Cole neighborhood site slated for apartments rezoned despite concern from neighbors

The area around 35th Avenue and Gilpin Street is home to a charter school and over a dozen nonprofits. Thanks to a unanimous vote from the Denver City Council, it will soon be a home for more people, too.

The council voted Monday evening to rezone the entire city block between 35th and 36th avenues and Franklin and Gilpin streets, along with a small parking lot directly to the northeast, in the Cole neighborhood.

The Urban Land Conservancy, which owns the site, will lease 2.3 acres to the nonprofit Medici Communities, which will build a 4-story, 63-unit apartment complex at 1675 E. 35th Ave. that will be reserved for those making between 30% and 60% of the area median income.

Next door is the Tramway Nonprofit Center, a 60,000-square-foot 1930s tram and bus storage building in use as a nonprofit community center since the 1990s.

“Cole is one of the neighborhoods that has experienced some of the most involuntary displacement and gentrification in recent years. ULC has been working toward housing on this site for eight years,” ULC spokeswoman Andrea Burns said.

The entire block was already zoned for 4 stories under Denver’s old zoning code, which was overhauled in 2010. The obsolete code posed challenges for nonprofits in the center looking to build out their spaces, and made it difficult for a builder to construct new housing on-site.

But some neighbors said they felt that the size of the apartment complex would be a detriment to the area.

“Right now, when I look out my front window, I see sun in the sky. Once this apartment building is built it will no longer have the evening sun and the sky will be covered. This building will be towering over my home,” Carmen Rivera, who lives across the street, said at Monday’s meeting.

“Reducing height would mitigate many of the density and scale issues and better fit into the context, character and history of the neighborhood,” nearby resident Katie Hanna said.

ULC had for months voluntarily engaged in mediation with concerned neighbors. A protest petition, which would have raised the number of needed council votes for approval to 10 from seven, was circulated. But it ultimately fell just short of the necessary 20% support of landowners in a 200-foot radius from the rezoning site, ending at 19.7%.

Some neighbors wanted to see three stories instead of four.

That option, however, would have killed the apartment project’s key financing source, low-income housing tax credits. The credits, sold by developers to raise equity, are awarded in a competitive process by the Colorado Housing and Finance Authority.

“CHFA evaluates whether developments make efficient use of a site’s allowed density,” ULC’s Burns said. “Because four-story zoning [already existed] on the site, a proposal that does not reasonably use that capacity would not be competitive for tax credits. And without tax credits, there would not be affordable housing.”