard you know we've got a couple of projects that we've

We've successfully invested with Parks and Rec on 44th and Pearl in Globeville and most recently on 1060 South Emporia in East Denver in the Windsor neighborhood.

But those were two acre and half acre properties to close 10 at walk and roll gap.

So there are some opportunities and the Denver Park Trust would like to be involved.

One thing that I've learned from John and his experience in working downtown is that sometimes a demonstration project is a good way to take a look at something that's such a big thing to bite off.

And, you know, the Riverfront Park and Sun Valley offer some of those opportunities there.

It is a park desert area.

There's the development, nationally recognized development from DHA going on, plans in place to build an 11-acre park.

As Ryan and I have talked about, it sits square in the middle of this river area.

And just embracing and supporting those and trying to see how that can be maybe replicated along the river is very important.

And then if we flip the slide.

Yeah, so something's happened to the.

We'll get it back up.

I was going to say that a lot of this we're talking about.

So if we flip it one more time, one of this is we're talking about, you know,

us saying that this is a good idea from a bigger level and adding park space.

But really, I think it has to start from the ground level.

And what Anita Gonzalez and the River Sisters have done to create the idea of the turquoise necklace

is something that dovetails very closely with what we're talking about here.

And I thought Anita was going to join us today, but she had a meeting.

And so getting groups like that, of course, Greenway, and folks on the ground to put together what it can look like from a community standpoint,

I think that's a really good role for the Denver Park Trust to support.

So getting to 13 acres per thousand residents citywide is going to take a real commitment in the long term.

And I think starting with that demonstration project, getting partners involved,

and keeping an eye on some of the things that Rocky and Critter have mapped out is a good way to go.

And our organization, working with others, is very supportive of that.

So I'm just going to quickly dovetail on River Sisters.

This afternoon, the university is still on winter break, so we don't have anyone here, there.

but they just about 20 minutes before we started wanted me to share with you some of their commitment and engagement.

I mean, they're looking at providing research and technical assistance.

They already have some contracts with the city dealing with park and park-related issues.

They can use classes, studios, capstone projects for master students, courses they have on parks,

geospatial courses, landscape architecture courses.

I mean, there's a lot of interest to really try to leverage as much as what happens in the university to support some of these efforts.

And they're very interested in working with the partnerships to try to secure additional grants for other projects,

maybe to build on like the pilot project that John's suggesting and begin to do more and more types of projects.

So just in conclusion here, we probably need to decide what kind of area or district are we talking about.

Are we going to kind of keep underlying zoning and just add some additional zoning things?

Are we going to look at creating kind of a new area with its own river-centric type of zoning here?

Look at the opportunities for additional park and open space there.

Do that buildable lands analysis.

I think we're going to see.

I think I just know, and you probably know too, there's a lot of vacant, partially vacant and underutilized land along the river.

There may be some inappropriate uses there too.

Dare I say I can do this?

I don't know that I'll get in trouble anymore.

When we did the area plan for Sun Valley, I actually had the boundary extended east to Zuni,

So we would have both sides of the bank to be looking at parks and open space opportunities and the river.

I don't think it's the best use to have spa and hot tub businesses right there along the river.

And, you know, there are great places for those to be within the city as well.

I think we've covered most of the points here, so I'm just going to move on.

And one of the issues I'll talk about is this notion of low-impact development.

And again, you've worked with this many times with a lot of street and infrastructure projects here.

A good example is Brighton Boulevard, where we have put drainage soils in to capture stormwater rather than just to pipe it right into the river.

So there's opportunities to be doing that type of infrastructure adjacent to the river and to ensure that there's adequate facilities and so on.

I'm a big advocate of impact assessment for the community and ensure that there's rich participation.

Critter and I developed this just looking.

We've just kind of identified we don't need to dwell on this here.

We've just kind of, again, and we're being kind of conservative, identify some areas right now where there may be opportunities to take advantage of underutilized or partially vacant land.

We're also showing right here, I don't know if my arrow is working, yeah, maybe creating a smaller manufacturing industrial district below the Barnum Yards.

that could be a site for a lot of these home and lifestyle businesses,

the tile and carpet businesses and so on that are along the banks.

