🏘️ Why some housing was nixed from East Boulder housing plan

Boulder City Council nixes potential housing from East Boulder redevelopment plan after pushback from drug manufacturer

In recent weeks, members of the Boulder City Council have repeatedly requested that city staff allow for more housing in the long-term plan to redevelop the mostly industrial eastern half of Boulder, known as the East Boulder Subcommunity Plan. 

In a city practically surrounded by open space off limits to new housing, the East Boulder plan is the latest opportunity to make a meaningful step toward addressing Boulder’s longstanding housing crisis. The most recent version of the plan seeks to redevelop the area east of Foothills Parkway and allow for about 5,000 new homes and apartments, according to estimates. 

But as city staff were putting the final touches on the plan, which has been in the works since 2019, the Boulder City Council effectively nixed 180 potential housing units from it by changing zoning regulations on a block just north of Western Ave. 

The change came at the request of CordenPharma, an international pharmaceutical company with two drug manufacturing plants just across the train tracks from the block previously set aside for mixed-use housing, according to the company and several councilmembers interviewed for this story. The company makes active ingredients in many over-the-counter drugs. 

On May 3, Job Dreiling, the company’s director of production support and project engineering, wrote a letter to city councilmembers that said adding housing near its 24-hour facility could lead to conflict with future residents due to truck traffic, lights and an overhead paging system. 

In an interview with the Boulder Reporting Lab, Dreiling said the company has been ramping up its operations, in part because it is making an ingredient in the Covid-19 vaccine. He said he does not want complaints or lawsuits from neighbors to slow that down.

“At the end of the day, we would have to address any issues that came up. We make life-saving medicines here. If it became that we had to slow or stop something — we just want to make sure we can keep going. We just want to be a good neighbor,” he said.

The change to the plan highlights the thorny challenges of building housing in a mostly industrial area that is occupied by major businesses, including Ball Aerospace, a manufacturer of spacecraft parts and military weapons. Concerns have also been expressed about allowing more housing near the Boulder Municipal Airport, which is located in the northern section of the subcommunity. (Residents in the Rock Creek neighborhood of Superior are suing Jefferson County over airport noise.) 

The question of whether to keep the block near the pharmaceutical manufacturing plant open to housing development stoked a debate extending into the early hours of the morning during Tuesday’s council meeting. The conversation pitted the desire to address the city’s lack of affordable housing and rising homelessness against environmental justice concerns.

Wildfire is among the biggest risks to Boulder’s water supply. How is the city protecting its streams, creeks and reservoirs?

After a wildfire’s smoke dies down and its flames reduce to smoldering embers, most of Boulder’s residents turn their attention away from the singed foothills and return to the banalities of everyday life.

But for Kate Dunlap, water quality project manager for the City of Boulder, the aftermath of a fire means putting in place a multi-tiered approach to protect the city’s water sources.

“I work on implementing projects and policies specifically designed to protect the city’s water supply,” Dunlap said. “And wildfire, being one of the top risks to the water supply, is a significant portion of my job.”

In arid climates like Boulder’s, fire plays a pivotal role in the decomposition process. Nitrogen, sulfur, phosphorus and carbon are released from burned flora as a gift to future generations. But that gift can’t be enjoyed if rain washes it from the landscape. Indeed, when moved from its place of origin, remnants of fire quickly become a bane to those downstream.

When fires burn hot enough, especially from a buildup of fuels on the forest floor, the soil underneath effectively cooks. This causes a condition called hydrophobicity: when soils repel water for several weeks to several years. Combine that repulsion with a lack of vegetative matter to absorb moisture (as fire tends to burn all pine needles, leaves and shrubbery) and there is a drastic reduction in the amount of water retained by the landscape. 

Now enter a violent, wet Colorado thunderstorm, and ash and sediment are sent trundling away towards streams, rivers and reservoirs — some of which provide Boulder its drinking water.

What will Boulder’s new designation as a ‘Lifelong City’ mean for its growing population of older residents?

There are plenty of reasons to live out your post-retirement years in Boulder: open space to keep active, volunteer opportunities to stay engaged with the community, and a growing cohort of older residents, to name just a few. But those reasons could multiply over the coming years if plans intended to make Boulder a “Colorado Lifelong City” become reality.

The city recently earned the designation from Gov. Jared Polis’ office as part of a statewide initiative dubbed Lifelong Colorado, which aims to ensure all Coloradoans, of any age, can live and participate in their communities as long as possible.

Longmont, Lyons and Broomfield also were among the 37 Colorado cities and counties acknowledged.

“The goal of a Lifelong City is that regardless of whether a community member chooses to live here lifelong or moves here later, our services will support the entire lifespan,” said Eden Bailey, manager of Older Adult Services, who spearheaded the project. “We want Boulder to be as comfortable and accessible for an 80-year-old as an 8-year-old.”

Boulder’s designation, which was recognized recently as part of a city council proclamation of May as Older Americans Month, capped two years of planning. The effort was led by the Housing and Human Services Department and involved more than 10 city departments.

Recommendations cover four areas: mobility and access, housing, community living and support services.