City Clerk rejects petitions opposing Jeffco Health campus rezoning

Jefferson County Health campus is the focus of a rezoning battle.

LAKEWOOD – Neighbors of the Jeffco Health Department campus this week lost another round in their fight against a controversial rezoning plan when City Clerk Margy Greer rejected their petitions challenging City Council’s decision to allow commercial development of the site.

Greer said the petitions fell to a double whammy: One of the petitioner’s cannot prove he is a registered Lakewood voter and there apparently are too few valid signatures to force City Council’s hand.

The City Charter allows citizens to petition to overturn a City Council decision. If the petitions are declared valid by the City Clerk, Council can either accept the terms of the petitioners – in this case overturning the zoning decision – or send it to a citywide vote.

Organizers of the petition drive earlier this month submitted petitions with nearly 3,000 signatures seeking to overturn decision to rezone the nearly 18-acre property to accommodate commercial and retail development.

Council in late April voted 7-3 to rezone the parcel, despite concerns from nearby residents that the plan – which would allow up to 150,000 square feet of retail space on the parcel – is too vague to ensure their quiet, rural neighborhoods would remain safe and secure.

Greer said the disqualification of a co-petitioner is the primary reason she determined the petitions are not valid, but noted there also is a problem with the number of qualified signatures needed.

“We went ahead and checked them, just in case … and if we had gone to City Council, we would have deemed them insufficient,” Greer said.

The opponents of the rezoning plan submitted 2,975 signatures, more than 100 more than needed to meet the Charter provision’s requirement: 3 percent of Lakewood voters who cast votes in the last mayoral election.

“We show that they were 472 short of the 2,849 (valid signatures) required,” Greer said.

Cathy Kentner, who coordinated the petition drive, said her co-petitioner’s inability to prove he is a registered voter in the city “was unexpected.”

“We are going to appeal,” Kentner said Wednesday. “I don’t feel this is done yet.”

Kentner expected that the total number of valid signatures might be problem and had hoped to provide a significant cushion – 1,000 more signatures – before the mid-June deadline.

Kentner’s quiet Bonvue neighborhood is immediately east and north of the county-owned parcel and many of its residents turned out to oppose the rezoning during Council’s public hearing on the rezoning request.

The effort got off the ground only three weeks before the deadline and was cut short by two days because the actual deadline fell on Sunday and the city requires petitions be returned on the last day city offices are open before the deadline.

Had it not been for that quirk, Kentner said, the petitioners would have compiled a much larger cushion.

The county intends to find developers with potential tenants that would maximize the sales- and property-tax income potential of the high profile site at one of the city’s busiest intersections.

“Our focus is economic development,” when disposing of county properties, said County Commissioner McCasky.

Commissioners met in executive session June 15 to discuss negotiations for the site, but no vote was taken and no details of the discussion have been released.

The rezoning would permit supermarkets, gas stations, banks and financial institutions, fast food outlets, office buildings, convenience stores and low-power telecommunications facilities at the site.

The list of uses is lengthy because the county’s rezoning application was submitted without a definite buyer in mind, resulting in few specifics the neighborhood can rely on.

The nebulous nature of the parcel’s future worries residents who live near the site at West Alameda Ave. and Kipling Street, one of the city’s busiest intersections.