Denver City Council members in a committee meeting on Wednesday morning heard public comment, queried Denver Public Schools officials and pieced through information about a controversial land swap in southeast Denver before sending the matter forward for a vote of the entire council.
The committee voted 4-1 with one member abstaining to move the bill to the full council, which is expected to cast a final vote on the matter on April 1 after a one-hour public hearing.
The bill would approve the swap, giving DPS 11.5 acres of city-owned property to build a school in exchange for a 46,000-square-foot downtown school building that would become a domestic violence resource center.
The crux of the controversy is over the 11.5 acres of undeveloped city land north of Cherry Creek Reservoir. For six years the parcel had been designated a natural area, part of the Cherry Creek Trail. Formally called the Hampden Heights Open Space but also known as Hentzell Park, the piece of land is beloved by parks advocates who cried foul when Denver’s Parks and Recreation Manager Lauri Dannemmiller in January removed the designation in preparation of the swap.
“This is a bad decision and bad policy,” said Dave Felice, an opponent to the swap who spoke at the committee meeting. “This is administrative theft of public property. The city cannot give up rare and irreplaceable natural areas.”
“This land is valuable and it cannot be replaced,” said Kathleen Wells, who spoke in the committee on behalf of the Advocates for Denver’s Parks. “There are many social needs in this community, but looking to park land to address them is not a sound social policy.”
Other members of the public who spoke to the committee urged the council to approve the swap, saying southeast Denver needs a new elementary school and the city needs a center for domestic violence victims.
Bill McMullen, former board member of the Regional Transportation District, said southeast Denver continues to outgrow its school facilities.
“There are no grade schools in the area,” he said. “If this is built, all those children who live to the east of Havana will have a school where they can walk to.”
Morgan Skurky-Thomas, who lives near the property, said a school would help keep the neighborhood “vital and alive.”
With the land swap, Denver still must pay the school district a total of $705,000 for the building at 1330 Fox St. The city would pay $350,000 of that out of the general fund, and the additional $355,000 would come from a nonprofit. A nonprofit also said it will spend $6 million to rehabilitate the building for the domestic violence center.
Denver’s Board of Education will discuss the swap at its Monday work session and vote on the swap on March 21. The board should have a new member by then to replace Nate Easley Jr., who resigned earlier.
The district said it has money from the 2012 general obligation bond to build a $20 million elementary school that would accommodate 500 students. The school would be built and open by the 2015 school year, said David Suppes, DPS’s chief operating officer.
Under the terms of the swap, the property only could be used for educational purposes for 40 years. It also would have sporting fields, playgrounds and access to open space for outdoor learning, said Kelly Leid, development services director for Denver.
The swap is occurring as the parks department is designating additional parks and open space around the city, including 5 acres of natural area in Montbello and 24 acres of a natural area in Globeville. Councilwoman Peggy Lehmann is sponsoring a bill that would convert the remaining 15 acres of undesignated acreage of Hentzell Park into parkland, which would make it more difficult to develop in the future.
The council, however, was concerned about the process and how the public was notified about the land swap. Councilwoman Robin Kniech abstained from voting to move the matter out of committee, and Councilwoman Debbie Ortega voted against moving it out of committee because she wanted answers to some specific questions about the swap. Voting for it in committee were Charlie Brown, Lehmann, Jeanne Faatz and Chris Herndon.
The discussion now moves to Tuesday’s Mayor Council meeting and will be introduced on first reading on March 26.