Boulder’s Landmarks Board voted this week to initiate the landmark designation process for a nearly 100-year-old Craftsman bungalow on Arapahoe Ave., complicating Presbyterian Manor’s plans to demolish the house and three neighboring homes to make way for an affordable senior housing expansion.
The 4-1 vote means the bungalow at 990 Arapahoe Ave. is now protected from demolition while a full designation hearing proceeds. That hearing, expected in the coming months, will determine whether the property is recommended for landmarking. The Boulder City Council will have the final say over whether to designate the home a historic landmark.
The decision by the Landmarks Board could mark a setback for Presbyterian Manor.
The nonprofit has proposed a four-story building with about 60 permanently affordable apartments for residents 62 and older. It would rise next to its existing 11-story tower at 1050 Arapahoe Ave., across the street from the Boulder Public Library.
Presbyterian Manor bought the houses in the 1980s and 1990s specifically to enable the expansion, according to the developers. All four homes date back to the 1920s and Presbyterian Manor rents them out.
The last time the city pursued a landmark designation over a property owner’s objection was in 2019, according to city officials. In this most recent case, the process began after Presbyterian Manor applied to demolish the homes. Under city code, demolition applications for buildings over 50 years old trigger a review to determine if the properties are eligible for landmark designation.
Mark Liebetrau, who chairs Presbyterian Manor’s board of directors, has said that if the homes are designated historic landmarks, the affordable housing project would not move forward. Retaining the houses would result in fewer on-site parking spaces than required by the project’s investor.
Liebetrau did not respond to a request for comment on Tuesday’s Landmarks Board vote. He previously told Boulder Reporting Lab that expanding affordable senior housing is a “moral imperative” in a city where many older residents are being priced out.
The Landmarks Board considered the four homes individually and ultimately voted to begin the landmarking process for just one of them. Members indicated that the home at 990 Arapahoe Ave. was the most architecturally interesting and the strongest candidate for landmarking. One member said Presbyterian Manor may be able to incorporate the single home into its redevelopment plans.
Historic Boulder supported halting demolition of the homes and starting the landmarking process. So did city planning staff, who recommended initiating designation to prevent the permanent loss of historically significant working-class housing and 1920s bungalow architecture. City staff also said the developers had not demonstrated that incorporating the homes into the project was economically infeasible, according to a city staff memo.
If the developers proceed with the development, the city’s Planning Board is expected to review a concept plan application for the project in the coming months.
The need for affordable senior housing is well-documented. The waitlist for Presbyterian Manor’s existing building opens just one day per year, and applicants may wait 18 months for a unit, according to the developers.
Several board members indicated they felt caught between their duty to uphold the historic preservation ordinance and their personal support for affordable senior housing. Chelsea Castellano was the only board member to vote against initiating designation.
“I think the fact that the Landmarks Board can prevent 60 units of affordable housing for seniors from being built in the name of preserving an unremarkable building that the community doesn’t even want shows how broken the historic preservation process is in our city and the degree to which it needs to be changed,” Castellano told Boulder Reporting Lab.
The designation process now moves forward with the Planning Board concept plan review proceeding on a parallel track. Any construction, already unlikely before 2028, may face a longer road ahead.
The Landmarks Board made frequent comments about the integrity of the neighborhood. This is not a residential neighborhood a block from Broadway with the Senior Center, Library and large parking lots on the North side of Arapahoe and apartments and a law office along the South side along. If this one house is kept, it will look entirely out of place surrounded by taller buildings. I am a resident of the Manor and support additional permanently affordable low income housing for seniors.
I’ve seen the buildings, they are not just “unremarkable “, they are an eyesore and street would look much better with them gone.
You’re calling this a Craftsman bungalow with no explanation of what that even means. Is this simply a Sears kit home from the 1920s?
I wonder if the solution to this is going to be finding somewhere else to move these bungalows to and preserve the buildings while freeing the land for development? That’s what happened to the bungalows on Grandview a few years back.
Putting 60 rental units into a space that is now filled with 4 very small houses is poor judgement. And, many seniors need handicapped parking. How do you also fit, 60 parking spaces where the 6 or so spaces are now for 3 houses? You are squishing a size 12 foot into a size 4 shoe.
Yes! As everyone here has been demanding, “Keep Boulder a museum to the most mediocre buildings in the country!”
Historic Boulder and city staff who are the significant support infrastructure for Historic Boulder are delegitimizing themselves by forcing this historic designation on Presbyterian Manor and private property owners. It’s like the city swooping in, telling you that your home is “important” and saying you can’t make any changes to it, including replacing siding or windows as well as demolition, without getting approval from city government.