I mean, that might be kind of a rich district there.

The university has done a lot of work on manufacturing industrial districts.

And again, we're seeing opportunities both at the north end and the south end of the city

to maybe do some consolidation and create some great regional parks here as well.

Last thing I want to talk about, this is a little bugaboo from my days working with the city,

are large-scale development projects.

Right now, there's a provision to set aside 10% open space.

That's very two-dimensional thinking.

It's very Euclidean.

It's not looking at amount of parkland needed to support a population.

So I'd really encourage that we look at getting beyond geometry

and looking at populations and densities.

And maybe future projects like this,

we're moving towards ensuring that there's 13 to 15 acres

of open space on a site for every 1,000 people

that will be housed there,

rather than just a Euclidean geometry sort of calculation.

We'll stop there.

Here's our contact information, and we're ready to chat.

with you now and into the future.

Great. Thank you so much.

I've got President Sandoval and then Flynn in queue.

President Sandoval, go for a second.

Thank you all. Good to see you, Rocky.

Good to see you.

For those who don't know, I met with Rocky every week.

I think it was every week or every week.

Yeah, every week. Yeah, your first term.

Yeah, my first term, I think, once a week,

and then it went to, like, every other, and then weekly,

and he helped me really identify a lot of the overlay extravaganzas that I have in Northwest Denver.

I did a lot of studying.

So for those who don't know, that's where I really studied a lot with Rocky.

And I'm an old District 1 boy, so that's where I grew up.

He's from District 1, and we really—

We call them Northsiders.

I mean, he was the CPD director, and I was working for Councilwoman Montero.

he really helped on the I-70 project

and really helped me learn about corridors and open space

and how important that really,

the whole entire ecosystem of land use is.

So one question I have on the presentation,

when you look at council districts,

so say for council district 10,

do you incorporate areas around Spear Boulevard?

Yes.

Okay, so if it's designated parkland, even if it's not designated and it is parkland, it still counts?

That's going to calculate. So for example, right near Spear and Laramond, there's three city sites that are undesignated parkland.

Two of the parcels have been developed as parks, kind of serving as the median.

So that's included in our analysis, as well as that strip along the area.

That would probably end up being actually Council District 3.

Yeah, that's true.

That's true.

Yeah.

We got district.

So then one other question I have, I keep thinking,

it's not in my Council District, but in Council District 3,

with the Ball Arena, it won't be city-owned land, open space,

but it would be open space that they, in their concept,

that they have with the, do you count land like that

as development comes online, even though it is not, quote,

unquote, the city and county of Denver's,

it will be open space that would be managed by that facility.

That's an excellent question.

So right now the data we're working

with is strictly city-owned land.

So privately owned open space or areas are not factored in.

That's something we could work on.

I mean, part of the controversy with that, or challenge, I should say, shouldn't be so negative, is, you know, if it's private open space, is it only available to certain users?

Yeah, I have the same concern.

There are other areas of town, like, and we talked about Council District 8 being fine, but within Central Park, there's a Metro District that manages their parks, as you know.

And so those aren't necessarily counted here.

They are.

They are counted in there.

Okay.

They're counted in there.

But some counts, like Trust for Public Land, don't include those.

It's hard to get it accurate.

But when you're 9 per 1,000 and there's 13 per 1,000 goal, you know, it's a big gap.

And that goal came from our adopted plans?

The plan identifies the national average set by the Trust for Public Land.

And so this is every municipality across the country.

The average is 13 acres, you know, whether it's a large town, small town.

So that's just the average.

I mean, so for us to get back to 13 acres, we would just be average, you know.

So that's something to keep in mind.

Okay.

One partner that I keep thinking about on one of your slides, I think it's slide 13,

is Dave Bennett just retired from their flood district.

The flood district.

Flood district is a great one, yeah.

So I think that's an important partner to think about

because I know I've been talking,

Councilman Torres and I,

when we even talked about creating this committee,

we talked about how important the flood district is

with the MOU for the water,

for the South Platte River to have the work with the Army Corps of Engineers

and that they would be really important.

