Councilman Rafael Espinoza won his spot as District 1’s representative during the 2015 election, running as a foil to the expansion and controversial growth in the area. That message enabled him to ride a wave of disenchantment with the area’s incumbent councilwoman.

Espinoza’s victory over Susan Shepherd was a rarity in Denver politics: a sitting council member losing to a challenger. The last time it had happened was in 1987. What’s even more strange about the win is Espinoza said he had no real political aspirations before he threw his hat in the ring in 2014.

A resident of Jefferson Park in northwest Denver, Espinoza was encouraged to run in the 2015 elections by activists in the area who wanted to see restraints put on development in the district. He said his background in architecture and design, along with his work with the Northeast Denver Housing Center organization, has served him well since joining the Council.

“All the heavy lifting was being done by residents and members of the community. I was really recruited by activists in northwest Denver and also city wide to consider a run. I said no for the better part of four months until a land-use issue came up on my block. I approached the councilwoman at the time to address the concerns, and all I got was the same response everyone else had been complaining about. So I realized it was time for a change. But even then, I still wasn’t thinking of running,” Espinoza said. “It wasn’t something that I sought to do but it was something I was willing to do because I had already been an activist in my neighborhood.”

A year into his run on City Council and Espinoza said he’s seen how hard it is to effect change on a large council of 13 members and in a mayor-centric government organization. But that hasn’t stopped him from making his presence known on council, especially during land use cases. In certain cases, he has loudly objected to approving rezone measures, questioning his colleagues on the Council and grilling unsuspecting developers.

“When you have representatives of a third of the city or a half of the city say yes we need to make this change, you’d expect the administration to say well that’s something we should spend time exploring rather than being tone deaf. Really the frustration is of how weak the council is in a mayor/council government,” Espinoza said. “It’s a double whammy of being in that minority position and then dealing with my colleagues that don’t have the same concerns and aren’t as invested in other parts of the city.”

Espinoza’s passion for changing how the city does development is evident the moment he starts talking about rezoning. He wants to see a more nuanced approach in how Denver develops that incorporates both the developers and the neighborhood’s ideas and wishes. As examples, he points to the experience of Jefferson Park and other neighborhoods across the city that have seen 100-year-old housing stock demolished for incongruous development that change the character of the area.

Too often projects that technically fit the zoning code but not the character of the neighborhood or the intent of the zoning is approved, Espinoza said.

“We need more design guidelines and standards that are cognizant of the different localities, not unlike what we just passed with Arapahoe Square,” Espinoza said, referring to the recent zoning changes passed by City Council. “If you get it right the first time you don’t have to fix it later on. It just works. And that’s not prescribed in our zoning code. It’s all well and good to have these forms. But if we’re not creating the forms that were intended but something else entirely, we should revisit the code so we’re actually meeting the intent.”

He said the city should do what it can to steer development to greenfield spaces instead of building incongruent housing projects in the middle of areas of stability. While some areas have design review of proposed projects, like downtown Denver and Cherry Creek North, that type of oversight isn’t available for every neighborhood.

“Developers when they work there, they know what they’re doing is going to be reviewed by somebody and critiqued on not just where it meets the code as a bureaucrat but as a design review committee,” Espinoza said. “Denver made a mistake when it adopted both the form-based code and remapped the entire city (in 2010.) We should have adopted the code and then mapped it on request for some period of time to vet out the nature of development that occur in these new zone districts. We could have learned from the process. Even if it would be a lot of rezoning cases, we still deal with a large amount of rezone requests now.”

Espinoza admits it can be frustrating being on the losing end in battles over rezoning. But Espinoza said he is heartened by the successes he’s had in working with developers seeking a demolition permit to tear down an existing structure to instead save the structure and in turn the design and look of the neighborhood.

“I was doing this sort of work voluntarily in my free time (before I joined council) because I worked harder for pray than I was working for pay,” Espinoza said. “Now I get to do that full time. And while it seems like a struggle because I’m working on a whole bunch more issues than I was working on when I was just in Jefferson Park, we are able to accomplish things even with the limitations of the position. I just wish we could move the needle more than we are.”

When not serving on council, Espinoza said he and his wife take part in the typical outdoor Colorad0 activities. And since 2008, he and his wife’s greenthumbs have been on display in their home in Jefferson Park. The two have created a massive garden along the 3,200 feet of public right of way attached to his property.

“My neighbors call it the Jefferson Park Botanical Gardens,” Espinoza laughed. “That’s my new pastime. As an architect, and now as a gardener, I have a newfound respect for landscape architects. When I chose a palette for a building, that’s what it will be like moving forward. Same brick color, same wood color. But landscape architects have to work with the seasons and different blooming times. It’s impressive.”