June 2004

Planning

Copyright by American Planning Association

They're Bolder in Boulder

How one Colorado city converted the site of an old drive-in movie theater to a mixed-use neighborhood.

By Cindy Brown

Three families in Boulder, Colorado, made history when they bought the first units in the Wild Sage Co-housing project in the city's Holiday Neighborhood.

Their homes are the result of the first collaboration ever undertaken by Habitat for Humanity and a co-housing community.

This summer a coffee shop will open, then a gourmet pizza place, an eco-friendly dry cleaner, health club, and salon. These shops will form the front door to the new neighborhood at the north end of Broadway, a main artery through Boulder. By fall, artists will begin to move in to the Studio Mews, a live/work community along a pedestrian walkway.

All of this activity centers around a two-acre park — the living room of the site. The pedestrian walkway links the park, the Studio Mews, a community garden, and the historic "Holiday Twin Screen" movie marquee that is left over from the days when the site held a drive-in movie theater. More than 40 percent of the homes here will be affordable to low- and moderate-income families. The best designers and builders in Boulder have helped to make this place a reality.

Putting it all together

The Holiday Neighborhood is the result of an innovative partnership between Boulder Housing Partners (BHP) — the local housing authority — and seven private developers, including both for profit and nonprofit companies. What makes this project unusual is that a public entity acted as land developer and sold finished lots to the private developers, who are building the residential and commercial buildings.

Projects undertaken by BHP must meet a triple bottom line by accomplishing social, financial, and environmental goals. To meet its social goal of providing a high level of affordability at the site, BHP discounted the land sales to its development partners. The organization held land for the park and gardens, and dedicated a 70-foot corridor to the city for a noise buffer and bike path along a busy highway.

The project's social and financial goals complement each other. One financial goal was to generate a surplus in the land development phase. This surplus has been invested in 56 units that BHP will "buy back" from the developer partners and hold for rent to people of low income.

It has taken more than seven years to get the project fully under way, but it almost was nipped in the bud. When negotiations for the 27-acre site began in 1996, several members of the real estate community opposed the deal, because they didn't think the public sector should be involved in development.

A special place

Boulder is a city of about 103,000 people, located just east of the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. The community has a history of growth management, beginning with the 1976 "Danish Plan" to limit residential growth to two percent or less each year. Through the Boulder Valley Comprehensive Plan, the city and county agree to direct urban growth into the city.

Extensive open space acquisitions and citywide parks create a livable community. However, the unintended consequence of these policies has been to limit land supply and drive up the price of land and housing. The current median price of a single-family house in Boulder is $450,000.

Recognizing the problem, the city has made affordable housing a priority. Its current goal is to make 10 percent of all of the housing stock in Boulder permanently affordable to people earning 60 percent of the area median income or less. The city has an affordable housing trust fund, known as the CHAP — Community Housing Assistance Program. Funds from property taxes and a tax on new development generate about $1 million annually; the money is awarded competitively to private and public sector applicants.

The affordable housing priority and CHAP fund were critical components in creating the Holiday Neighborhood project.

How it came about

When it opened in 1969, the Holiday Twin Screen Drive-In Theater prompted its proud manager to call it "the finest drive-in in the USA." The first movie shown there was "Easy Rider." The drive-in closed in 1989.

In 1990, the drive-in, along with many parcels in north Boulder, was annexed to the city. The owners negotiated the right to build a 120,000-square-foot big box warehouse on the site. They signed a letter of intent with a retailer and entered the city planning approval process. At about the same time, the city was undertaking a sub-community planning process for north Boulder. What resulted was a vision not for a big box development but for a fully integrated mixed-use, mixed-income area with a new urbanist character, which has been the development pattern for much of Boulder.

The city set out to acquire the land. This was a radical planning tool, atypical for Boulder. Some members of the real estate community began a campaign to stop the process. But in 1997, the council held firm and authorized the city's purchase of the land, even providing a grant of $1 million and allowing the use of city reserves to back an interim loan for the land purchase.