The next opportunity that I keep thinking about is on slide 14,

or even, no, still slide 13,

what type of area or district for the Platte River and adjacent areas?

So when I was going through Harkness Heights, Discover Denver had done a survey already.

And so I was able to go into Discover Denver and utilize the, which is a part of Historic

Denver and the Denver Partnership.

They just got a new executive director.

I was able to go in and use their data because they had already gone into Harkness Heights.

They'd gone into Sunnyside, and they'd gone into other parts of my council district that had done research on the parcel size.

What was the land use?

What was the make of the buildings?

What was the type of era of the buildings that were there?

And so I really used that information.

I have not, in all the years that I've been studying land use, been able to find anything that, any entity that has done that along the South Platte River.

because it's a long way of me getting there.

But when I was, I used the Discover Denver data,

then I went to our land use rules and I was like,

okay, is this a conservation overlay?

Am I trying to conserve something based on all of the work

that Discover Denver had done?

Or am I attempting to get a different design?

And then I did a, so some of my overlays

on all the extravagances that I've done,

Some of them are a design overlay because I needed to get a different design outcome.

And some of them were a conservation because I wanted to conserve what was already in the

built environment and then continue to promote that where I've gotten stuck.

Um, and I haven't done this since I've been council president and I'm getting my master's.

So I really just dropped all of this.

But where I got stuck when I was working on this for the South Platte river is there's

no entity that has done that type of land use analysis along the whole entire quarter a and

then even in our um our land use there's nothing that leads me to like a direct um should it be

a area or a district it was really it was much easier for me to say okay sunnyside needs to have

a conservation overlay on this side an overlay on this side and then go to cpd and say am i on the

on the right path because oftentimes I'll get a capstone student from the School of

Architecture, give them my problem statement that I'm trying to solve for and then say

now go do your research.

When I've met with, I think his name is Strobel, he's at the UC Denver, I'll go in and sit

on some of their advisories and he'll like their capstone projects.

I've talked to them about this problem statement, and he was like, it's really hard because there's no guidance in your revised municipal code that leads you to a district for a river or anything.

So this comes a long way in me saying that when I first rezoned Chaffee Park, we didn't have a standard zone district because the lots were really small.

And so I had to create a zone district in for the Denver zoning code and then rezone some part of my neighborhood to that zone district.

So I feel like this, even in concluding thoughts, it's even a little bit more complicated than that.

It is.

Because we're going to have to actually create a district, adopt that district, put it in our zoning code,

and then that could lead us to figuring out is it an area or a district for that.

Am I on the right?

You're totally on the right.

I think when we first started, I think Critter and I were kind of using the term conservation overlay.

Yeah.

We backed off of that.

Because it has distinct critters.

Yeah, I mean, it's not uniformly defined what that is and isn't.

And it has distinct characteristics.

Exactly.

That you are trying to conserve.

Yeah.

You don't have that on the South Platte River.

No, no.

So that's why we backed away and just kind of are using nebulous, you know, some area.

Some people take issue with using the term district.

I mean, I don't have a problem with that.

I know some of you have talked about creating a district,

and this may be doing something totally new that we've never done before.

I mean, there's probably rich examples across the country that would be a great thing

to have the university do some research on, you know,

to see where have communities created kind

of a river district, if you will.

I think Pittsburgh may have that.

I shouldn't mention a place without having the specific

data behind it.

We have partners .

Yeah, how do I find that information of what rivers,

because I know that when we got the update from the Congressos,

the River Sisters, they had talked about areas

that had done personhood, so I was able to research that.

Yes.

That, in Colorado and Denver, it still doesn't give us a protection that I would want to see along the river.

It's a good identifier.

I think it needs to be an and.

It needs to be both and that.

So that is something that I'll have to be able to check out because I think we're going to have to create something into our Denver Revised Municipal Code for this.

Yeah. The last thought that I had, I have it on the top of my head, but now I forgot. So I'll go back in the queue. But just want to say thank you all for the work on this. You know, this is, oh, the last that I had was when I had Naomi, who I hired as my first councillor from the School of Architecture.

she created a overlay for actually Councilwoman Taurus's district.

It was part, we shared the district.

It was the Lakewood Gulch.

