About 50 people filled the Woodmoor Barn on Monday night for El Paso County’s session on its draft Land Development Code, and many of the questions came back to one thing: what the new rules would do to stop a denser project from landing beside an established neighborhood. The county’s consultant said the draft is meant to make outcomes more predictable, and conceded it has no tool yet for easing transitions between one kind of housing and another. Written comments close at 5 p.m. on Oct. 16.
Mike Aspenson, president of the Northern El Paso County Coalition of Community Organizations (NEPCO), opened the meeting and said the county had asked the coalition to host it. The presentation was given by Elizabeth Garvin, a lawyer and planner who is a director in the Denver office of Clarion Associates, the firm the county hired to write the code. Kylie Bagley of the county’s Planning and Community Development department attended to take notes.
Ms. Garvin set two subjects aside at the start. The Buc-ee’s decision, she said, is outside the project, and regulations for data centers will be written separately and posted for public comment when they are ready. She described four goals: modernize a code adopted in 2007, regulate only what matters, tailor standards to rural, suburban and urban areas, and make the document simpler to search and read.
Harold Larson, who leads NEPCO’s land use and transportation committee, told the room the coalition had compared the old and new codes and identified 15 issues it considers material. He asked residents for specific, workable suggestions rather than complaints — “talk logic,” in the words of an early boss — and said NEPCO would post its first round of comments on its website by the end of next week.
Most of the evening was questions. What follows are the main exchanges, in the order they came.
One District Where There Were Two
The draft folds the county’s two multi-family districts, RM-12 and RM-30, into a single Residential Flex district allowing up to 30 units an acre. Michael Christensen, the Independent’s editor, asked whether that removed “granularity and control” over how growth is measured out. “We’ve gotten to the point of too much granularity and too much control,” Ms. Garvin said, calling the consolidation “a best practice position.” When he said the two districts were not incrementally different, she agreed — “It is more than double” — and said 12-unit projects cost more and are built less often than 30-unit ones, and that site design can make the two densities feel similar.
A resident asked whether the rewrite was meant to serve developers or residents. Ms. Garvin said it had been written “not from the developer’s perspective, not from the residents’ perspective,” but as a sound zoning code, and that public comments would be compiled into a summary for the working group, the Planning Commission and the county commissioners.
Another resident objected to the word “flex.” A code, the resident said, “should not be a living document that can be changed willy-nilly,” but something “more like a constitution that is harder to change,” so buyers know what can happen around them. Ms. Garvin said the name meant only that a project could be built at any density up to 30 units an acre — “That’s all flex means in that title” — and offered to rename it a high-density district.
Mr. Larson said the district labels matter less than the rezonings between them. If land can be rezoned at will, he said, residents need to know what in the code would give them grounds to say a proposal does not fit.
Covenants, Buffers and Compatibility
A resident asked whether the county would consider neighborhood covenants before rezoning land nearby. Ms. Garvin said covenants and zoning are separate legal instruments: “The county zoning regulations do not override your covenants,” she said, but “the county does not write its regulations to align with the covenants.” Asked why the county may rezone one parcel for far more homes than its neighbors, she said it is “part of the authority we have from the state.”
Another asked whether the draft would create buffers around established places such as Jackson Creek, Woodmoor and Palmer Lake, not just against noise and lighting but against sheer density. Ms. Garvin said the draft requires distance and lower heights where more intense development abuts homes, and that which districts go where remains a decision for the commissioners. Asked about an overlay that would impose stricter standards near existing neighborhoods, she said, “We don’t have that now, but I’ve got it on the list.” Residents pressed that a buffer should apply between large residential lots and dense housing, not only between homes and commercial uses; she said transitions and buffers are both forms of compatibility, and that she was hearing concern about rezonings residents cannot foresee.
Places That Are Not Alike
Mr. Christensen said Boulder, Larimer and Douglas counties write standards for small, named places into their codes, and that El Paso County’s last revision “kind of homogenized” its code. He asked “what differentiates Highway 105 from Powers Boulevard” in the draft. “Palmer Lake is not Falcon,” he said, “and my concern is I don’t see a mechanism in the code that allows us to differentiate those different place types.” The draft’s only mention of small area plans is a footnote recording that a reference to them was removed from one set of review criteria.