After a long series of negotiations, the city bought the land in March 1997. Realizing it should not be a developer, due to the potential for conflict of interest in the regulatory review, the city sold the land to Boulder Housing Partners in 1998.

Public entity as land developer

BHP is a pubic entity, but it is separate from the city. In Colorado, housing authorities are established by state charter. They can condemn property, issue debt, and develop, own, and manage property. In Boulder, BHP owns and manages more than 1,500 units scattered throughout the city; BHP is the largest landlord in Boulder.

Although many housing authorities across the country are developing housing, few have BHP's history. Foreseeing the reduction of federal funding in the early 1980s, the organization developed an apartment complex consisting of 80 percent market rate units and 20 percent affordable units, partly for cash flow.

BHP also undertook one of the first low-income housing tax credit projects in the nation, begun soon after the passage of the federal tax credit legislation in 1986. The organization was working on other development at this time, including 75 rental units in a mix of affordable and market-rate units.

After buying the land at the Holiday site, BHP entered the city's planning approval process. The first step was the concept plan. Barrett Studio Architects was selected as the master site designer, and the public process began. The first meeting, a kick-off barbeque, was held in a tent on the site in 1998. People toured the site and answered questions such as these: What would you like to celebrate about the site? What would make the project a success?

A concept plan came together very quickly and was presented to the planning board in 1999. The board supported the plan, but there was a problem. The concept plan called for 20 housing units per acre, twice the density specified in the North Boulder Sub-community Plan. In the end, a special ordinance was adopted that created a density bonus, but it took the entire year of 2000 to write and adopt the ordinance. Still to come were the site review and technical document, which took until the end of 2002.

After months of scheduling and canceling, a ground breaking ceremony was held on the site on a snowy day in December 2002, appropriate to ground breaking for the "Holiday" neighborhood.

What will be there

When completed, the Holiday Neighborhood will include 333 homes, 138 of them affordable, with 56 affordable units for rent and 82 for sale. Thirty-four units will be part of the Wild Sage Co-housing development. The average price of the affordable units will be $94,000 to $170,000. Market-rate units will sell for an average of $216,000 to $460,000.

A sub-team of the developer group created the "Holiday Neighborhood" identity. Each part of the project has its own name, too. There is Northern Lights at the Holiday Neighborhood — 14 duplex homes — all affordable. There is Garden Crossing, Northcourt, Parkview, Main Street North, and Northstar Place, each a mix of affordable and market-rate housing in a variety of housing types.

There will be 50,000 square feet of non-residential uses, including a coffee shop and pizza place, artists' studios, fitness center, and architects' offices. According to the open space document for the site, "The overall plan of the neighborhood was structured as a series of pedestrian spaces, paths, and outdoor environments that create public living rooms and passageways."

The pedestrian walkway links the park to the Studio Mews and the Community Gardens and restored Holiday Drive-in Marquee. A small grant funded a public art installation of four-foot-tall, stainless steel movie reel sculptures where pedestrians cross Holiday Drive into Holiday Park. The site is linked to the city by a bike path and frequent transit service.

At 27 acres, this was a large site for Boulder — and one that could be developed as an urban neighborhood in an area dominated by suburban growth patterns. Many drive-in theater sites along Colorado's Front Range are being redeveloped now, but most are typical subdivisions without any nod to the past.

Outcomes and lessons

Among the lessons learned is that to accomplish community goals, the project leader must be dedicated to the public good. BHP was willing to take a lower financial return on the project and charge a lower development fee than most in the private sector would do. BHP ensured that a park was included in the development, that there was double the amount of affordable housing that would have been produced by a private developer alone, and that the project provided an appropriate gateway to the north edge of town.

As a public entity, BHP believed in the public process and structured it to be truly inclusive. The site plan evolved during the public process, rather than being developed before the process and then defended against public outcry. In a town famous for its public debate and high level of public participation and opposition, there was virtually no opposition to this project.

In addition, many of the neighbors had participated in the sub-community plan and were relieved to have a mixed-use plan, rather than a big box, as a neighbor.

