A Once in a Lifetime Opportunity for Boulder Citizens

Overview: At the heart of the City of Boulder lies the 9 acre Boulder Community Hospital site now called, "Alpine-Balsam". This was a bold purchase by the City of Boulder in December 2015 as the Alpine Balsam Task Force convened by Goose Creek CLT and others advocated. We were thrilled the City, with local and national consultants and with lots of citizen input created a good "Vision Plan" in June 2017.  The City then decided to pursue an additional two and a half years of civic engagement during which they introduced lower density options for development in response to concerns from a limited and homogenous group of nearby neighbors.

Recent Developments: A variety of other neighbors and local community building experts pushed back to maintain the Vision Plan’s goals of a “new model of sustainable, affordable and equitable living” to help meet Boulder’s urgent housing crisis. The City scaled back an Area Plan proposal that asked Council to describe future development opportunities in 10 areas around and including the AB site amidst an outpouring of mostly under-informed concerns-exacerbated by perhaps misleading flyers and social media-about replacing local commercial businesses with housing. Council voted Oct 1 to accept the staff recommendation for the Area Plan with only the Site Plan for AB in question. Read the details of this recommendation here. This staff recommendation foresees up to 260 housing units with a continuing embrace of the “barbell model” of a minority amount of affordable housing.

Currently: The Implementation Phase has begun with recycling of the old hospital buildings except the Medical Pavilion to begun sometime in 2020.

Write City Council and copy Implementation Plan manager Amanda Bevis-Cole to ask that:

• County offices be located elsewhere, especially to the east where potential traffic from employees and service seekers can be less impactful and more convenient.

• The Implementation Phase reflect that City Land at AB provide maximum social and financial return to ALL.

• Be a promised “new model” for “equitable, affordable and sustainable living”, not a “barbell” city of rich and poor and be well underway by 2021.

• Offer significant for sale, permanently affordable, modest sized, middle income units with shared vehicles and affordable offices for local NGO’s etc

• Reflect our Boulder Valley Comprehensive Plan values of compact development, inclusivity and a sustainable urban pattern.

Into the “weeds”: let’s sell most of the site through an RFP that mandates a high social return of delightful public spaces, permanently affordable, mostly middle income for sale housing and offices (like the Alliance Center in Denver). Add teachers, first responders, other public employees and current in-commuters to increase quality of life and reduce traffic city-wide (~50,000 workers have to commute into the City adding to congestion).

Let's demonstrate little need for parking or fossil fuel vehicles with mostly shared vehicles. Let’s surround the buildings with beautiful, garden and art filled spaces so residents and neighbors alike experience the redevelopment as a wonderful amenity. Let's help it be a state of art green building complex inspired by the Living Building Challenge (see Bullitt Foundation office), LEED for Neighborhoods,  net zero energy communities and ecodistricts, anthroposophic buildings (eg ING Bank) and it's beautiful foot-of-the-Rockies setting. Let's explore “daylighting” Goose Creek down to Unity Church! Let's explore connecting it upstream via a beautiful pedestrian-bikeway through the proposed North St. Woonerf to the 311 Mapleton redevelopment and the Sanitas Open Space. Come join one of our walks around the area to learn together about how to do all this (see events)! Let’s reignite the American Dream for middle income workers in Boulder. Here is another community perspective on the project. Two neighbors talk about the opportunities: Equity AND Sustainability!

HISTORY

In May 2015, the hospital listed the Broadway hospital location for sale.  Goose Creek Neighborhoods then reached out to members of the community to form the BCH Task Force to engage the greater community and to explore ways to play a positive, proactive role in the redevelopment of the property.  This working group included City of Boulder residents, business owners, commercial property owners, former public office holders, and action-oriented community members. The city completed the purchase of the property in December 2015. 

Original BCH Task Force participants included:  Steve LeBlang, Will Toor, Richard Foy, Roger Lewis, Jim Robb, Brad Smith, Charlie Hager, Benita Duran, Michael McCrea, Pete Morton, Jerry Shapins and David Adamson of Goose Creek.

FURTHER INFORMATION

Want to learn more? Check out links to diverse Camera opinions, Letters to the Editor and articles.