A proposed downtown Colorado Springs apartment building that will be 27 stories and more than 300 feet tall moved one step closer to construction with an approval vote Tuesday morning. 

The Downtown Review Board unanimously voted 8-0 to approve the development plan for One VeLa apartment complex, which would become the tallest building in Colorado Springs. It would be built on the block at the northeast corner of West Costilla Street and Sahwatch Street.

The proposed apartment building will include 400 units of housing, a parking garage with more than 400 spaces and 8,000 square feet of retail space on the ground floor. The building would be between 50 and 68 feet taller than the Wells Fargo Tower, depending on how the elevation difference between the blocks and the slight grade of the One VeLa site are measured. 

Urban Planning Manager Ryan Tefertiller said the city received dozens of emails opposing the project in the 48 hours before the meeting. The concerns, largely submitted in identical forms and echoed in public comments made Tuesday, were that the city was letting developers ruin the views of Pikes Peak and the Rocky Mountains over local concerns. 

“We believe that our skyline is a core community value. We have been vocalizing that for a long period of time,” said Dianne Bridges, from the Historic Neighborhoods Association. 

The building is being designed and planned by the local private equity firm The O’Neil Group and Kansas City-based Vela Development, who have built three similar apartment high-rises in Kansas City, Mo., and St. Louis. 

Board Chair David Lord said he had been involved with the discussions in 2008 to enact the special form-based requirements for buildings downtown, which led to the creation of the Review Board. 

Lord stood by the decision at the time to not set a height limit for 0.4 square miles of the downtown core, which is where One Vela would be built. Lord said the proposal met all the form-based code requirements that are unique to downtown and are covered by the development plan. 

“That is really our job to evaluate the project against the current criteria. Down the road there will be opportunities for form-based code to be updated,” Lord said. 

Max Kronstadt was the most skeptical board member about the value of the project for the city. Kronstadt questioned why city staff and the Urban Renewal Authority had not gone further to ensure this building and other projects downtown offered a significant number of low-income units.

One VeLa will have 40 units reserved for residents making up to 100% of the area’s median income, which Kronstadt said could still equate to rents around $1,700 per month for a studio apartment.

“I just think it’s really unfortunate that as a city, we don’t use the levers that we have, which are primarily urban renewal and land use review, to try and win meaning benefits from developers who are ultimately going to make a lot of money,” Kronstadt said.

Bridges, Integrity Matters and other residents have urged the City Council to offer a ballot measure or broader public debate about setting building height limits for the area. The council discussed changing the building height caps in June but never moved to place it on the ballot.

Board member Sam Friesema said he had attempted to use 3-D modeling in Google Earth to see if the new building blocked views of Pikes Peak from the nearby Hillside neighborhood. Friesema said he could not find any views that were completely blocked outside of downtown.

The review board received comments in favor of the project from the Pikes Peak Housing Network and the Downtown Partnership, both of which said it was important to build more housing density in downtown Colorado Springs.

Dana Duggan, lead spokesperson for Integrity Matters, has repeatedly said she planned to appeal the decision if the development plan was approved. An appeal would need to be filed with the city within 10 days and would be heard by the City Council at one of its March meetings.

One argument made to the review board against the project was that any decision should be delayed because of a lawsuit Integrity Matters filed at the beginning of January.

The group sued Colorado Springs in 4th Judicial District Court seeking to overturn the urban renewal district the City Council approved for the site in December. The urban renewal designation provided the developers with around $12 million in tax-increment financing from the city to reimburse part of the estimated $200 million construction cost.

The lawsuit claimed the property did not actually meet enough of the standards to be considered blighted under the state urban renewal law. According to the lawsuit, The O’Neil Group had created the blight by not improving or occupying the buildings since it bought the land in 2021 and the city had not done its due diligence to independently confirm if the property qualified.

“Producing blight in order to be financially rewarded by the anti-blight statute renders the Urban Renewal Statute itself nonsensical,” the lawsuit states.

The suit also said that council members who received campaign contributions from The O’Neil Group should have recused themselves to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest. Similar complaints were made last year in relation to a proposed apartment complex on Garden of the Gods Road.

The lawsuit asks the court to reverse the urban renewal distinction and block any public funds from being used for the project. City spokeswoman Vanessa Zink said Colorado Springs could not comment on a pending lawsuit.