Oh, yes.

Yeah, I remember that.

Yeah, she had created so the doors didn't go.

The doors actually went to the river, right, facing the river instead

because we can't do that.

You have to face the street.

So then the gulch would have been designated as like under Dottie

and been able to face that.

So I wanted, so I have that, but it still doesn't get to the, I still have her work.

It still doesn't get me what I want to see along this whole entire corridor and get to why Councilwoman Torres and I even started this committee as I came to her with this crazy idea.

I was like, what if we have a committee that just only talks about one of our things that's always been the backdoor and actually is an asset.

and you can't have it an asset unless you start talking about what kind of asset it is.

So thank you for that.

Once I have a little bit more time on my hands, I graduate in March 7th,

so thank God I can see the horizon.

I'll start working on this again and thinking with CPD about who.

We're going to have to figure out what in our Denver Revised Municipal Code

to add to get to this outcome.

So you'll be hearing from me soon.

That's perfect.

Yeah, I think there's several options, alternatives that we can consider.

And, you know, maybe it's something we could work on, just kind of our core group here,

or we ask the university to work on to, you know, what would an overlay thing look like?

What would a totally new river district look like?

What would something hybrid, you know, look like where there's just certain requirements

for infrastructure that are more river sensitive?

Yeah, because one of the things I've done is when I've gone into communities, I have

the definition of a historic district, the definition of a conservation overlay, and

then the definition of a design overlay.

And I'm like, what are we trying to solve for?

So you want to do that.

It can't ever be torn down.

We know we have this tool.

If you're trying to conserve something that you have for characteristic that you want

to save, let's do a conservation overlay.

If we're trying to do design outcomes, we have this.

just don't have that no in our on our code no we don't or else i would have already tried to work

on it and i think from our side i think what we feel is it's our job to pull together the best

information possible for you to work through alternatives and options that's true i can give

you my problem all right thank you all thank you madam chair thank you i've got councilman flynn

and then Councilman Hines.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

And Rocky, Council President was getting at my first question,

which was how do you account for privately owned open space

that is in metro districts?

And at first I thought you said that you were not counting privately owned space

such as the Ball Arena open space that's proposed.

But then you said that that which is managed by metro district

in Central Park neighborhood is included?

It is included.

Yes, it is.

Why would Ball?

I mean, part of why that happened was at the request of a council person at the time that

we bring that in.

So, and again, if there's a gap there, I think that's something we can work on, you know,

and look at other places that are privately owned.

I think part of it is just a little bit of the anomaly of Central Park as a community.

So, and I'm not sure that that's replicated everywhere.

You know, where I'm thinking of other places of privately owned open spaces like the Skyline District downtown.

For instance, how about Lowry in District 5?

Yeah, Lowry, again, we have accounted for all of the parkland there, regardless of whether it's Metro District or not.

So it is a mix.

I wanted to point out.

It's a mix, Councilmember, yes.

Because in the chat, we were talking about, I was asked about Loretto Heights, which, of course, it's not fully developed yet.

So the open space that we planned there actually is about 18 or close to 20 percent of the acreage there, although it's only a 70-acre site.

But somebody mentioned that, you know, is it open to the public or is it restricted for certain users?

And in the development agreement at Loretto Heights, it's open to everybody.

So we expect folks from College View or Harvey Park to be able to use the open space at Colorado Heights.

It's not a big number, but 18% of 70 acres is what we ended up with.

Yeah, that's a contribution.

Yes.

Are you – I saw in the presentation that you had potential park additions in Council District 1,

but I was shocked to see that Council District 2 is the lowest other than the downtown District 10,

which is much smaller geographically, of course.

Yeah, yeah.

So it stands to reason it's harder to find a lot of open space for every thousand residents in downtown.

But in my Council District, I was shocked that we were as low as we are.

So do you have a proposed potential additions in Council District 2 or in other Council districts that can try to get us up to that average of 13 acres?

Not yet. So we've done work for District 9 already.

And if we have a little bit of a queue, I've been asked by Paul Cashman and Amanda Sawyer to do that work for their districts.

So I promise to do that.

You may be a priority to get to earlier.

Yeah.

