Twin Lakes land-use debate continues

Though City of Boulder planning staff submitted a revised affordable-housing proposal for the development of the land parcels abutting Twin Lakes Road in unincorporated Gunbarrel, local residents continued to contest the project at the Jan. 18 Boulder County Planning Commission hearing. The land-use change is proposed as the first step before pursuing annexation of the property to the City of Boulder.

It was a public hearing only, with no vote taken, as one of the commissioners was absent. The decision regarding the land-use change designation for the parcels at 6655 Twin Lakes Road, 6500 Twin Lakes Road and 0 Kahlua Road has therefore been postponed, and will likely take place at the next planning commission meeting on Feb. 15 after the absent commissioner has a chance to review the tape of the hearing.

About 80 people attended the session, with more than 60 from Gunbarrel making public comments. Many of the speakers are also members of the Twin Lakes Action Group (TLAG), the grassroots organization opposed to the land-use change which would allow for affordable, medium-density residential housing on the parcels. It’s proposed that 80 percent of the housing development would be made available as rental units.

Resident Brian Lay said the current density in Gunbarrel stands at about four units per acre, on average. To paint a picture of the impact to the neighborhood for the eight-member panel, he said, “There are 80 people in this room—what if [that changed to] 280 people in this room right now? Would that feel the same?”

Resident Jessica Hartung, who works in human services, said that while she’s in favor of affordable housing, the lower income community would be better served by being integrated into the community, rather than housed in one dense area.

As a counterpoint, Greg Harms, the executive director of the Boulder Shelter for the Homeless, said that when it comes to building housing for the poor in any given neighborhood, there’s always “some better, mystical place” for them to live, finishing with, “In Boulder County, affordability is not possible without density.”

Senior planner with the City of Boulder, Jay Sugnet, spoke about the land-use stakeholder process. Seven meetings were held that began last spring, and resulted in the development of “scenarios” to include the plan’s new “wildlife corridor,” he said, a process informed by guiding principles in “the common agreements and commitments” made by the Boulder County Housing Authority and the Boulder Valley School District, owners of the northern and southern parcels respectively, bodies that jointly submitted the mixed-density residential land-use change proposal.

“The amount of staff time and analysis that’s gone into this request far exceeds any previous [process],” Sugnet said, and “surpasses any other by a minimum of a ten-fold difference.”

TLAG Chairman David Rechberger objected to what he considers land-use staff’s “clear pattern of manipulation and misrepresentation of the process and some of the facts.” He added that “[TLAG’s representatives] strongly believe there should be separate consideration and separate votes for the northern and southern parcels,” arguing that staff ought to adhere to the current zoning designations for rural residential, and either a school or park, respectively.

Volunteers of TLAG, Rechberger continued, “have been fighting with the juggernaut” that is Boulder’s government. “Unfortunately the record is littered with improprieties from the very staff that’s supposed to objectively inform, [but instead] they are effectively driving this process to a predetermined outcome for development.”

Rechberger deemed the process the “perfect self-licking ice-cream cone,” where the same bodies are the requesters, the analysts, the developers, judge and jury. “The process has been tainted, and we believe it needs to stop,” he said.

Sugnet responded, speaking to the scarcity of housing in the City of Boulder, and the need for a diversity of housing types and price points. According to a 2015 Boulder Valley Comprehensive Plan survey, housing was the number-one community priority, he said, due to the city’s escalating rents and housing costs. The average price of a home in Boulder recently surpassed the $1 million mark, with a median price of $850,000.

Because of stakeholder discussions, land-use staff revised the proposal for the parcels by reducing the maximum allowable housing units from 280 to 203, and included a 70-foot wide buffer (or 5.3 acres in total), deemed a “wildlife corridor,” which skirts the northern, eastern and southern edges of the parcels, to allow for animal movement and to accommodate connectivity to other trail systems in the area.

“That seems too narrow,” Planning Commissioner W.C. Pat Shanks said about the corridor’s proposed width.

Sugnet also said the parcels “do not meet the city’s or county’s criteria for acquisition…as open space,” which was corroborated by a county Parks and Open Space official, but instead have identified them as “wildlife habitat,” which accounts for the proposed buffer, or about 27 percent of the parcels’ area of 10 acres apiece.

Boulder County Department of Housing and Human Services Director Frank Alexander said the demand for affordable housing requires a minimum of an additional 10,000 units, which “still wouldn’t meet major demand.” Underlining the crisis he said, is the current “40,000 households that are spending more than 50 percent of their income on housing.” The parcels, he said, meet the criteria for being within a half-mile of a neighborhood park, identifying Eaton Park to the north, along with easy access to a bus line, which would help reduce traffic and parking congestion.

Resident Kristin Bjornsen advocated for a Gunbarrel sub-community plan, asking panelists, “How can there be planning without a plan?” She also said city planners “don’t know enough about us,” and backed up the argument by explaining that Eaton Park has been suggested as a nearby source of recreation, “when the majority [of the park] is closed to the public.”