Boulder’s Landmarks Board voted this week against designating a 1920s bungalow as a historic landmark, removing a preservation obstacle to a proposed 60-unit permanently affordable housing development for older adults on Arapahoe Ave.
Presbyterian Manor has been seeking to demolish four nearly 100-year-old Craftsman bungalows to make way for a new three-story building adjacent to the nonprofit’s existing 11-story tower at 1050 Arapahoe Ave. All rental units would be restricted to residents 62 and older earning at or below 60% of the area median income. Construction is unlikely to begin before 2028.
Earlier this year, the five-member Landmarks Board voted to begin the process of designating one of the homes, 990 Arapahoe Ave., a historic landmark. This week’s vote reverses course on that decision, allowing all four homes to be demolished. The property owner has offered to donate the homes for relocation.
Board member Chelsea Castellano opposed landmarking the home.
“When I think about historic preservation, I think about places that are truly exceptional buildings and spaces that are celebrated as clear public good and whose preservation is unquestionably something that enriches future generations,” Castellano said. “I don’t believe that this property does that.”
Castellano said “to designate this property over a nonprofit’s objection that provides affordable housing to seniors would be an abhorrent step.”
City officials had initially recommended landmarking all four homes. But after the board decided to initiate the process for just one, officials said the 1920s working-class residential character of the homes was “diminished” and recommended against designating 990 Arapahoe.
“Staff finds designation over the owner’s objection would not draw a reasonable balance between private property rights and the public interest in preserving the city’s cultural, historic and architectural heritage,” city officials wrote in a memo to the board.
The project team warned that preserving 990 Arapahoe would effectively trap the home on three sides, an outcome they compared to the house in Pixar’s “Up,” in which a small home is boxed in by high-rise development. Keeping the home would also eliminate nearly all off-street parking for residents, reduce the unit count and could jeopardize the project’s Low-Income Housing Tax Credit award, the project team said.
“The project is not feasible with 990 being kept,” Catherine Bean, a principal at Element Properties, told the board this week. “It wouldn’t work.”
Boulder City Council will have the final say on whether to landmark the home, but councilmembers appear unlikely to designate the property and threaten the housing project. On Thursday, they voted not to call up a concept plan for the development, signaling they have no major concerns with the project moving forward.
“This is a very promising project,” Mayor Aaron Brockett said.
The project comes as Boulder faces a growing shortage of affordable housing for older adults. Seniors are among the city’s fastest-growing demographic, and city housing officials have said older adults with lower incomes face some of the greatest housing needs in Boulder, where rents and home prices have far outpaced many residents’ fixed incomes.