And I've got some affinity with you, council member.

I used to live in your district till I got de-annexed.

I used to live at the branch and overnight ended up in Jefferson County.

About three years later, I moved back into Denver.

So I know part of your challenge are those.

A lot of people don't realize the history.

We had annexed all the way to Red Rocks practically.

Yeah, exactly.

So, yeah.

Back in the 60s and 70s.

Thank you, Freda Poundstone.

Oh, my gosh, yeah.

And then we explain it a little bit in your area.

I mean, you've got some really challenging boundaries there with how the annexations have played out.

But, yeah, happy to try to do that district-wide assessment for you.

I think you should bump us up above districts 9 and 6 and 5, actually.

All right.

All right.

The last question is, how do you account for even city, let's say city park land, that is passive?

Because 13 acres per thousand, well, I only have like 3.3 acres, if I remember the slide correctly.

But a lot of that, for instance, Bear Creek Park is probably my largest park.

but probably I'm just guessing at the percentage from looking at a map that

maybe 65 to 70% of it is not, you know, you can't walk on it.

You can't lay your blanket down and have a picnic on it with your kids.

The only active part of it is north of the Creek,

south of the Creek up to Kenyon Avenue is practically all,

we have some crusher fine trails that run through it, but you,

but you walk through it, but you don't, you don't play on it.

So how much do you make a distinction between active and passive users?

Because it's nice to have a nice looking open space that, well, look at that.

There's no buildings on it.

It's open.

But I can't actually use it.

I can't play ball on it.

I can't have a picnic on it.

How do you account for that?

Well, I'll say something quickly, and Frank may be better equipped to answer it.

I've actually done an issue paper on passive open space and the contribution that makes,

environmentally, economically, sense of community, and so on. So we include it in this analysis.

So passive open space is included here. But I'll let, I mean, I think you're a little bit more of

an expert on that. And I think that some of the policies, Councilman, that Denver Parks and

Recreation has enacted around resiliency and less turf grass, trying to use parks strategically,

So ball fields and areas that will take Bear Creek, for example, like you said, north of it, the new playground that there's there.

But then the walking trails in the passive area.

From our perspective, that's all park space because people can go in here and use it.

It's just different uses for different people.

And we've got a 712,000 people that we've got to serve and everybody wants something different.

So our parks are going to look different.

And to have them with that kind of open space or non-mode is a good thing.

Far Northeast has great opportunities because of Green Valley Ranch building out, add those in at the get-go.

So I think we'll count them in.

We think they're very important.

Certainly, and I don't mean to sound like I am downplaying the importance.

No, no, no.

These are good questions.

It's not a passive open space, but what I'm saying is that when I look at Wash Park, which is, I think, has a very small little naturalized area, but then I compare it to Bear Creek Park, and then again also Bear Valley Park, which is the same, maybe the same ratio.

It's sort of a very linear park along the creek itself.

It's not quite as, I don't know what the ratio of active to passive should be per 1,000 residents.

Is there a drill down that could tell us, should we have, of the 13 acres per thousand,

should we have X percent of that should be active uses and some should be passive?

Yeah, I think I'm going to cop out here a little bit and say, I think the important thing is parks and open space,

they're the green lungs of our city that we need.

And, you know, there's multiple benefits there.

But I'll do some research to see if I can answer your question directly here on breakdown.

Thank you. That's great. That'd be greatly appreciated. Appreciate it very much. Thank you. That's all I have, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you for the presentation. Thank you all for being here.

I did not know a statistic to identify how frustrated my constituents are with the lack of a place to play.

And I think that's part of the reason why the very recently adopted downtown area plan has talked about play so much,

is because people who live in my district feel frustrated.

They have no place to play.

Yeah.

But we've got Cheeseman Park, which is the fourth largest park in the city.

Yeah.

We've got Civic Center Park, which is also a beautiful park,

also heavily activated too.

Yes.

And so I wonder, it is technically an acre per 1,000 people.

You know, it's part of the statistic, but even at 2.5 acres per 1,000 people,

a place like Civic Center Park is often taken off the map.

You know, it's unavailable because of the,

particularly in the summer,

because of all the festivals and the setup

and teardown of those events as well.

