Denver City Council’s approval of new zoning guidelines for the Arapahoe Square Neighborhood could substantially alter the view of the downtown skyline, along with possibly putting a dent in the city’s struggle to provide affordable housing.

City council voted in June to create new zoning guidelines along with a design review system for the Arapahoe Square Neighborhood, which is roughly 100 acres in the area bound by Park Avenue, 20th Street, the alley between Lawrence and Larimer streets and the alley between Welton and Glenarm streets. The new zoning is formed-based and is the first rezone in downtown Denver that moves the code away from specifics such as ratios for floor plans and instead focuses on uses and design standards.

While the existing uses, including those that allow nonprofits such as the Denver Rescue Mission to work in the area, were grandfathered in, the new system will help promote density and multi-use development, said Abe Barge, senior city planner.

“The new zoning encourages a variety of development and building forms. It’s not a one size fit all approach. It has different development paths based on incentives,” Barge said. “As a developer, you can get taller and taller depending on what you’re providing as far as on street vitality and design. One thing it will do is produce a wide variety of development in the neighborhood. You’ll see a combination of smaller ones and basic buildings while others will be bigger. The new zoning also makes it a little bit easier to reuse existing buildings because the parking requirements are so flexible for one thing.”

Barge said the city will incentivize developers with allowances for higher buildings based on designs, including buildings that incorporate point towers. The point towers are slender towers that have significantly less visual impact and allows more sunlight to hit street level than a traditional high rise.

Another change: designs for new developments will go through a design-review committee as opposed to a city planning process. The Arapahoe Square Design Advisory Board, which will be comprised of design professionals, property owners and residents appointed by the mayor, will replace the current city staff lead review process.

Councilman Albus Brooks, District 9, was intimately involved in the 18-month stakeholder process that developed the new zoning regulations. He said the consensus that the group was able to get from a varied group of participants speaks to the desire of the neighborhood to see it revitalized.

“To me, and I think many people would agree, this is a model for success for small area plans. If you look at the city and where there are single family homes and high density zone districts, they’re constantly in contention. But this 18-month process was wonderful for its collaboration and consensus building through neighbors and stakeholders,” Brooks said.

While affordable housing was not specifically addressed, Denver is in the process of creating a city-wide plan to increase affordable housing. Barge said the design incentives will help create the space for affordable housing to develop in the area. He pointed to the new zoning that requires few parking spaces as a way for developers to cut costs and develop less expensive products.

“We were really conscious about housing affordability and wanted to make sure nothing we were doing was getting in way of production of market affordable housing,” Barge said. “One thing we heard from a developer working on project in the area was eliminating the minimum parking requirements, which is consistent with the rest of the downtown core, could help certain kinds of housing projects on smaller lots.”