Ball Arena redevelopment, affordable housing hinge on view plane vote

Plans by sports mogul Stan Kroenke and company to redevelop the parking lots around Ball Arena would reshape the Denver skyline — but only if the City Council gives developers permission to pierce a legally protected view of the Rocky Mountains.

The sanctity of what the municipal code calls the Old City Hall view plane is a sticking point in a package of legislation up for final votes Monday. Approval would clear the way for the long-contemplated transformation of the sea of asphalt around the 25-year-old arena on the southwest side of downtown.

Under the zoning being considered for the 70-acre property, Kroenke Sports and Entertainment, or KSE, would be entitled to build tall, thin towers with no height restrictions. In exchange, KSE would guarantee the inclusion of a significant amount of affordable housing in what’s built, beyond what city rules already require.

The plans have raised objections among nearby condo owners whose mountain views the new high-rises might slice through, whether or not they’re technically protected by the view plane ordinance.

City planners and legal staff say Denver’s code clearly defines the view plane as protecting mountain views only from a specific point near ground level at the intersection of 14th and Larimer streets. That’s near where the long-gone old town hall once was located and where its bell, the only existing relic of that site, sits today.

City officials add that buildings on the Auraria Higher Education Center campus have already wiped out that particular view. That’s because Auraria, as a state entity, was not beholden to the city code.

But several residents of the 32-story Larimer Place condo tower in Lower Downtown dispute city staff’s interpretations. They’ve long enjoyed largely unobstructed views of Colorado’s iconic peaks, and they’re urging council members to vote against changing the view plane — or at least to delay Monday’s votes to allow more discussion.

Resident Casey Pitinga says she doesn’t oppose new development, and she wants the Colorado Avalanche and the Denver Nuggets — Kroenke’s teams — to stay in Denver in the long term, which is another objective of the rezoning deal. But she argues the city’s willingness to grant exemptions to this view plane will undermine all efforts to preserve views of the mountains and the city’s skyline in the future.

“Nothing will be protected if this goes through, I don’t feel,” Pitinga said.

Councilman Kevin Flynn said the view plane has had the effect of protecting a wide range of vantages, in a variety of directions — even if its explicit protection was narrower.

“I am trying to answer the question: Is the view plane intended only for the benefits of someone standing on the particular point right at 14th and Larimer … or does the fact that it exists provide a secondary benefit to the public at large?” Flynn said in an interview. “And I am struggling with it.”

At last week’s council meeting, Councilwoman Amanda Sawyer also said she was conflicted about changing the view plane. She acknowledged the irony of talking about her misgivings while wearing an Avalanche jersey before heading over to Ball Arena for that night’s hockey game.

The package of bills includes an amended agreement with KSE that would tie the Avs and the Nuggets to the Ball Arena property at least through June 2050.

View plane change envisioned by city plans

The Old City Hall view plane is one of 14 legally protected view corridors in the city. City leaders amended code in 1999 to allow what was then the Denver Broncos’ yet-to-be-built new stadium to rise beyond allowable heights that would obstruct vantages from certain points to the east.

But the zoning changes being contemplated now could be more impactful. They would not be just for specific buildings but for all properties that fall under the city’s Downtown Central Platte Valley-Auraria Center zoning designation.

It’s the same zoning that has already been granted to the River Mile property just west of the train tracks from Ball Arena. That land, now dominated by Elitch Gardens Theme and Water Park, is owned by Revesco Properties in partnership with Kroenke.

The two expanses are expected to develop as an interconnected new urban neighborhood over the next 20 to 30 years, according to Matt Mahoney, KSE’s senior vice president of development. While no designs have been finalized, KSE envisions some buildings rising 30 to 40 stories, Mahoney said.

Only a portion of the Ball Arena land falls within the view plane — and would be directly affected by its height restrictions without an exemption — but KSE officials say adding density there is critical to their plans.

Pitinga and other view plane defenders shared their displeasure directly with Mahoney and city staff members Thursday at a meeting organized by Councilman Chris Hinds, whose District 10 includes much of downtown.

She  grew up in Colorado. Her career took her all over the world, she said, but she chose to come back to the state and buy her condo in 2018 specifically because of the mountain views. She sees them as critical to Denver’s attractiveness and quality of life, no matter a person’s vantage point.

“If you’re talking about doing a 25-year plan, you’re going to have cranes on the horizon for 25 years — and you’re going to have noise and disruption to traffic,” Pitinga said during the meeting.

The impacts would also affect bars and restaurants with rooftop patios, Pitinga argued, and tourism and convention center business could also take a hit.

The Colorado Convention Center in December unveiled its long-awaited $233 million rooftop expansion, which came with panoramic views to the west. Richard Scharf, the president and CEO of Visit Denver, the city convention and tourism bureau, said in a text message that he expected any new development supporting Ball Arena to also benefit the city’s convention and tourism industries.

Tom Hefty, another Lairmer Place resident, said in Thursday’s meeting that he consulted a lawyer before he bought his condo in 2008. He interpreted the view plane ordinance as the city’s promise that no tall buildings would be built in that zone to block views.

Zoning predictability is important for both residents and businesses, Hefty said, and he argued that changing it would bring “negative national publicity that the city has now become a cow town of zoning, with changes to satisfy the favored developer of the day.”

But senior city planner Tony Lechuga said city leaders and downtown stakeholders have been preparing for the transformation of the Ball Area lots for the better part of a decade.

Lechuga pointed to a 2018 amendment to the city’s Downtown Area Plan. The document instructs city staff to “analyze the effectiveness of the Old City Hall Mountain View Plane” and consider removing it from the city code if “new tools effectively enhance key views and render the view plane obsolete.”

The specialized zoning that KSE is seeking qualifies as such a tool, Lechuga said. Rather than bulky, full block-spanning skyscrapers of the kind that dominate downtown’s skyline today, the zoning would allow the building of tall, narrow towers — using a building form that gives the city leeway to shape design so that key views are protected. He emphasized that the city, in its approach, would consider protecting views only from public property, not private property.

“My job very explicitly with the city is to implement our city-adopted plans, and so I would not make this recommendation if I did not feel like it was advancing our city’s adopted plan recommendations,” Lechuga said in an interview.

The owners of three properties in the 500 block of Wazee Street, south of Ball Arena, have also filed an application to rezone to the new zone district, which could exempt those lots from the view plane as well. The council has delayed consideration of that request until December.

Weighing housing trade-offs

For some council members, amending the view plane will be about weighing trade-offs.

Hinds last week said he hadn’t made up his mind on that issue, but he knows which questions he’s balancing.

“One: Do people own their view?” he said. “And two: What helps the greatest number of people or those in greatest need?”

Another bill up for final consideration by the council Monday would cement a development agreement between the city and KSE that would advance the city’s affordable housing goals, meaning the production of homes that come with income restrictions and below-market rents or prices.

The agreement mandates that KSE set aside 18% of all new housing built on the property as income-restricted units. That’s a modest boost above the city’s existing affordable housing requirements for new development, and it accounts for 1,080 of the 6,000 units of new apartments and condos in the company’s plans.

That agreement runs parallel with an independent community benefits agreement that KSE signed with a committee representing neighborhood groups, businesses and other stakeholders. That agreement, announced last week, includes commitments such as the creation of a $16 million community investment fund, which would fuel bike and pedestrian infrastructure, as well as arts and cultural opportunities and job opportunities on-site.

The housing promises hinge on being able to build higher in the view plane, KSE’s Mahoney said in an interview. Without that option, KSE projects it would be able to build just 3,000 units, of which 500 would be rated as affordable housing.