Goodbye to Lafayette's Managed Growth Amendment

A report from Vicky Uhland

I am usually all over anything in Lafayette that pertains to our Managed Growth Amendment but last Monday the city council held a workshop that I was not able to watch. I am just now trying to catch up. You need to be aware of what’s happening.

Luckily for all of us, Vicky Uhland was there and wrote a piece for Nextdoor. She has given me permission to share it with you. She mentions the potential development at the corner of 287 and Arapahoe named the Lafayette Marketplace. I have been reporting on the progress of this project. See here.

Read on.

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ATTENTION: Because of a new state law, Lafayette’s residential growth-management amendment is ending Aug. 7. This means that unless the city council takes action, the city will be unable to cap how many residential units developers are able to build in the future. Here’s what city council has discussed doing, and why it’s important for residents to weigh in.

LAFAYETTE’S THREE-DECADE GROWTH-MANAGEMENT HISTORY

Something that flew under the radar during the last Colorado legislative session was the passage of a law prohibiting the state’s cities and other entities from enacting or enforcing “anti-growth” laws. According to Lafayette planning staff, this affects four cities that currently have growth-management laws: Lafayette, Boulder, Golden and Lakewood.

This is a big honkin’ deal for Lafayette, where residential growth management has been in effect since 1996, after a group of residents who were concerned about unchecked growth in our city petitioned to get an amendment to the city charter on the ballot. Despite city council speaking against it, voters approved the amendment, which required the city to cap residential building permits at 200 permits per year for six years. The amendment also called for a citizen’s vote every six years to decide whether to renew the growth cap.

Voters have approved the amendment every time since then. It was altered in 2017 to exclude developments that have at least 40% affordable housing, but the 1,200-permit cap every six years for new market-rate housing has remained the same. The amendment was last approved by voters in 2018, and would have lasted until Jan. 1, 2025 had the new state law not superseded it.

HOW MANY HOUSING UNITS ARE WE TALKING ABOUT?

According to city records (posted here), during this current growth-management cycle (2019-25), the city has issued 320 residential building permits, plus another 193 for affordable housing (which, as noted above, are exempt from the 1,200-unit cap). In the pipeline are another 790 permits, plus 400 for the affordable housing project Willoughby Corner.

So that means 983 residential building permits out of the 1,200-permit cap have been or are in the process of being issued since the beginning of 2019, plus another 593 for affordable housing. Also in the pipeline is the 40 North development on Baseline between Anna’s Farm and Indian Peaks, which will account for 419 residential permits. Unfortunately, due to some legal mumbo-jumbo, those permits don’t count against the growth cap even though they aren’t affordable.

WHAT ABOUT DEVELOPMENTS IN THE PLANNING PROCESS?

Also worth noting is the 500-plus apartments (plus some commercial buildings) proposed for the Lafayette Marketplace property at the northwest corner of Arapahoe and 287. I was told by planning staff that preliminary site plans may go before council in September.

If all of the Lafayette Marketplace development and annexation plans are approved and the developer wants to start building before 2025, they would have been limited in the number of permits they could have received in this growth cycle had the state law restricting growth management not been passed.

Another fallout from this state law is that before it was passed, the Lafayette Marketplace developers discussed in neighborhood meetings about making 40% of their units affordable, in order to qualify for the affordable-housing permit exemption in the Lafayette growth-management law. We’re not hearing about that affordable housing anymore, presumably because the developer doesn’t have to do it under the new state law.

The irony is that this state law was supposed to encourage affordable housing construction by doing away with growth-management laws that supposedly make it difficult. It’s had the opposite effect in Lafayette.

WHAT HAPPENED LAST WEEK

On Monday, July 24, the Lafayette City Council had a workshop where they discussed what the city could do about the state’s anti-growth law legislation. This meeting was open to the public, but as with other council workshops, there was no opportunity for public input. (Here’s the meeting video link)

The council discussed three options of how to respond to the state law:

1. Challenge it in court.

2. Do nothing.

3. Take advantage of language in the legislation that allows cities to adopt a temporary, two-year growth-management law.

City councilors nixed option 2 right off the bat.

They then discussed option 1.

City planning staff said they had called the other cities with growth-management laws, and Boulder and Golden intend to do nothing and let their laws end. The Lakewood council was meeting the same night Lafayette’s was—no report yet on what they decided. But staff said it was likely that Lafayette would need to go it alone on a court challenge, and the city attorney said a challenge could potentially be tricky legal ground. It would also cost the city an unspecified amount of attorney’s fees.

THE TEMPORARY GROWTH-MANAGEMENT OPTION

Council was more interested in option 3, which would extend growth management for two years while the new building codes are being developed. I’ll write more about this in a subsequent Nextdoor post, but the gist is the city’s land-use/zoning codes haven’t been updated since the 1980s and aren’t in keeping with the new comprehensive plan. A process to update the codes is underway (learn more here)

Under option 3, staff presented two ways the council could vote to continue growth-management restrictions for two years:

1. Continue as we have. This means residential building permits in the pipeline would be issued, but there wouldn’t be any new permits for two years. Developments also wouldn’t be allowed to go past the preliminary sketch plan phase of the planning process.

2. Enact a two-year anti-growth plan on new residential projects, with the following exemptions:

*Developments that are platted or have final approval from council

*Mixed-use projects within the Lafayette Urban Renewal Authority districts

*Minor subdivisions of already-platted lots (three units or fewer)

*Projects that have reached certain milestones, such as preliminary plat or PUD approval

*Affordable housing

Councilor Nicole Samson said she wanted “the smoothest transition possible for staff and developers.” She mentioned adding an exemption to the second option under option 3 for “projects of economic significance,” which she defined as mixed-use, and specifically the King Soopers building that will be vacant after KS moves to Erie. (Note: The King Soopers property is currently zoned commercial, but Lafayette Marketplace and potentially other big projects on land that’s within the proposed Lafayette annexation areas are mixed-use projects).

Councilors said they liked the second option under option 3 the best. They asked staff to draft an ordinance regarding that option. Staff said the ordinance would likely be presented for a vote at one of council’s September meetings.

WHAT CAN YOU DO?

As I mentioned above, this workshop was conducted with NO opportunity for public input. Council decided on how to proceed on actions regarding The People’s Amendment— an entirely Lafayette citizen-initiated and citizen-approved growth-management initiative—without actually asking what the people want. Fortunately, you can tell them. Council will hold two meetings in August: this Tuesday, Aug. 1, and Aug. 15. You can speak during public input beginning at 5:30 p.m., or send an email to council members.

Please, please, tell council what you think regarding our growth-management options. Your voice matters!

Vicky Uhland