Council rejects controversial rezoning plan
Opponents of a controversial rezoning plan pack Council chambers.
LAKEWOOD – A coalition of neighbors used a unique tactic to protect their neighborhood this week, challenging city staff’s attempts to justify plans for a restaurant in the far northwest part of the city.
But, in the end, it was the coalition’s passionate defense of their neighborhood’s rural character that swayed city council to reject a rezoning to accommodate a new Tafolino’s restaurant at West 20th Avenue and Youngfield Street.
City Council’s 6-5 vote ended Juan and Josephine Tafoya’s plan to build to a 7,200 square-foot restaurant on a vacant 1.73-acre site at 2100 Youngfield. The vote came in the wee hours of Tuesday morning after a seven-hour hearing.
The Tafoyas now operate two Tafolino’s Mexican restaurants just across Youngfield from the proposed site and had hoped to consolidate both under a single roof on the other side of the street.
But that site is adjacent to five homes in a rural Lakewood neighborhood.
For hours, the Tafoyas’ plans to expand their thriving restaurant business came up against a coalition from the adjacent Lakewood neighborhood and their close neighbors across Youngfield in unincorporated Jefferson County .
The neighbors raised concerns – and questioned staff claims – about such issues as traffic, drainage, light and noise pollution, property values and compatibility with surrounding land uses.
“I come to you as a brand new member of the Applewood district. We decided, after looking at literally a hundred houses, that the house on Myrtlewood Lane is where we would spend the rest of our lives,” Kristen Borland told Council. “I don’t want an access to a restaurant on the street where my kids are going to play.”
Borland’s love for her neighborhood was echoed by a number of others, some of whom have lived in the Applewood area for 40 years.
“”The key issue here is maintaining a livable, viable neighborhood,” said. Sam Guyton. “That’s what we are about.”
The coalition challenged city’s staff’s “findings of facts”, which were adopted by the city’s Planning Commission in early January. They also compiled their own findings about the issues in question.
Not surprisingly, their conclusions ran contrary to those from City Hall staff.
The group turned to a seldom-used city ordinance that allows citizens to challenge staff’s findings, which are adopted by the Planning Commission as part of a recommendation for City Council approval of rezoning cases.
If successful in convincing City Council that staff’s findings were flawed, the case would have been returned to the Planning Commission for reconsideration.
But Council, which rarely questions staff’s findings, refused to do so in this case after struggling to compile a motion that would agree with staff, but reject the Tafoyas’ plan.
Instead, they turned a motion to deny the rezoning based on a requirement that such developments must contribute to “the health, safety and welfare” of Lakewood citizens and be compatible with surrounding land uses.
Councilman Ed Peterson, one of six council members to vote against the rezoning request said the Tafoya’s plan is a “good project, but in the wrong location.”
“Respect for existing communities and neighborhoods is embedded” in the city’s review process, Peterson said. “We have to respect the wishes of those who are affected by private development.”
Council’s 6-5 vote belayed the need for a super-majority vote of eight for approval, which was required after the neighbors filed a petition signed by adjacent property owners. The petition invoked a “legal protest” under Lakewood’s City Charter, forcing Council to muster a super-majority vote.
The super-majority tactic has been successful in a number of recent cases, including a proposed Sam’s Club in southeast Lakewood’s Ward 5 and a mammoth apartment building on West Alameda Avenue between Garrison and Kipling streets in Ward 3.
Mayor Bob Murphy, Ward 3 Councilwoman Sue King, Ward 4 Councilman Adam Paul, Ward 5 Councilwoman Diana Allen and Ward 2 Councilwoman Cindy Barroway voted to approve the Tafoya’s plan.
Murphy, who has voted for each of the projects that have failed the super-majority test, said the Youngfield corridor is an issue Lakewood inherited from the county when the collector street became he dividing line between unincorporated Jeffco and the city.
“We are an evolving community,” Murphy said.
