The Boulder City Council on Feb. 12 voted to continue studying possible expansion of the city into the Area III planning reserve, a 493-acre parcel northeast of the city that remains largely undeveloped.
The site has the capacity for up to 8,700 units of housing, making it one of the city’s largest potential opportunities to address its housing shortage and create a new neighborhood. Skeptics of expanding into the area have cited the need to prioritize infill projects within city limits, the significant cost of extending city services and the workload it would impose on city staff.
On Jan. 20, the Boulder Planning Board voted 4-3 that there was not sufficient community need to warrant further consideration of expansion into the planning reserve. The council’s decision means the Planning Board will now have the opportunity to reconsider its vote.
The council voted 7-2 that community need exists, with Mayor Aaron Brockett and Councilmembers Matt Benjamin, Rob Kaplan, Tina Marquis, Ryan Schuchard, Nicole Speer and Tara Winer voting in favor, and Mark Wallach and Taishya Adams voting no.
Supporters framed the vote as a generational opportunity to address affordability.
“Homeownership is super important for the next generation so that they can build wealth,” Winer said. “I feel like this is our opportunity of a lifetime.”
Councilmember Rob Kaplan said housing prices are unlikely to stabilize without bold action.
“These prices aren’t going to go down, they’re going to continue to escalate. I feel like we should be visionary,” he said.
Wallach said he did not dispute that community need exists and indicated he would switch his vote if guardrails are added in a future resolution to ensure middle-income housing is prioritized.
A majority of council voted to add language outlining guardrails for future land use in Area III and agreed to provide feedback to staff by Feb. 19.
Adams cited concerns about land conservation in explaining her vote.
“We need to invest in natural systems in the same way that we invest in our roads, in our utilities and our housing,” she said, adding that she has seen habitat loss “all around us” in the 15 years she’s lived in Boulder and that land within current city limits “is sufficient for our population needs.”
For the potential expansion to remain a possibility, both the Boulder City Council and Planning Board must agree that there is a “community need.” If either body ultimately decides against it, the process would pause until the next Boulder Valley Comprehensive Plan update, roughly five to 10 years from now.
If both agree, the next step would be to begin creating a Service Area Expansion Plan. That plan would require approval from the Planning Board, Boulder City Council, Boulder County Planning Commission and Board of County Commissioners.
Even if all approvals are secured, significant development would not occur until at least the 2030s.
The property, located east of the North Foothills Highway and north of Jay Road, was first identified as a potential site for urban expansion in 1993. The city owns approximately 220 acres, much of it purchased for future parks, while most of the rest is privately held by dozens of property owners, according to city officials. Adjacent to the site are a shooting range and Boulder Valley Ranch, a city-managed open space.
Proponents of annexation argue it would allow the city to build more affordable housing than it can within city limits, largely because the city could negotiate annexation terms requiring housing priced for people earning a certain income. However, at least one developer previously struggled to deliver the amount of on-site affordable housing promised in an annexation agreement.
While the planning reserve offers significant housing potential, the costs of extending city services are steep. Baseline off-site infrastructure costs, such as water lines and wastewater treatment, are estimated at up to $1 billion, according to a November report by AECOM, a Denver-based consulting firm hired by the city. On-site costs, such as roads, add another $159 million, much of which would likely be paid by developers.
Another key concern among skeptics is the staff time required to create a service area expansion plan, which city officials said would take up to two years to collect community feedback and draft. Staff told council they have capacity, “but that would mean not doing other things.” Consultant costs could also top $500,000, according to a city official.
This process would begin after the city completes its update to the Boulder Valley Comprehensive Plan, a joint planning document between the City of Boulder and Boulder County that guides land use and development decisions.
There are already 9000 approved unbuilt units. C’mon Boulder, when are we going to stop making developers ever more $$$. Lets demand developers build what they have approval for first.
I’m glad the council is finally moving this forward but do we really expect the planning board to change their mind if they look at it again? What other new data is needed than looking up the cost to rent (forget about buying) any place in/around Boulder? I wonder what Polis would do…
It would be excellent if the Council studied–without hiring expensive consultants–whether our water supply can support another 20,000 residents (per city figures).
$1B estimate just for the cost of extending infrastructure. In another 10 or 15 years when they could possibly get around to it, the cost will probably be double that amount. Yet, Boulder can’t even manage to fund renovations for the South Boulder Rec Center? What seemed like a promising idea a few years ago now seems like an exercise in futility and wishful thinking, and the next step if this goes forward, “community needs assessment” is what Boulder seems to always do poorly (despite lots of expensive consultants doing most of the work.)
All of the caveats might even be worthwhile in the long run if Boulder could actually figure out how to develop affordable housing. The “affordable” housing recently built or renovated? in the city consists mainly of small, poorly designed, and unattractive units in stacked flats. The impetus is towards building ever smaller units – like the new 300 studio units and 1 BRs proposed on East Arapahoe – and who besides students would want to live in that? Soon, though, our professional class in the city will be forced to live in units like this because everything else will be too expensive. I doubt City Council or staff have the ingenuity to figure out how to so this well. With the city’s insular, narrow approach toward developing housing, I don’t see any evidence that it has the expertise, or especially the culture of innovation, required to pull this off.
Where is the water going to come from to supply 8,700 new residences?
My understanding is that the City has not done a study of the potential water shortages for the existing or future population and has no credible evidence that water for an additional 20,000 people that, according to City figures, this build of 8700 units would represent (20,000 x 2.3 people per unit per the City).
Even if this new development is denser than Boulder’s 1960s neighborhoods, it’s still a form of sprawl. We would do better to fix the low density in our existing neighborhoods rather than repeat the errors of previous generations and authorize more greenfield development.
How do we fix the low density and keep families & not destroy neighborhoods of existing families in places like Martin Acres Keewayden and Newlands?
Another good article by John and Brooke – thank you BRL!
You would allow businesses to be distributed through the neighborhoods rather than just in outer shopping centers and you would allow duplexes, triplexes, row houses etc to be built. This would change the character of the neighborhood, but it would be an upgrade in my opinion. Martin acres could have its own smaller grocery store, for example.
I also fail to see how adding 9,000 homes on the opposite side of a highway will not create more car dependence. Highways splitting communities created the highway protest movement of the 1960s. How are people crossing this highway and what are they walking to given that they’re on the outer periphery of Boulder. These new residents are going to drive to everything and have to contend with at most a few underpasses to connect them to anything walkable.
Finally I have opposition to a neighborhood that is built all at once. Neighborhoods should evolve organically through zoning not the vision of a few developers, who benefit from selling homes rather than designing the best possible neighborhood.
“A generational opportunity to address affordability?” Pardon me, but that is laughable considering that there are NO provisions for affordable or middle-income housing. It will be more of the same high-end multi-million dollar housing. If developers are responsible for the $1,000,000,000 in infrastructure costs as has been claimed over and over and as the city’s study showed, are developers going to be able to build anything other than high-end housing? Hint: NO.
From the article, it sounds like City of Boulder would be on the hook for that $1B cost, and developers would handle the “on-site” costs such as roads.