Greetings Neighbors:

Please join the Cherry Creek East Association for a community meeting (by Zoom) taking place next Tuesday, June 2nd from 5: 30 to 7 pm. All Cherry Creek East residents are welcome to join but must register in advance. Login information will be provided when you register.

Broe Development Group is proposing to expand their property at Steele Street, between Bayaud and Ellsworth. Specifically, they want to build two towers over their existing underground parking lots, which would give them three buildings in total along Steele.

Their proposal is to make the two new buildings twelve, rather than eight, stories, which would require a zoning variance. That is not particularly unusual in the area. There are a number of equally tall or taller buildings around them. Also, the Cherry Creek Master Plan and the Denver Moves Plan both envision twelve stories for these properties.

Broe brought the proposal to CCEA about a year ago. Since then we have held a community meeting to allow Broe to address the community and formed a negotiations team to see what concessions they would offer the community for our support. (Just to make it clear, CCEA doesn’t make decisions on zoning variances but the City Council will ask for the Board’s opinion on a major proposal like this.)

The negotiations team, led by Bill Tanner, Bill Allen, Brooks Waldman, Joe Larkin and advised by Dick Farley, have worked with Broe to secure a number of  concessions that we believe will benefit the community. They include:

1. A 25% reduction in building mass, which means the buildings are similar in internal size to eight story buildings which they have a right to build. They are also building in L shapes to allow more light through.
2. Six foot wide detached sidewalks including Steele Street to make it safer and more pleasant for pedestrians. Trees and greenery between sidewalk and streets as you will see.
3. A heated sidewalk or the like on Ellsworth to prevent ice buildups for pedestrians.
4. Five foot building setbacks in the areas of new construction to make the street scape more pleasant.
5. Lowering the current parking lot walls to 3-4 feet to make them less imposing.
6. Providing design enhancements at the third story level to enhance pedestrian and neighborhood scale. This may include facade articulation, balconies, and/or material changes to prevent the “straight up from the street” glass and steel tower/downtown aesthetic and to help mitigate cold downdrafts at street level.
7. Limits on residential unit sizing.
8. Improved landscaping.
9. A space available to CCEA for community meetings.
10. A parking, traffic and demand management study.
11. Good practices during construction

I want to thank the Broe Group for their willingness to collaborate with the negotiations team and the reasonableness they exhibited in these discussions. I also want to thank the negotiations team–Bill, Bill, Brooks, Joe and Dick–for the many (perhaps hundreds) hours they put into this project, all on a volunteer basis.

The meeting will include presentations by Broe on the proposed project, along with discussions by members of the negotiations team. We will take questions by email or chat either before or during the meeting. The meeting will be recorded and posted on our website for later access.

Please register by clicking on this link. You will also find it on our home page, www.cherrycreekeast.org.

After the meeting, the CCEA Board will survey our residents to gauge community feelings about the proposal. That survey, along with comments at the meeting and other interactions will be considered by the Board in making its final recommendation to City Council and the Planning Board. Cherry Creek East Residents also are free to express their opinions at public hearings or to our City Councilman, Chris Hinds.

Please join us at the meeting to hear the presentation and ask questions. You are welcome to attend even if you are not a CCEA members. We also ask that you participate in our survey which will be sent out after the meeting. It is a key way for us to hear from the community. .

Thanks from the CCEA Board

JT

John Tredennick

President, CCEA

303-810-1918