A developer wants Denver City Council to rezone the property at 1709 Williams Street and plans to demolish the seventy-year-old building, the latest of several demolitions and rebuilds in the area. Neighbors say they are tired of seeing the area lose the diversity of architecture it had a decade ago to a parade of similar medium-sized, mixed-use buildings that have popped up within the past few years.
“Since we have been here, the entire east side of Williams Street has been wiped clean of beautiful Victorian homes and built up into these condo apartments that are luxury,” says Lindsay Dalton, who has run the Weathervane Cafe next door to the 1709 Williams property for the past twelve years. “It’s the same development plan over and over and over again on every lot. ... The reason that they were able to do the east side of the street without any fight is because they did not actually have to change the zoning to do that.”
Dalton says many residents and small-business owners nearby were disheartened by the constant demolition and rebuilding but felt powerless to do anything; the city had rezoned most of the 17th Street corridor ten years ago, leaving citizens without public processes to weigh in.
But this time, there will be a public process, and the community is speaking up about how their neighborhood should age.
Susan Abbott has lived near 1709 Williams for almost twenty years. She sees the current rezoning and redevelopment proposal as a chance to push back against what she sees as a problem with Denver's approach to growth: Those who live and work in changing neighborhoods aren’t often given a say in how they develop over time.
“Most taxpayers and citizens feel very disempowered,” Abbott says. "Our little corner is a microcosm of, ‘Can't we do better?’”
“Most taxpayers and citizens feel very disempowered,” Abbott says. "Our little corner is a microcosm of, ‘Can't we do better?’”
Nearby neighbors have received word about the proposal, including Dalton, who says she told prospective developer Michael McAtee that her opposition isn’t personal. However, she and a handful of others plan to fight the rezoning to preserve their corner of Denver.
“I feel bad for the owner. It sucks that he's being pinned for this, because when they were redeveloping all these other things, they didn't have to change the zoning — and now this is the one thing where they do have to change the zoning,” Dalton says. “So I do see it as unfortunate luck, but it's just the way it is. This is our opportunity to say something.”
When Westword called the currently listed owner of the property, Sandy Stein, the person who picked up the phone hung up without commenting.
The building’s current zoning restricts mixed-use possibilities and building height, but the proposed zoning change would allow mixed-use development and a height of up to three stories. McAtee, who will become the property owner if the rezoning goes through, says rezoning is needed because the property is still zoned under pre-2010 code and doesn’t match the rest of the area.
“A rezone will align with the neighborhood and city in general,” he says.
Alexandra Foster, a spokesperson for the Denver Department of Community Planning & Development, says the parcel wasn’t rezoned with the rest of the street because it has a few waivers and the city made exceptions for some properties with custom zoning while updating the code.
“We are trying to actively bring in properties from the old code into the new code because it's more modern,” Foster says. “It allows for more uniformity and predictability of rules.”
According to the rezoning application for the property, the site will be redeveloped with a “multiunit residential and/or mixed-use development that will increase housing units close to transit and other mixed-use developments.”
Denver CPD staff recommended approval for the rezoning.
Abbott says Denver's constant shift from unique buildings to a cookie-cutter look is concerning.
“We need the yoga studios and the Weathervanes and the St. Mark’s and these places that make a neighborhood interesting, and we don't just need million-dollar condos and $1 million to $2 million row houses,” she argues. “That's very boring, and it's actually not going to draw in artists, teachers and writers and journalists and musicians. We had a lot of really interesting people who live and work in our neighborhood, who are completely priced out and have had to leave.”
Although the development could add some affordable housing, the proposal is small in scale. Scott Holder of the City Park West Registered Neighborhood Organization says one or two more affordable units is essentially a drop in the bucket for the area's needs.
In the rezoning application, McAtee wrote that the development team had reached out to all RNOs, but City Park West was not among those included. The area has a few overlapping relevant organizations, like Capitol Hill United Neighbors and City Park Friends and Neighbors, who were contacted.
However, "they didn’t contact the RNO, quite frankly, that counts,” according to Holder.
Holder says the group would still be open to a conversation with the developers, but it stung not to be included. Now that the organization knows about the proposal, Holder says volunteers will spread invitations to a meeting to discuss the plan with everyone nearby, including McAtee if he’s interested.
McAtee says he has reached out to the group since submitting his application. Due to a paperwork issue, the City Park West RNO wasn't listed on the city website in July while he was preparing his application.
After gathering feedback from residents in the form of a straw poll and other comments, City Park West will submit a letter to the city sharing the results.
“We try to follow what we think the lead is on the neighbors, because people get frustrated with what they see as a lack of any input in development in the city,” Holder says.
He isn’t ready to speak on behalf of the neighborhood yet, but Holder says in the past the group has had concerns with demolition plans, as those can lead to scraped and dormant lots. City Park West has also been active in historic preservation, successfully petitioning the city to designate a mansion at 1741 Gaylord Street as a historic landmark; that marked just the second time an owner-opposed landmark application was approved by city council.
"This particular building is a cool building,” Dalton says of the 1709 Williams property. “It has historically been rented out to small businesses. It has room for four small businesses.”
There is currently just one business still operating in the building: a skin-care salon.
Dalton wishes someone would purchase and restore the structure instead of building a generic office or apartment building. Plus, demolition and construction could impact her business. Weathervane is almost entirely encompassed by the site that could be rezoned, which wraps around to the rear of the coffee shop’s building. According to a site plan submitted to the city, the proposed development might place garages behind Weathervane and build office space about five feet away from the east side of the cafe.
A draft idea of what the development might look like, but the plan could change.
Courtesy Michael McAtee
As Foster explains, once the rezoning is complete, the developer is “in a sense, pre-approved to tear down the building” any time before June 2029.
Dalton still thinks the building has amazing potential for someone who would want to preserve it. Holder agrees, arguing on behalf of its mid-century architecture and pointing out that the erosion of such properties changes the character of Denver.
“A lot of Denver's historical landscape, we like to say it's being scraped away one demo permit at a time,” Holder says. “It's death by 1,000 demolition permits.”
Unless there is a rezoning or landmarking question, people who care about architecture or development often feel helpless to get involved, Holder says. Citizens and RNOs are volunteers going up against people paid to develop properties, and one side often has more resources.
“There's a fundamental unequal playing field when it comes to neighbors wanting to have a say in how their neighborhoods evolve and the reality on the ground,” Holder says,
Abbott plans to speak up against this rezoning effort, citing its impact on the cost of living and the visual character of her neighborhood, but she hopes to spark a bigger reckoning about maintaining each neighborhood as Denver evolves.
McAtee says his company tries to make positive changes in the neighborhoods it builds in. Right now, the site plan is still conceptual and could change based on comments from CPD and code requirements, he adds.
“As I have communicated to the neighbors, our goal is to always do our best to blend into the neighborhoods we develop in,” he says. “We take pride in blending modern functionality with historic architectural details.”
But the vague site plans also worry Holder, who says City Park West would want to meet with McAtee no matter what happens with rezoning, to try to have some say in how the lot looks in the future.
“My understanding is they could still pretty much do whatever, but they would be limited by the technical zoning requirements,” Holder says. “It could be a glass office building, for all we know. … Since the developer doesn't have a plan other than it might be mixed-use [and] it might be three stories, I really think that most people are afraid of seeing a corridor like 17th turn into Tennyson.”
This article was updated on September 26 to clarify that City Park West Registered Neighborhood Organization was not listed by the City of Denver when development plans for 1709 Williams Street were submitted.
