DENVER, CO - It's unfortunate that comprehensive, involuntary downzoning is again on the Denver City Council's agenda. An attempt to block small multifamily dwellings in 208 acres of West Washington Park could offer a replay of the hostile debate that surrounded downzoning moves in West Highland and Sloan's Lake earlier this year. Those contentious battles pitted residents concerned about their property rights against others concerned about neighborhood preservation.
The council may be poised to repeat this drama in the form of a proposal by Councilman Chris Nevitt - scheduled for final consideration Dec. 15 - to downzone portions of West Wash Park, where it is now OK to build duplexes and other small, multifamily dwellings, to designation R-1: single-family only. In other parts of the neighborhood, an 18-month moratorium would be declared on combining two or more lots, making it nearly impossible for property owners to assemble parcels large enough to build duplexes or other low-rise multifamily units that are legal in the zoning code.
Neighborhood associations and city planners have pushed downzoning to align several of Denver's older residential areas with the goals of Blueprint Denver, the land-use and transportation guidelines adopted by the city in 2002. The aim is to shift most population growth to newer "areas of change" in the city, to better accommodate mass transit and major traffic arteries.
But Blueprint Denver was never meant to become a rigid prescription to limit all development in older neighborhoods - a stealthy way to rewrite the zoning code without allowing full community notification, input and feedback. The proposed moratorium and downzoning in West Wash Park would let some property owners dictate how others use their land - even if the purposes were allowed when the property was purchased.
If the downzoning measure passes, several blocks between Clarkson and Downing would be rezoned from R-2 to R-1, meaning only detached single-family homes could be built there. The moratorium, covering the area west of Clarkson, would ban the combination of parcels of land totaling more than 6,000 square feet. R-2 zoning now allows multifamily units on these larger lots.
Look, we can understand why some residents - backed by the West Washington Park Neighborhood Association - might want to limit density. A sudden increase of new residents in a mature neighborhood can transform it, and not always in positive ways. But large-scale, hostile downzoning compromises the rights of landowners who can no longer use their property as they had always anticipated.
Moreover, it gives residents in other neighborhoods a green light to demand similar treatment. Homeowners in West Highland and Sloan's Lake won growth controls in their neighborhoods; why shouldn't folks in West Wash Park and elsewhere be entitled, as well? Just last month a smaller downzoning occurred in south Park Hill - despite the loud protests of one property owner.
If people want to downzone their property, that's fine. They should find as many neighbors as possible who agree, exclude those who don't, and downzone as much of their neighborhood as they can without coercing everyone into the fold.
Property rights obviously aren't absolute, but they're important - they're in the Constitution, after all. And even if the moratorium and the downzoning have the support of a significant number of residents, which they apparently do, they should not be allowed to trample the rights of the minority who disagrees. The council should say no to both proposals.
Source: Rocky Mountain News