LITTLETON 1/14/13
February 14, 2013
Arapahoe County, Colorado • Volume 124, Issue 4
75 cents
A Colorado Community Media Publication
ourlittletonnews.com
Density increase approved
TO BEAD OR NOT TO BEAD
Council OKs apartment complex’s plan for one-bedroom units By Jennifer Smith
jsmith@ourcoloradonews.com
Kristin McGraw mans one of the Reinke Brothers’ bead bars Feb. 9 during the second night of downtown Littleton’s Mardi Gras celebration. Participating restaurants and bars created special Cajun menu offerings, and some featured live music. Photo by Courtney Kuhlen
Bow Mar a hidden gem near Littleton Town offers unique place for families By Jennifer Smith
jsmith@ourcoloradonews. com Rick Pilgrim is the mayor of a town he didn’t know was a town when he was growing up in Littleton: Bow Mar. To be clear, he’s the mayor of the Town of Bow Mar — not Bow Mar South or Bow Mar Knolls, which are in Littleton proper, nor Bow Mar Heights, which is in Jefferson County. And then there’s Mary’s Meadow, which the town owns but is actually in the city and county of Denver. Of course, he enjoys them all. “It’s such a great place for a family to grow up and to be a kid and feel safe,” he said, having raised his three daughters there himself. Two of them went to Littleton High School — where he graduated from in 1973 — and the other went to Heritage. Located northwest of Littleton, Bow Mar is a unique little
Bow Mar Mayor Rick Pilgrim is a native of Colorado. Photo by Courtney Kuhlen town of about 600 acres, 293 homes, 850 people and a budget of just a half-million dollars. It literally has no businesses, so it depends on property tax to function, yet it owns its own lake and has its own yacht club. “We’re a city that needs to be responsible to our voters,” he said, and they want low taxes and limited government. “We depend on volunteers to help us do stuff.” Along with a very active homeowners’ association and a foundation, and a partnership with Columbine Valley that allows them to share a town hall and eight-person police
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department, things seem to run smoothly in the little town. Skimming council-meeting minutes makes it seem like dog poop and chickens are the most pressing matters. Pilgrim, a transportation engineer, thinks it’s actually the roads. There’s no real drainage, just ditches that allow water to seep under the pavement. “We’ve asked the voters two times, and they’ve turned it down two times,” he said. “But each of those times we’d have gone into debt.” Change does happen slowly sometimes in a town so small. Bow Mar didn’t even have paved
roads until the early 1970s, and didn’t bury its utilities until the late 1960s. Both were controversial. “Those had costs for everybody,” he said. There probably wouldn’t even be a town of Bow Mar without your friendly neighborhood grocery store. Lloyd King, who founded King Soopers in 1948, started buying up small farms in the neighborhood just east of what is now Grant Ranch after business started booming. But in the 1950s, Denver started annexing everything it could get its hands on. Bow Mar incorporated in 1958 to protect itself, 16 years before the Poundstone Amendment required a vote of the residents to be annexed. “That’s why they became their own town, so they were in charge of themselves,” said Pilgrim. That’s how Mary’s Meadow ended up in Denver, and Pilgrim said that’s another issue that needs handled. Should there ever be an emergency, Denver crews would have to respond, and the closest fire department is near Fort Logan. “We own it, but we can’t manage it,” he said. “Thank heavens we’ve never had a grass fire.”
LITTLETON INDEPENDENT (ISSN 1058-7837) (USPS 315-780) OFFICE: 9137 S. Ridgeline Blvd., Suite 210, Highlands Ranch, CO 80129 PHONE: 303-566-4100 A legal newspaper of general circulation in Englewood, Colorado, the Littleton Independent is published weekly on Thursday by Colorado Community Media. PERIODICALS POSTAGE PAID AT ENGLEWOOD, COLORADO AND ADDITIONAL MAILING OFFICES. POSTMASTER: Send address change to: 9137 S. Ridgeline Blvd., Suite 210, Highlands Ranch, CO 80129 DEADLINES: Display advertising: Thurs. 11 a.m. Legal advertising: Thurs. 11 a.m. Classified advertising: Mon. 12 p.m.
A developer’s request to nearly double the density of a downtown apartment building increased density by far more than that in the Littleton City Council chambers during a five-hour meeting Feb. 5. About 90 people showed up to display their opposition to the Nevada Place rezone, versus nine in support. Despite the opposition and the planning board’s previous rejection of the plan, city council approved the rezone on a 4-3 vote. Jonathan Miller of Camelback Development owns the project, and says it won’t be financially feasible unless the density is increased 37 two-bedroom apartments to 72 one-bedrooms. He built the first phase of the project — the eastern building containing mostly two-bedrooms — after council approved it in 2007. He intended to build the western building at the same time, but then economic disaster struck the nation. Last year, he proposed a building that features the same footprint, height and materials as what was originally approved; the only change is to density. There will be 103 Council continues on Page 8
C-470 panel turns to tolls
Steering committee’s unanimous vote narrows expansion focus By Ryan Boldrey
rboldrey@ourcoloradonews.com Like traffic at the end of rush hour, the future of C-470 appears to be clearing up. On Feb. 7, the C-470 Corridor Coalition Steering Committee — made up of representatives from Douglas, Arapahoe and Jefferson counties as well as the Highlands Ranch Metro District and cities of Littleton, Lone Tree and Centennial — voted 7-0 to toll any new lanes along the 13-mile stretch between Interstate 25 and Kipling Street. The coalition has been studying different options to finance the addition of one or two lanes in each direction since 2011 and began a heavy dose of public outreach last summer. Other options included the implementation of sales or property tax increases within a to-be-determined taxing district as well as tolling all the lanes. “The public was divided on tolling (the new lanes) and sales tax,” said Roger Sherman, chief operating officer with consulting
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C-470 continues on Page 8
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