In this case, the home that was voted to be landmarked is actually a mass produced Sears kit catalogue home, specifically the Sears Roebuck model Ardara https://www.studiostgermain.com/ideasblog/2025/12/6/the-american-dream-in-a-box-unpacking-the-legacy-of-the-sears-kit-home If the professional staff under Historic Boulder could not identify that this home was a cookie cutter, mass produced home of largely insignificant cultural or architectural interest, then the organization is actively failing at being effective stewards of properties that actually deserve to be landmarked.
Instead, I argued in my comment at this week’s hearing that a subset of these professionals, intentionally or not, are weaponizing the landmarks ordinance to prevent any significant change to the city. Or at worse, furthering classist or racist goals from the original implementation of historic preservation.
That same day of the hearing, Michelle Alexander, author of “The New Jim Crow” spoke to CU students about her work. Perhaps she should have spoken to the landmark’s board too, as per the Atlantic article “What Historic Preservation Is Doing to American Cities” by Jacob Anbinder, “The nation’s very first historic district, that of downtown Charleston, South Carolina, was created in 1931 as part of a Jim Crow zoning code whose aim was to encourage the segregation of the city. Although the zoning itself did not use racial labels, which the U.S. Supreme Court had already declared unconstitutional, observers understood that its intent was to increase the neighborhood’s appeal to white people who had left the area and to encourage the Black residents who lived there to move elsewhere.” https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/05/historic-preservation-has-tenuous-relationship-history/629731/
Regardless if the staff’s or landmark’s boards decision was intentionally classist or not, the lack of technical awareness on the miniscule cultural value or historical significance of these properties devalues their expertise for future, more valuable efforts in historic preservation. Especially so since 18 members of the public were in favor of demolition vs 5 against, two of those being staff or representatives connected to Historic Boulder.
Clearly, when a democratic majority of the public gets overruled by Historic Boulder’s influence, they threaten their own legitimacy and potentially open the door for future public opinion, perhaps even referendums, to do away with the ordinances that support more legitimate historic landmarks.
Preservationists need to remember that they serve to protect culture not just old buildings. So I close with a quote shared at their own recent Saving Places conference series, sourced from the Senate Congressional Report in WITH HERITAGE SO RICH which helped establish the National Historic Preservation Act in 1966:
“If the preservation movement is to be successful, it must go beyond saving bricks and mortar. It must go beyond saving occasional historic houses and opening museums. It must be more than a cult of antiquarians. It must do more than revere a few precious national shrines. It must attempt to give a sense of orientation to our society, using structures and objects of the past to establish values of time and place.”
I generally support historic preservation but in this case I believe the greater good would be served by providing affordable senior housing, which is desperately needed in Boulder. If the historic property can be moved, that would be ideal, but if there is no interest in that, then the loss of a not particularly remarkable house is a small price to pay for housing our elders.
The board are great people they all give good inputs but you have to love Chelsea Castellano. She is the best.
I agree with the majority of those who commented: This is far from a remarkable “Craftsman” structure. I don’t know what the next steps are, but I hope that a larger (or different) entity that is to make the final decision strongly reconsider.
I grew up in a city that had quality builders starting in the 1920’s, and neighborhoods had a beautiful mix of “true” Craftsman alongside Dutch Colonial, tudor, Classic Colonial, and more. As others have said, this is an eyesore. Give these owners the chance to do something good (and greatly needed) for Boulder.
The 11 storey Presbyterian Manor Tower is a beautiful building. The one bedroom apartments are laid out in a compact and nice way with giant tucked in balconys. Best views in Boulder, yet the tower is nestled into the hill. The grounds are lovely. They include a long one storey strip of garages behind the houses in question. So careful thoughtful people of Presbyterian have built an area for future expansion. Just as they originally did some 60-70 years ago. But oh no, precious Historic Boulder has to save a single unremarkable tract house. Presbyterian should build another 11 storey tower, 150 apartments. The hillside means the tower would not stick out that much.
Curious why the members of Historic Boulder overruled the people who spoke out against the preservation? Senior housing is very important for the city. I have not reviewed the development plans and if it is not sufficient, as others commented here, I think those concerns could be addressed.
I lived in one of these delapidated crap houses for a semester. I can’t say I see what’s worth preserving. The comment in the article about preserving the working class housing from the 20s is so amazing in the current context of who can actually buy a house in Boulder these days(or in general). I guess it’s important to preserve the memory of such a possibility!
This building isn’t safe from a fire resilience perspective with the wood trellises and siding. Should the process take safety into account?
To preserve the memory of a working class that could actually live in the city in which they work. Oh, the irony. There is always a constituency to attach to a structure and cry for their remembrance. However, landmarking should be much more than that. If the structure is remarkable, that’s not enough – it should be amazing in order to hold a ‘forever’ designation. The Landmarks Board does not have the expertise to make these decisions, and staff has never turned down an opportunity to landmark when it is on offer. If the city wants museums, it should invest in them. Ban landmarking without owner approval outside of historic districts. Dissolve the landmarks board. Uncle.