So it might take two days on each end,

you know, in addition to the festival itself.

And so I'm assuming that that's not part

of the calculation or thought process.

Well, yeah, I mean, parks that have restricted use on certain occasions, I mean, we're still counting them as park space, even though there's times when they're not accessible to the full public.

But I think downtown, and I know there's been work.

I've interacted with some of the people in the parks department that have done some really creative thinking.

And I know John and I have talked a little bit, too.

I mean, there's great opportunities to maybe introduce the concept of Living Street, you know.

And I think it's a place like Tucson.

It's different from what we've done here.

I mean, it's basically making it an open space thing and calling it open space.

That's on my list.

Yeah, yeah.

Have you heard of the 5280 Trail?

Oh, yeah, yeah.

5.280 mile pedestrian and cyclist priority right around the center city?

Yeah, exactly.

So we do have an opportunity.

Yeah, those are great opportunities.

Where we find space in our center city.

I mean, Cheeseman Park, we pedestrianized the circle around Cheeseman.

We opened it to the people closest to cars.

Bannock, just in front of this building, it is no longer a street at all.

It's, you know, through ordinance, it is no longer part of our street grid.

It is now part of Civic Center.

It is a park in Civic Center Park.

Yes.

So, I mean, you know, that is like.

That's awesome.

Yeah.

How do we take 2.5 and make it a higher number?

I think we have to think about our city-owned assets and how we utilize them.

Yeah.

And so you've given me another data point and talking point about the importance, I believe,

of in addition to being able to get around our center city without a car to connect seven neighborhoods.

Some are half neighborhoods, some are half not, you know, statistically underserved neighborhoods, District 3.

And so I was at first, I was like, how, because you were talking about potentially changing the metric instead of 10%, you know, private.

Go to 1,000 people.

Yeah, that's intriguing.

and that also helps solve for, you know, if 80202, the downtown zip code, is the most expensive real estate.

It isn't, actually.

But it's some of the most expensive real estate in Denver.

You have to have the highest wage in 80202 to afford to live.

That's true.

But that's not the same as the different metrics.

But that helps change.

So maybe, you know, 10% isn't the right metric

in incredibly valuable land that's in our center city.

No, it's not.

You know, I mean, at a point in time,

it probably worked when we were doing lower density development

in the city, but it's time to evolve from that.

Just a couple of quick reactions.

So you take that 1,000, 13 acres per 1,000 people.

So, I mean, so if you've got like a development for 100 people, you're talking about maybe a 1.3 acre park, hypothetically.

I mean, so a pocket park sort of thing, great.

I mean, that may be a good thing to be looking at in terms of closing the gap.

And I know Frank's talked about that as a strategy too, just where else do we have opportunities for that.

And I'm going to be a little bold here and talk about great cities and what great cities have done and maybe hearken back to things that happened in Denver not that long ago.

So up in Council Member Sandoval's district, there used to be a residential neighborhood on the west side of Berkeley Park between like Xavier and Sheridan Boulevard.

and there was an angled street, which was actually a continuation of Spear Boulevard.

There was a plan back in the day to make Spear Boulevard go all the way up to Inspiration Point,

so there was a little street there.

We bought that up.

We relocated those people, and we expanded Berkeley Park from, you know, boulevard to boulevard, basically.

Similarly, in front of North High School, I remember at the time,

council member Gallagher complaining every other high school you know had a

park associated with it and again that triangle where Viking Park is right now

was was a residential neighborhood so yeah so yeah and it wasn't that long ago

that that happened so so there may be opportunities where we just say we

really need a park here and you know to be bold to do things that other cities

have done, you know, we're going to acquire properties for park for the greater good.

So I think to your point about, you know, downtown, while we're here talking about parks,

we're really talking about public spaces.

Public spaces.

So what does it look like downtown?

I'd love to have some of those surface parking lots all be green, but could they be public

spaces like you've done with Bannock Street and things?

Absolutely.

I think that that all fits into this greater thinking about plazas, parks, libraries, places where we can all go.

Because I think where we're all in this room in agreement on.

Well, we want to resist.

