Lakewood apartment project at edge of Belmar Park faces opposition

A raft of ducks perched and waddled on the frozen surface of a pond at Belmar Park on a recent fall morning — foreground bustle for a double-crested cormorant rookery located on a small island just offshore.

This 132-acre park in the middle of Lakewood, Colorado’s fifth-largest city, is tagged as a “hotspot” on eBird.com, where birders have recorded sightings of more than 230 bird species — many of them migratory — in the park, including the Northern shoveler, the cedar waxwing and the dark-eyed junco.

But according to an increasingly vocal group of city residents, this rich tableau of avian activity is under threat from a five-story, 412-unit apartment building proposed for the eastern edge of the park, at 777 S. Yarrow St.

“I ride my bicycle through here to see the birds, the wildlife,” said Regina Hopkins, a Lakewood native who went to Green Mountain High School and is on the front lines of this latest fight over high-density development in metro Denver. “The animals, the trees — they need our voice.”

It’s a battle that began under the last Lakewood City Council and continues under the one newly seated in late November. Despite an announcement the prior month by Kairoi Residential that it would pause its development efforts for a couple months, opponents remain steadfast that the San Antonio, Texas-based company needs to do more.

Or less, said Anita Springsteen — who just stepped down from the council after four years but vows to continue fighting the project as a private citizen.

“What the developer wants is high-end luxury units that they’ll make millions of dollars on,” she said. “What we are saying is that we have the ability as a local municipality to push back on developers and make them consider the rights of the community and the effects they’re having on the community.”

Kairoi did not respond to several requests by The Denver Post to comment for this story. In its Oct. 18 announcement, principal Tyler Sibley called the development pause “an important step because of the concerns that have been expressed over the past few weeks about our project.” He said the developer would consider potential changes.

“We want to be a good neighbor,” Sibley wrote, “and understand that while a neighborhood meeting wasn’t required as part of the development process, we should have worked to have a community discussion because of the importance of the neighboring park.”

Springsteen introduced a resolution in the waning days of the previous council that would have pressed Kairoi to spare 69 trees that are slated for removal and to dedicate a portion of the 4-acre site as parkland rather than paying an opt-out fee.

Project opponents question why Lakewood isn’t doing more to uphold its environmental sustainability goals, one of which is to “protect and expand” the city’s tree canopy.

While Springsteen’s measure didn’t win majority support from her colleagues, the Oct. 23 meeting packed council chambers and yielded four hours of feedback and discussion — just about all of it critical of the project.

Lakewood’s new mayor, Wendi Strom, said residents’ concerns are important to consider. But Kairoi’s project is a “use by right” — meaning it complies with the zoning for the area and doesn’t require approval from the council.

The developer, she said, could build up to 12 stories under Lakewood’s zoning code but has chosen to max out at five.

“I think it’s often missed that this kind of development is considered the most sustainable type of development: It is occurring in Lakewood’s downtown, which is a section of the city that has a lot of walkability, and residents are easily able to get around in several ways beyond just use of a single-occupancy vehicle,” Strom said. “It is creating residences where it’s walkable to transit, shopping, parks and other services and amenities.”

A vacant two-story, 1970s-era office building that now occupies the site where Kairoi wants to build — just blocks from the Belmar shopping center — would be demolished.

The city states on its website that Belmar Park is already within 500 feet of 1,400 housing units. The mayor said 412 apartments would have far less impact on Lakewood’s landscape than if those residents were spread across hundreds of single-family homes.

That was an important consideration for Brian Holman, who was a rare voice at the October City Council meeting in not condemning the project.

He cast it as a generational divide: Younger people like him need more housing types to choose from, given metro Denver’s astronomical home prices.

“If we truly care about the climate and the environment, we should be building where people want to spend time and reduce the amount of land dedicated to travel infrastructure,” he said. “This development is honestly better than most of our existing housing developments.”

Even so, Strom acknowledged, the apartment building’s proposed location is understandably jarring for people who treasure Belmar Park as an oasis of nature in the city. It also has historical value as the grounds of the now-razed mansion built in 1937 by May Bonfils Stanton, the daughter of one of The Denver Post’s co-founders.

“These impacts are not ones to take lightly,” she said, “and as some of our community members have voiced, there is a lot of emotion — and, for some, a significant feeling that their own lives will be adversely affected.”

Celia Greenman, a 30-year birder at Belmar Park, said a taller building on the park’s eastern periphery poses a potential disturbance for migrating birds, both during the construction phase and once it’s standing.

“With that big a building, there’s going to be bird strikes against the windows,” she said. “It’s just too big a building to be at the entrance to the park.”

Greenman, 72, has spotted the blackpoll warbler, the American avocet and the elusive vermilion flycatcher at the park. Removing so many mature trees at that end of Lake Kountze will be devastating, she said.

“Belmar Park is special because it has a lake and it provides really good habitat,” she said. “If you’re a migratory bird, you spot that and head right for it.”

Aside from potential wildlife impacts, the opposition group Save Belmar Park says the apartment complex would be incompatible with the surrounding neighborhood. In a Dec. 19 news release, the group said a five-story building “with no buffer in no way seamlessly integrates to the surrounding buildings.”