An apartment complex under construction at 2141 S. Broadway in Denver in 2021. (BusinessDen file)
Denver intends to push back a final deadline determining which developments are exempt from new regulations into next year.
Currently, projects seeking to be grandfathered in from the “Expanding Housing Affordability” ordinance, which went into effect in July 2022, must receive at least their third round of site development plan comments by May 17. If that deadline is met, they have until the end of August to get their plans fully approved.
At a Denver City Council committee meeting on Tuesday, Mayor Mike Johnston’s administration will propose pushing the date by which final approval must be received by nearly eight months, to April 18, 2025. The council will ultimately have to approve the change.
The new EHA regulations require those constructing residential buildings in the city to incorporate a varying number of income-restricted units, or to pay a fee of $250,000 or more for each missing unit. Developers building a non-residential project, such as a warehouse or office building, must pay an increased linkage fee.
The aforementioned deadline pertains to projects for which developers submitted a concept plan, a precursor to the more detailed site-development plan, by June 30, 2022 — one day before the new rules went into effect.
This would be the second extension to the final deadline, which was originally Aug. 31, 2023. The council voted 12-1 in May 2023 to push the deadline back a year.
The initial deadline push acknowledged a critical fact. Whether a project’s plans are approved by a certain date is not necessarily in a developer’s control — it also depends on how fast city staffers review plans. And review times slowed when the city was flooded with hundreds of development proposals leading up to June 2022.
Emily Collins, administrator of the Expanding Housing Affordability program, wrote in a memo to council members this week that another extension “is the fair response to a difficult situation that is impacting customers through no fault of their own.”
“While we continue to see improvements in city review time, there are still areas of the city that due to a great influx of submittals are taking more time to provide comments,” Collins wrote.
A final vote on the extension could take place May 13, per city documents.
An apartment complex under construction at 2141 S. Broadway in Denver in 2021. (BusinessDen file)
Denver intends to push back a final deadline determining which developments are exempt from new regulations into next year.
Currently, projects seeking to be grandfathered in from the “Expanding Housing Affordability” ordinance, which went into effect in July 2022, must receive at least their third round of site development plan comments by May 17. If that deadline is met, they have until the end of August to get their plans fully approved.
At a Denver City Council committee meeting on Tuesday, Mayor Mike Johnston’s administration will propose pushing the date by which final approval must be received by nearly eight months, to April 18, 2025. The council will ultimately have to approve the change.
The new EHA regulations require those constructing residential buildings in the city to incorporate a varying number of income-restricted units, or to pay a fee of $250,000 or more for each missing unit. Developers building a non-residential project, such as a warehouse or office building, must pay an increased linkage fee.
The aforementioned deadline pertains to projects for which developers submitted a concept plan, a precursor to the more detailed site-development plan, by June 30, 2022 — one day before the new rules went into effect.
This would be the second extension to the final deadline, which was originally Aug. 31, 2023. The council voted 12-1 in May 2023 to push the deadline back a year.
The initial deadline push acknowledged a critical fact. Whether a project’s plans are approved by a certain date is not necessarily in a developer’s control — it also depends on how fast city staffers review plans. And review times slowed when the city was flooded with hundreds of development proposals leading up to June 2022.
Emily Collins, administrator of the Expanding Housing Affordability program, wrote in a memo to council members this week that another extension “is the fair response to a difficult situation that is impacting customers through no fault of their own.”
“While we continue to see improvements in city review time, there are still areas of the city that due to a great influx of submittals are taking more time to provide comments,” Collins wrote.
A final vote on the extension could take place May 13, per city documents.