I mean, there's some, you know, plans that never made it to fruition with, you know, in District 10 where they say, oh, we want to put in a park on the second floor.

Yeah.

Because you don't want everyone to have access to it.

And so, you know, a bunch of the apartment buildings that we have going, and it's a horseshoe kind of shape,

and on the third floor is the party place where it's a pool and, you know, a community gathering spot only for those residents.

And so, you know, some of these buildings have hundreds of units.

So, you know, that's one of the good things about District 10 is we can have a lot of density.

We should have density where it's appropriate.

Congress Park, maybe not as much, more density than maybe Council Member Flynn's district.

But downtown, those two neighborhoods, we should go big and go high.

Maybe we have 1,000 people in some of these buildings where one acre, I don't know how they would fit that area.

Figure out how to configure it, yeah.

I mean, and it's kind of in your control, too, with some of these developments,

especially, you know, a major project downtown or, you know, a large-scale development in outlying neighborhoods in the city.

I mean, part of it may be some tradeoffs, you know, that you work with a developer

and you give them more units that they go vertical

for a commitment to additional park space, you know, so.

We actually did that with a golden triangle change.

Yeah, exactly.

2021, yeah.

Should we consider legislation to bring us up

to the national average by 2040 or 2035?

Ooh, I like that.

Let us explore that a little bit.

And again, you know, I think we want to work on some options to bring back to you.

So we might look to see where that commitment is.

Again, I mean, cities like New York and Chicago, who probably back in the day we used to say, you know, Denver is an idyllic city with parks, you know, and their parks were ratty.

I mean, they have done amazing things in the last two decades or so.

So, I mean, this has been a total overhaul of New York parks.

You know, a lot of them were just asphalt play areas.

I mean, that's been addressed.

A lot of them were fenced in and hard to access.

The fences have come down.

I mean, the gold standard now is the Highline walkway there.

Highline canal.

Yeah, exactly.

I mean, that is just part of the inspiration of the 5280 Trail.

Yeah, exactly.

Have I told you about the 5280 trail?

It's a 5.2 million.

Can we keep going through the queue, please?

I've got it.

Okay, yeah.

Yeah, and we can, I mean, with any of you, happy to have some chats offline.

Thanks.

Okay, thank you.

Councilman Watson, and then I've got questions.

Yeah, just have one quick question.

I know, Frank Rowe, you and I began discussions on our trust board with Denver Public Schools on their green space.

And I know for the Outdoor Adventures Alternative Sports Plan that Parks and Rec put together,

they're very conscious of looking at some of those outdoor spaces.

I'm curious, Rocky and Frank, as far as looking at increasing that acreage,

have we been in dialogue with the DPS spaces that I know in Whittier, we have five pocket parks,

but we use all of the green spaces at Manual, at Whittier, K through 8, K through 8.

We use that as green space.

That's considered park space in our neighborhood.

I'm curious, how are you counting that?

And if you're not, do you plan on doing any type of work on that?

So where the agreements have happened, that's factored in.

So I'm thinking right now of like a Remington school in District 1.

So that playground area on the south side is designated as a park now.

So it's counted in.

Two schools.

Yeah, and we're designated.

I have Remington on 48th, 48th, 46th, and Pecos, and then I have one off of 41st and Le Pan.

That's a designated park space on one side, but there's no fence in between the two schools.

I didn't know we had designated on schools, so that's a sidebar talk.

We love that because I know that Park Trust was looking at that city-wide.

Frank, you may know better. I don't know how universal that is.

I think there's another example at Northfield.

That's in a new high school out in the Northeast and a park right next to it.

But, Darrell, that's, I mean, in addition to the river, that's lower hanging.

Yeah, totally.

Well, that's, I'm glad you reminded me of those discussions.

All right.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you so much.

I really appreciate the eye that you're putting towards these, the partnerships that you're developing.

I do feel like a couple different things are happening in my district throughout the city when it comes to conversations about amenity improvement, infrastructure improvement.

And your mention of Chicago's High Line really catalyzed, I think, in our research, some of the work that we've got to do around preventing gentrification and displacement.

Hello, yeah.

