Under the terms of a proposal expected to land in the Denver planning office this month, a trio of asphalt parking lots on Sherman Street east of downtown could be replaced with the city’s next batch of skyscrapers.
The Dikeou family plans to ask the Denver City Council to rezone a collection of lots it owns north of the state Capitol Building, making them “downtown core” properties free of height restrictions. It’s a major shakeup that would alter the City Park view plane that today caps most buildings along north Sherman at 155 feet high.
In exchange for the right to change one of Denver’s most iconic views with new, tall buildings, the Dikeous would agree to a city mandate that any new skyscrapers built on their lots include affordable housing and would pay for more than a half-million-dollars in sidewalk repairs, new trees and other streetscaping work along Sherman.
Tryba Architects, the Uptown firm spearheading the Dikeous’ rezoning effort, recently presented conceptual plans that show the family’s lots hosting buildings as tall as 48 stories with a combined 211 units of affordable housing, far more than would be produced under city rules in place now.
“Frankly, this has been a long process,” said David Tryba, who has been working with the Dikeous for more than three years, focusing for much of the past 18 months on hammering out an affordable-housing incentive deal with the city. “That’s because the Dikeou family is so committed to doing the right thing.”
The three lots are made up of six individual properties with a patchwork of zoning designations. One of the lots is a two-tiered collection of blacktop located between Lincoln and Sherman streets just north of East 16th Avenue. The other two can be found on opposite sides of Sherman stretching from Lincoln to Grant Street north of East 18th Avenue.
After holding more than 75 meetings with neighborhood groups, council members, city officials and others over the past few years, Tryba intends to submit the rezoning application to the city sometime in the next few weeks, he said. If it clears the Denver planning board, Tryba expects public hearings before the City Council in December.
The document has pages of affordable housing definitions and requirements. The glut of info is meant to cut through the type of uncertainty that officials feel has slowed down development around the 38th and Blake rail station, another place the city has offered height incentives in return for affordable housing.
In its simplest terms, the Sherman Street document says anyone who develops the rezoned properties will be required to build one additional unit of affordable housing for approximately every 8,500 square feet of residential space they build beyond what existing zoning allows, according to city planner Scott Robinson.
Fifty percent of the affordable rental units would have to be priced for people making no more than 80% of the area median income and 40% would have to be accessible to people making 60% of area median income or less. Income restrictions would be in place for 40 years.
Developers cannot buy out of building units and no city subsidy can be used to fund construction. At least 25% of the affordable housing has to be on the rezoned properties. The remaining 75% could be built elsewhere as long as they are within one mile of the lots. The only way to achieve the bonus zoning is to commit to each building being at least 50% residential.
“This project has grown immensely in terms of the refinement of the agreement with the city, and the city has gotten much, much more out of the property owner,” Tryba said of the proposed incentive.
The plan had a lot of fans at a neighborhood meeting at the Central Presbyterian Church at 1660 Sherman St. Thursday night including Elayna McCall, who lives on Sherman Street south of Colfax Avenue. The 31-year-old walks or bikes to work every day and said Denver can benefit from the streetscape infrastructure the deal would bring. It will make the area a more inviting place to get around without a car. Bigger buildings should mean more people living and working in the neighborhood, hopefully resulting in fewer daily car trips and more use of the nearby RTD Civic Center station facility.
“We need density to improve public transportation, you can’t have one without the other,” McCall said.
City Councilman Chris Hinds was also at the meeting. The landscaping work, which is to include 10-foot-wide lawns, at least 20 new trees and upgraded sidewalks along the Dikeous’ property lines, could serve as the first wave of private-sector investment to support the 5280 Trail, Hinds said. The proposed but unfunded walk and bikeway around Denver’s core is slated to come down Sherman Street. It’s a project Hinds wants to see built.
The streetscape improvements have to begin within 12 months of rezoning passing or all building entitlements lapse under the agreement.
Living on High Street just east of City Park, 59-year-old Jo Untiedt is much more skeptical about a deal that could bring new towers to her westward view. She remembers when the view plane was last tweaked to make way for a proposed 650-foot tower next to the El Jebel Shrine Temple on Sherman. That project, OK’d in 2003, was supposed to result in the restoration of the temple, according to a deal with the city at the time. That tower has yet to be built.
“I’m concerned that the city has been jumping through all these hoops so one family can make more money,” said Untiedt.
The City Park view plane was established in 1975. Two buildings have been granted variances and built along Sherman since then, according to Tryba: Wells Fargo Center, a.k.a. “the cash register building,” built at 1700 Lincoln St. in 1983 and the Denver Financial Center at 1775 Sherman St., built in 1981. At 52 stories and 698 feet, Wells Fargo Center is Denver’s third tallest building.
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The conceptual building designs Tryba and Kathleen Fogler, leader of the architecture firm’s urban design studio, presented Thursday would contribute 211 affordable housing units to the city’s supply if built. That’s 170 more than would be constructed under existing zoning. But they acknowledged the properties are likely to be sold to other developers who may pursue their own designs.
When the Dikeou family first contacted him about Sherman Street, Tryba said they were considering selling their lots to developers seeking to build block-consuming mid-rise apartment buildings like those that have popped up across Uptown in recent years. Rezoning is the antidote to projects like that, he said.
“I’ve watched these lots for 35, 40 years be not developed,” Tryba said. “We do know that it is coming, and we know we’ll get stubby, blocky buildings because that’s what it’s zoned for.”
