In 2022, the Boulder City Council approved the East Boulder Subcommunity Plan, seeking to bring approximately 5,000 housing units to the primarily industrial area east of the Foothills Parkway. Building homes in this area is one of the city’s single-largest opportunities to combate its housing shortage.
In an area known as the Flatiron Business Park near the Upslope Brewery and OZO Coffee, the subcommunity plan seeks to create a “destination workplace” neighborhood. This includes replacing office buildings with new “dining and entertainment” spaces as well as mixed-use housing to provide “employees with local housing options,” according to the plan.
Despite this goal, the company that owns most of the land in the Flatiron Business Park has a different vision in mind.
BioMed Realty, a San Diego-based real estate investment company, plans to tear down an office building currently occupied by Lumen, the telecommunications company. In its place, BioMed Realty aims to build two three-story, flat-roofed buildings used for research and development in the life sciences.
These life sciences buildings may be the first of many. BioMed Realty purchased 23 properties in the Flatiron Business Park for more than $600 million in March 2022, just months before the subcommunity plan was formally adopted in October that year, according to Boulder County property records. In a meeting with the city’s Planning Board in December 2023, company officials said they have never developed any housing projects. The company’s tenants have helped produce vaccines for infectious diseases and antiviral drugs, officials said.
“We’re working hard to meet the growing demand of this industry and provide real-estate solutions that allow our tenants to perform innovative research,” Kelsey Hunter, the development applicant speaking on behalf of BioMed Realty, told Planning Board members during the concept plan review hearing. “We’re excited by the depth and strength of the talent here in Boulder and we’re looking forward to supporting the continued growing ecosystem.”
The company’s plans are at odds with the hopes of some members of the city’s Planning Board. Many on the board view the area as a critical opportunity to alleviate the city’s housing shortage and therefore reduce the cost of living in Boulder.
BioMed Realty’s redevelopment proposal, one of the first since the East Boulder Subcommunity Plan was adopted, has prompted Planning Board members to consider more stringent zoning requirements that would force developers to build more housing.
Sarah Silver, the chair of the Planning Board, said during a Feb. 20 meeting that the city needs “stronger controls to get more residential” in mixed-use areas of East Boulder. Another member, ml Robles, suggested that the zoning for the area should require “a certain percentage of residential relative to office” space.
Whether the city pursues such zoning rules remains to be determined. The Boulder City Council is scheduled to discuss the underlying zoning for the East Boulder Subcommunity at its next meeting on March 7.
Regardless, whether housing is added to the Flatiron Business Park is not expected to significantly affect the city’s overall estimates for new housing potential in East Boulder, according to city officials.
The East Boulder Subcommunity stretches from the Foothills Parkway to the multi-use path along South Boulder Creek. Arapahoe Avenue marks the southern boundary of the area, while the Boulder Municipal Airport is at the northern edge. City officials suggest that the areas near the Valmont City Park and along 55th Street and Arapahoe Avenue offer greater opportunities for housing development. Both of those areas have more access to parks, open space and bus routes, making them more likely areas of future residential development.
“There’s a lot of opportunity in East Boulder” for housing, Kathleen King, a city principal planner and project manager for the East Boulder Subcommunity Plan, said in an interview. “We’re trying to set up the regulations to allow that type of development that people want to see both in the Flatiron Business Park, but also in these other neighborhoods.”
Even so, BioMed Realty’s proposal underscores one of the challenges of urban infill on privately owned land, where the market largely dictates what is built. In contrast, in other areas of the city like the Alpine-Balsam property, where the city plans to build affordable housing and offices, and Boulder Junction, where housing is concentrated around a mostly idle RTD bus station, the city owns most of the land. Practically all of the land in East Boulder is privately owned, according to the city, meaning only so much can be asked of developers and landowners.
“Any type of requirement that we put into zoning impacts private property owner rights. So we just want to be very thoughtful,” King said. “There are legal boundaries to what we can and cannot require.”
In the meantime, some Planning Board members are encouraging BioMed Realty to reconsider its long-term plans. Ideally, members said, the company would build some mixed-use housing.
“Because you own so much land here, you have the opportunity to roll these projects one after the other and make your own neighborhood,” Laura Kaplan, a Planning Board member who served on the working group that helped draft the plan for East Boulder, said during a recent Planning Board meeting.
“The city’s vision here really is a mixed-use area,” Kaplan added. “It’s not to keep it purely industrial, even though we love life sciences.”
With the glut of office space causing it to be almost given away all over the country, coupled with a few million units of housing shortfall, I’m surprised they think they can do well with more office. But as the article thoughtfully notes, it’s up to them; type of use should be encouraged but not mandated. My guess is a workable compromise will result.
Would be interesting to know what those legal constraints are on zoning. Do private property interests of large real estate development have priority over community needs and interests? They need to stop being coy and figure out exactly what they can legally require, and do that to the max. If mixed use is the vision for the business park area, it’s not going to happen without the city insisting on it. Otherwise, the divine right of capital prevails.
First question: Are there Boulder residents who can or would fill the jobs available with this employer? Is there an ancillary benefit to be realized by the larger Boulder community with the addition of this employer?
Can the employer provide–or subsidize–bus transportation for all employees?
Seems to me the first job of a municipality is the safety, housing and employment of its residents; not accommodating developers or enterprises that add nothing beyond tax revenue to the community.
Not that I want to hang crepe on the idea of growth. But. Picture this: A wildfire just west of Broadway south of Baseline. Winds out of the west on a late summer Friday afternoon.
Where is the evacuation route? South? to where? East to 36, which is already packed with southbound commuters from Niwot and Gun Barrel south along the urban corridor? North? Through downtown past CU to Lyons?
Isn’t that kind of a moot point, though? According to article, BioMed Realty alerady purchased 23 properties in the Flatiron Business Park. They don’t need to develop them further. Since it’s in a business park it’s already zoned for what they intend to do. I don’t know what options the city has to influence outcomes.