I mean, in Chicago's Highline project in particular has been legislated around in terms of planning guidance and rezoning guidance because they were starting to see or preparing for gentrification as a result of that becoming so much more attractive for folks to want to live along that corridor.

I feel the same way about 5280 as it presents for Lama Lincoln Park in particular.

So in Chicago passed kind of in a vicinity of five or so neighborhoods, very specific time-limited legislation that helped prevent or at least helped stave off some of the gentrification trends that they were seeing.

So I can't not think about that when I think about the South Platte Corridor.

And, you know, when we talk about growing parkland, we're also talking about property acquisition.

We have to be right. You mentioned the hot tub companies on those strange little parcels.

I mean, they've been there for a long time.

They have.

It's where we planted our industrial corridors entirely along the South Platte River.

I think we have, as a city, and this includes the mayor's office, we have to be really committed to seeing that transform.

and really committed to an entire corridor of river,

have a new vision, have some real implementation.

And the more that I'm thinking about that,

there's a lot of momentum,

and I don't know if either of you have been part of some of the groups

around transforming Spear Boulevard and opening up Cherry Creek.

Yes.

I honestly feel like that is putting an area of interest ahead of an area of need.

Thank you.

And maybe our attention on doing that kind of treatment for Cherry Creek is coming at the expense of continuing to say to the Platt, you have to keep waiting.

I agree.

And I say that with a little trepidation because I know the university had been very involved when that initiative first started.

So but I don't know that I'm in step with some of my colleagues who worked on that.

So I mean, I agree.

The other thing, since we're talking Spear, I mean, CDOT's talking now about a new bridge configuration over I-25.

I know there's some chat about more bikeway along Spear First Avenue in the southeast of probably your district, Council Member Hines.

I mean, why are we doing these piecemeal?

You know, I mean, let's, if we're going to look at Spear, let's not just look at these six blocks, this overpass, you know, and then this stretch, you know.

Let's look at it in an integrated, holistic manner.

So it'll keep certain neighborhoods further and further behind.

Right.

We agree.

So where there's a lot in this that has so many layers of process and procedure,

like and President Sandoval's right, like even what River Sisters are pursuing with personhood

has like overly it's just this great interesting men diagram, right, of what like growing

parkland could look like.

you don't have entirely the same objectives and goals, but there's some overlap and some partnership there.

I think they would be very concerned about the gentrification potential of just adding parkland

and letting people kind of go where they go and letting that process kind of flow as it might.

Obviously, Council District 3 might be looking at how we reposition where Mile High Stadium's at right now.

as one of the largest swaths of land that will revert back to the city's ownership.

So a lot of these things, but it's piecemeal.

Like, it is so hard to patchwork this and shove it into a 12-year plan that's already 12 years planned out from now, right?

And so I just want to thank you.

We're in the final minutes of the committee.

I think there's a lot to think about with this.

I do feel like this committee was created with the mobilization around the Platte River.

And I really do feel like for the seven members that are a part of this committee, there's a lot of investment for us to figure out what's our kind of unified interest in the Platte.

How do we bring the administration on board into whatever that vision might be?

and try to figure out how to lift this to the top.

Because we're not going to be, folks are not going to stop wanting to develop at the river.

We're seeing it all the time.

That's why this committee has rezonings every time we meet.

And we're constantly trying to pivot and go, yeah, but what about the river, right?

And what's the interface with that river when we could have a standard?

and the standard could be different in the southwest part of the district

than when you get closer to downtown than when you get out in District 9.

It could be neighborhood context sensitive, but we would have a plan.

So thank you.

Any final thoughts?

Just quickly, I'm just going to put my planner hat back on.

I do not use the term gentrification.

I do not use the term displacement.

It's retention, retention, retention is, I think, the language we should be using.

So I worked with a committee on the state legislation a couple of years ago,

and the governor's office was pushing displacement strategies.

And we were able to kind of get them to move away from using the G word, gentrification.

But I kept trying to say not a displacement strategy, a retention strategy.

You know, we want to keep people, we want to keep businesses.

So, you know, so thank you for having that sensitivity.

Thank you so much for being here and for keeping this a live conversation.

Thanks, everyone. We're adjourned.

Thank you.