Countless people attended the Lakewood Planning Commission meeting Wednesday night in an effort to curb the site plan for an apartment building — a battle that has been fought by residents for years.

Ultimately, the planning commission approved Kairoi Properties, LLC’s site plan of an apartment complex at 777 S. Yarrow St. — right on the eastern border of Belmar Park — agreeing that it applied to zoning ordinances. 

At the location, just a few feet away from the green hills of the beloved city park, currently lies an empty office building and parking lot. The new market-rate apartment complex would demolish the existing building and replace it with a six-story apartment building with 411 units and 561 parking spaces, according to the planning commission’s staff report.

Residents have been disgruntled with the idea since it was first proposed in 2022, causing various delays in the potential construction. Around 60 people spoke during the hearing, taking up over four hours.

“Why is their voice so much louder than thousands of residents and park visitors who have fought this for over 18 months?” resident Celia Greenman asked the commissioners about the developer. 

Cathy Kentner, creator of the citizen-led Save Open Space Lakewood, helped start the Save Belmar Park group in 2023 after the introduction of the plans. The group’s concern involves the lack of buffer area between the new building and the 132-acre park. 

Currently, a stretch of free space and trees sits between the old office building and the park. In the construction plan, the apartment building would sit directly on the property line, demolishing 66 mature trees.

Save Belmar Park claims that the lack of buffer and construction would directly affect the over 245 bird species and other wildlife that call the park and center lake home, according to eBird.

“My concern about this particular development proposal is that the building is so close to the park,” Michael Pardo, an ecologist, told the planning commission Wednesday. “This particular development project would be a disaster for birds in Belmar Park.”

Pardo said the issues would be the loss of mature trees where animals breed, potential window collisions, light pollution disorienting birds, pet cats eating birds, the height of the building shading the park and noise pollution interfering with animal mating.

According to Brea Pafford, Lakewood Principal Planner, the city has looked at saving as many trees as possible when creating the plan, with arborists pinpointing trees that should be saved during the construction.

Alongside potential issues in the park, citizens raised questions about the parking near the building. 

South Yarrow Street is only around three blocks long and already gets jammed when spring and summer events are happening at Belmar Park, according to resident Tom Dearth. 

While the site plan has a parking garage in place, it’s only for residents of the apartment building. Visitors will have to park on the small street, with the only other nearby streets being main highways or shopping centers.

“The reality check is: it’s going to delay first responders. That is really scary,” Dearth said.

The site would adhere to the city’s comprehensive Envision Lakewood 2040 plan, though, according to Planning Commission Vice Chair Steven Buckley. 

Buckley added that the location would increase walkability, part of the plan, and would help stop sprawl into the actual parks by creating multiple residences in one building. It would also include on-site composting and recycling, another part of the plan.

“There’s a lot of stuff in our plan that supports a project like this in a place like this,” Buckley said. “The goal of this body is to see that those plan criteria are being met and to see that the zoning criteria are being met; they are.”

Save Belmar Park, along with residents, have fought hard to keep the potential damage from occurring, creating a public policy in 2023 that has halted the planning stages and led to an eventual lawsuit.

Under previous city rules, a developer in Lakewood that did not want to dedicate green space on their property to the city for parkland was able to pay a fee in lieu. Those fees were then used by the city for improvements in other parks and open spaces across Lakewood.

Save Open Space Lakewood and Save Belmar Park garnered over 6,000 signatures to place a new public policy on the 2023 ballot in a special election. The ordinance set to erase the in lieu charges and require anyone constructing new residential projects to devote a portion of their properties to parkland for use by the public.

This ordinance also includes all single-family homes, not just multi-family residential buildings. 

Lakewood City Council did not hold the special election, instead enacting the ordinance in 2024.

In a nearly six-hour long city council meeting Feb. 10 discussing how to go about the new law, Mayor Wendi Strom said the ordinance had held up 102 projects from single-family homes to townhomes and larger developments.

In return, Kairoi Properties filed a lawsuit against the city of Lakewood on Dec. 20 claiming that the ordinance was illegal according to a Colorado revised statute. Furthermore, the developer is only required to abide by the laws in effect at the time of the proposed plan, which was in 2022.

A Jefferson County judge granted a preliminary injunction in January, allowing the apartment project to proceed while the case continued.

The ordinance was eventually replaced on Feb. 24 when the city council unanimously approved a revised version of the ordinance. The new version exempts affordable housing and single-family homes from the dedication requirements and gives developers the option of dedicating land, paying a fee, improving existing land or a mix of the three. Residents also get to decide what parks the fee money is spent on.

Kairoi Properties plans to dedicate 8,600 square feet of parkland to the city, according to the site plan.

Sam Kasparek, co-founder of Kairoi Properties, told the planning committee that the complex was “thoughtfully designed” and will be a “strong edition to the community for years to come.”

Still, residents continued to fight, coming to a conclusion Wednesday night with over two hours of public comment and over 100 comments on the city’s website.

“Why not, for a change, be on the right side of history, and negotiate with the developer for a smaller less intrusive project that respects the integrity of the park?” Greenman asked.

Overall, the commissioners agreed that the building does, in fact, comply with zoning ordinances and applicable standards. 

“At some point in Lakewood, as a community, we have to agree that we need more housing. We need less sprawl,” Jenny O’Neill, a planning commissioner, said. “(The residents’ concerns) are heard, they’re real. But they cannot trump the fact that we need the things that we need in this city.”