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Posted Mar 17, 2018, 2:47 PM
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Registered User
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Join Date: Jul 2001
Location: New York, NY / Denver, CO
Posts: 2,017
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Surprised nobody has posted this yet.
This is why we can't have nice things in Denver...
Quote:
Vanishing vistas: Cherished mountain views falling victim to growth in Denver and along the Front Range
Denver uses “view planes” to preserve panoramic vistas in some areas
By KEVIN SIMPSON | ksimpson@denverpost.com | The Denver Post
PUBLISHED: March 16, 2018 at 6:00 am
As construction stretched outward along Welton Street, following the light rail line from downtown into Five Points, Tim Oldham eagerly anticipated the growth that would bring vibrant density and commercial amenities to the neighborhood.
In the meantime, he and his wife, Kelly, could sit on their second-floor deck and gaze past the surface parking lot behind their house to marvel at Rocky Mountain sunsets, scan the distant ridge line and set their internal compass to the west.
But as a building rose from the former parking lot — and rose, and rose, to its final eight-story profile — they charted the trade-off for growth by their vanishing vista. Oldham likened it to the frog in the pot of slowly boiling water, measuring its demise by degrees.
“As the building got incrementally bigger, the sunsets went away,” says the 47-year-old landscaper. “It’s just been stacking up on top of us. Our view of the mountains is kind of like … well, it’s a big part of why we’re here.”
Mountain views and other iconic, geographic sight lines can be vulnerable to the surge of development sweeping Denver and the Front Range, underscoring their cherished place in the Colorado ethos. Some of those Denver views are preserved in the municipal code by a tool called a view plane, while other municipalities rely on height restrictions and strategic green space to maintain locals’ connection to natural panoramas and cityscapes alike.
But when construction booms, views once taken for granted can disappear.
Carlos Santistevan, a 79-year-old artist and former congressional aide, has lived in a small house on Glenarm Place in Five Points for most of his life. Although he’s witnessed multiple neighborhood transformations, he knew when the light rail line arrived that more change would soon follow. Then a 28-unit residential building sprang up behind his house a few years ago, with units going for $450,000 and more, and he realized he sat smack in the middle of the next phase.
The eight-story building on Welton Street, which looms over him as he peers out from his front door, took away what remained of his visual connection to the mountains.
“To lose that, it’s like losing a friend,” says Santistevan, his westward view interrupted by a block-long, gray mass of apartments. “Now, I look up at this and wonder where I’m living now.”
Neighborhood groups often rally to oppose, or at least scale back, development that they see as infringing on the qualities that help define their community. But the calculus of growth also includes benefits.
For instance, Oldham looks forward to a more energetic commercial district around his house — an infusion of restaurants, nightlife and sidewalk patios to serve a more densely populated area. He envisioned something like the Potter Highlands district in northwest Denver, where “mom and pop shops pretty much look like the rest of the neighborhood.”
But while he regards his area’s growth as positive, he describes the construction that enables it as “cheap, what you see everywhere.” And now, the residential floors of the building under construction shroud his house in shadows and several stories of soon-to-be neighbors will look down on his backyard and rear deck.
“After four more years,” Oldham says, gauging his son’s remaining time in the nearby elementary school, “we’ll see what the neighborhood looks like and consider cashing in.”
Concerns about the speed and aesthetic character of Denver’s growth have found several flash points, from installation of hundreds of 5G cell towers to major redevelopment of the former St. Anthony Hospital site in the Sloan’s Lake neighborhood and proposed reimagining of the central Platte Valley to so-called “slot homes” that last week prompted a moratorium on their construction.
“Aesthetically, the recent wave of development is not serving us well,” says Drew Dutcher, an architect and president of the Elyria and Swansea Neighborhood Association. “We’re building at such a huge pace, but we’re not thinking about what we’re building. It’s not only the view planes.”
Even in areas not protected by view planes, some long-standing corridors that train the eye west to the mountains lend character to the community. John Hayden, president of Curtis Park Neighbors, worries that as the burgeoning River North area continues to develop, construction could threaten views of Longs Peak visible on most of the numbered streets.
“I want to make it clear, I’m not against density,” Hayden says. “I think it’s essential. But it should be added in a way that’s conscious of design and how it’s impacting the neighborhoods around it. It’s not that any individual person is entitled to a view of the mountains from their home. If that’s what they’re thinking they should have bought on the highest floor of the tallest building.”
While growth may infringe on the views once enjoyed by many individual homes, Denver does have a mechanism in place to protect more than a dozen public views from encroaching development.
View planes, codified exercises in geography and math that date back to 1950, continue to be powerful tools to protect some of the city’s most iconic vistas, says Brad Buchanan, executive director of Community Planning & Development in Denver.
With an origin point that expands in a widening angle to encompass a particular sightline — usually the mountains but sometimes a panoramic cityscape — it denotes an area where new structures are prohibited from crowding out the view.
Think of those popular images of the Denver skyline backed by the mountains, as captured from a vantage point at the Museum of Nature & Science in City Park. Or, to conjure a view plane of more recent vintage, the sightline from the first-base stands at Coors Field that extends beyond the left-field seats to a backdrop of majestic peaks.
“View planes in Denver are holy ground,” Buchanan says.
He points to the view plane that originates at the sundial in Hilltop’s Cranmer Park. The plane encompasses everything within an obtuse angle that extends to the west, covering structures all the way to University Boulevard, including what today is the Cherry Creek shopping district.