Another lesson is that partners should be chosen for their expertise. Realizing that it lacked expertise with market-rate single-family housing, BHP chose a developer that was highly qualified in that regard. The commercial section of the project is being built by a developer with a strong record in mixed-use projects. And the sweat equity elements of the project, in which families that will own the homes contribute 350 to 450 hours of their time to building those homes, were led by Habitat for Humanity and a local nonprofit, the Affordable Housing Alliance.

We also learned that new urbanism can work. People want to walk to their favorite coffee shop and catch transit to their jobs. And with cars tucked away in the alleys, there is room for front porches, where people can interact with their neighbors and keep an eye on the street.

Already those living nearby have their favorite run or walk through the neighborhood, and that changes constantly as new buildings go up. Pre-sales are between 62 percent and 97 percent, astounding appraisers and others in the real estate community. The same brokers who opposed the project are now asking to be part of a team that will build a house for a low-income family in a new development adjacent to Holiday.

A final lesson: In development, everything takes longer and costs more than you think. The BHP team loves to look back on the early schedule that showed a project time line between 1997 and 2001. At the time, 2001 seemed so far in the future it is was laughable. Good thing the team didn't know the real time line.

The future at Holiday

There will be construction here for a while to come, and the park will be slow to develop due to tight budgets at the city parks department. But in the meantime, Boulder Outdoor Cinema is at work on a scheme to show outdoor movies. Instead of pulling up in your car, you'll be able to pull up a blanket and watch a movie outside on a summer night. And a weekly farmers market is planned for 13th Street, along with an artists market.

Architect David Barrett had this to say about Holiday Neighborhood at the ground breaking: "This is a monumental excavation. Out of this dig will come a magnificent 21st century settlement ... the transition from a landscape dedicated to the internal combustion engine, into a true neighborhood ... a place for life."

Cindy Brown is co-executive director for development at Boulder Housing Partners.

Resources

Contacts: Cindy Brown or Willa Johnson at Boulder Housing Partners, 720-564-4610; www.boulderhousing.org and www.holidayneighborhood.com.

View from the Project Manager

By Cindy Brown

I've had the privilege and the aggravation of working on the Holiday Neighborhood project since 1996. I was with the city of Boulder and part of the original team charged with acquiring the land by former city manager Tim Honey.

My new office is next to the Holiday site, and I walk on the site almost every day. Some days I see contractors dumping concrete where they shouldn't and building foundations on land they don't own yet and a variety of other problems that require multiple phone calls upon my return to the office. But most days, I just look on in amazement as the buildings barrel out of the ground at an astounding rate.

Sometimes I wonder if it is still1996 and I'm in some public hearing induced hysteria and only imagine that I am walking on the site under construction, dreaming of a future that will never happen. But then I arrive at the edge of the two-acre park and know it is real. It's raw and dirty and everything is under construction, but you can begin to see what architect George Watt calls the "good bones" of the development — the elements that will provide structure for the beautiful buildings and landscape that is still to come.

Crucial to the success of the project were people willing to think big: a city manager who said, "Do it ," and a board of commissioners willing to take a risk to meet public goals. My small organization fronted hundreds of thousands of dollars, as did the city of Boulder through its affordable housing trust fund, to keep the project running and pay debt on land during the long development process.

For me, it is all about trade-offs; about balancing poetry with pro forma. There is a lot of poetry at the site, between the live/work studios, the park, the art, the historic sign, and the vision of movies in the park and farmers at a street market. All that poetry had to be paid for somehow.

The trade-offs are always difficult in any development, but here they were sometimes heart breaking. More right-of-way property dedicated to the city meant a smaller park. Innovative water quality treatments and the need to drain the site impacted the size and usability of the park. The community garden shrunk as the developers used more land on each side to squeeze in one more affordable unit. We had to earn enough money to cover our costs and buy back units from the developers in order to hold them for rent to people of very low income.

We set guiding principles at the beginning of the process that reminded us to focus on variety and diversity of housing type and richness of architecture, serving the community and creating an environmentally sustainable community — all good goals, but sometimes in conflict. Only time will tell if the decisions were the right ones.