The municipal code restricts the height of structures in the Cranmer Park vista by a fairly simple formula: None can rise more than 5,434 feet above sea level (the altitude of the park’s reference point) plus one foot for every 100 feet distant from that point. So while the area has seen major development, there remain areas around Cherry Creek that will never be developed because of the view plane.
Similarly, the view plane from Washington Park to the west has effectively placed height limits on redevelopment of the former Gates Rubber site near I-25 and Broadway.
Although these sightlines may be nearly sacrosanct, at times they have been altered or varied. State land isn’t subject to view planes, which accounts for some Auraria construction that pokes into them. But Buchanan, who has been involved in city land use discussions in various capacities since 1982, recalls only three instances when infringement has been allowed.
One involved restoration and development of the former El Jebel Shrine Temple at 18th Avenue and Sherman Street. The building stands at the farthest edge of the City Park view plane, and buildings beyond that boundary already rose higher. Another involved placement of new power poles within the Ruby Hill Park view plane and the third addressed slight encroachment of the Denver Broncos’ stadium, currently in naming-rights limbo, into the state Capitol view plane.
“When our views change, that’s a type of change that our community has a hard time with — and rightfully so,” Buchanan says. “We value views. And specifically we value views to the mountains. It’s sort of our geography and our compass.”
But as Denver’s skyline evolved over the years, it also acquired a certain visual cachet. Now, three of the 14 view planes tilt east to preserve an urban panorama. The Sloan’s Lake Park view plane, added to the municipal code in 1988, takes in the city’s central business district. Two more east-facing views were added in 1999.
Obviously, not all mountain views or glittering cityscapes fall under the municipal code’s protection — and as Denver hits a period of ramped-up development, those whose aesthetics are impacted typically feel a sense of loss.
“What you’re touching on,” Buchanan says, “is the experiential value of what it’s like to be in a place. Not every piece of property downtown is guaranteed a view of the mountains in perpetuity. There’s a reality to that that sinks in when a big building gets built next to one that’s had a view of the mountains from downtown.
“And I think that creates tension and conflict,” he adds, “because we not only hold this view of the mountains as a community value, but the real estate market also holds that as very much a value.”
Beyond Denver’s city limits, other Front Range communities also face the forces of growth on somewhat smaller scales, but with similar defining vistas.
Colorado Springs, where Pikes Peak rises to the west, identifies strongly with the 14,115-foot peak — in fact, the entire region invokes its name. Yet the city has never felt the need to establish view planes to protect the view.
In part, this stems from the fact that from most city locations the mountain’s proximity and steep elevation gain make it clearly visible, says Peter Wysocki, the city’s director of planning and development. But it’s also a nod to property rights that, as long as they meet local regulations, aren’t limited by sight lines.
That said, most developers that build in the region remain sensitive to view corridors and like to preserve them, often by designing buildings and arranging them on a property to allow for maximum exposure, Wysocki adds.
Views do come into consideration as the city develops parks, open space and other public gathering areas, working view corridors of natural landmarks like Garden of the Gods and Pikes Peak into the design.
“In the original city street layout, major boulevards were designed with an east-west alignment, orienting the original parks and streets with Pikes Peak in mind,” Wysocki says. “I’m looking at it right now out of the window. I wish it had way more snow.”
Similar regard for elements of the landscape that tie people to place hold sway in Fort Collins, where Horsetooth Rock and Longs Peak offer familiar backdrops. Except for views from parks and open space, the city has no protected views under its land-use code.
Neither does Boulder, but the city guards its natural setting with other tools.
In 1959, voters approved an amendment to the city charter that created the Blue Line, an imaginary boundary that extends north from Eldorado Springs at about 5,750 feet of elevation along the foothills. The city will pump water no higher, a decision that effectively limited construction that had begun to impact the city’s mountain backdrop.
It also gave rise to Boulder’s open space program that launched in 1967 with a sales tax dedicated to fund land purchases. Since then, the city has bought and protected parks and open land equal to three times the size of its developed portion, director of planning housing and sustainability Jim Robertson says.
Then, in 1971, voters adopted a 55-foot height limit within the city — a restriction enshrined in the city charter, not the land use code.
“It’s embedded in the DNA of the city as well as defining the physical growth of the city,” Robertson says. “The driving factor was protection of views. This may be folklore, but 55 feet was roughly selected to be treetops’ height. We won’t go higher than trees naturally go in terms of blocking mountain views.”
Still, Boulder is not immune to conversations about growth, and since the city can’t grow outward, it naturally looks up. The question is how far. Robertson notes that the 55-foot limit has not eliminated or resolved the question of how residents feel about height.
“We probably have as vigorous a discussion around those issues as Denver,” he says.
Back in Five Points, Jerome Schroeder stands amid the remodel in progress at the back of his second-floor home in a triplex on Glenarm Place. For more than a year, he has tried to get approval for a rooftop deck that would add 18 vertical inches to his attached garage — a project that is, in part, an effort to regain some of the mountain views he lost to the rising eight-story structure one block to the west.
From atop his garage, he can see Longs Peak to the north, downtown and, on a clear day, even Pikes Peak far to the south. But the city has denied his permit because of height restrictions, a decision he continues to appeal in light of what he calls “this monstrosity across the street from me.”
“I love the mountains, it’s one reason I live here,” Schroeder says. “I love living in the city and I love the view I have of the city, especially at night. Being able to see the mountains throughout the day keeps me grounded and attached to what makes me happy.”
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Full Article: https://www.denverpost.com/2018/03/1...ilding-growth/
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