“This is a discussion we’ve been having internally,” Ms. Garvin said. She said the team was working on how to define urban, suburban and rural more clearly, and asked whether he meant something more granular still — a neighborhood and its commercial strip treated as a place of its own. He pointed to Douglas County’s treatment of Sedalia. Another resident followed: residents may simply be out of step with what developers want to build, and the code should reflect that.
Who Is Paying, and Why Now
Asked who hired Clarion, Ms. Garvin said the county did, paying in part with a state grant. “Developers are not paying for any of this,” she said. Asked whether residents could still oppose projects, she said, “You will still have all the same opportunities to go to public hearings and oppose development under this code as you do under the current code,” and that the code itself would go to public hearings before the Planning Commission and the commissioners early next year. Asked why the county was rewriting a code it had amended nine years ago, she said, “We’re doing it because the current code is dated and has gaps in it.”
One resident asked for a version of the draft showing every change, who made it and when. Ms. Garvin said a before-and-after comparison is on the project website; it does not list authors or dates. Another said four months is too little time to review a document of more than 500 pages.
Several residents said development should pay for its own parks, schools and roads. When one linked density to crime, Ms. Garvin pushed back: “I don’t think that there is good data on that point.”
Rural Lots, Housing and Water
Ms. Garvin said the rural districts are being renamed but their standards kept, apart from a five-foot increase in allowed height; RR-5 becomes RR1. Residents objected that a five-acre district called “RR1” would confuse buyers.
She said the draft allows duplexes and accessory dwelling units in more residential districts to add housing — “I realize I just pushed a big red button for some people” — and that accessory units are a county choice rather than a state mandate, which she said would apply only in Security-Widefield once its population reaches 40,000. Asked about parking for accessory units, she said, “I don’t think that we’ve required extra parking for ADUs,” and offered to check. A Woodmoor resident said the neighborhood’s winding streets already make on-street parking dangerous.
Residents on wells asked whether accessory units could be approved without enough water. Ms. Garvin said a unit that cannot be served on the property can be turned down, and that the water supply rules were carried forward unchanged. One resident listed concerns about well quantity, quality, dependability, water-level trends and the cumulative effect of new wells on existing ones; she said those standards belong in the county’s engineering criteria manual, not the code.
Staff Decisions and Rezonings
Asked whether the draft means more decisions made by staff without a hearing, Ms. Garvin said the aim is clear rules, not more or fewer administrative approvals, and that sending every approval to the Board of County Commissioners would keep its meetings running until three in the morning. “Clarity will help us all,” Mr. Larson said.
A resident said buying land in order to rezone it and resell it has become a business model, and asked what the code would do about it. Ms. Garvin said that concerns the approval process, “which isn’t what we’re focused on tonight. But I hear you.” As the questions sharpened, she asked the room to “just bring it down a little bit.”
What Comes Next
Ms. Garvin said Oct. 16 closes the first round of comments and that a second round will follow. She said Clarion would record the presentation at its office and post it, with the slides, on the project website.
Michael Christensen, the Independent’s editor, took part in the question period and is quoted above. This account covers roughly the first 90 minutes of the meeting, which continued after the Independent’s recording ended.
Sources & further reading
The Independent’s own coverage: The County’s Zoning Rewrite Comes to the Woodmoor Barn Monday · El Paso County Is Rewriting the Rules the Buc-ee’s Fight Turned On · El Paso County Commissioners: A Board That Never Says No
County record: LDC Modules 1 & 2 draft and comment portal · Project website and document library
Methodology
This account is based on the Independent’s audio recording of the first 90 minutes of the Sept. 21 session and an automated transcript of it. Residents who asked questions are not named. Quotations were checked against the transcript; where the transcript was unclear, the account paraphrases. The attendance figure is the Independent’s estimate. Ms. Garvin’s title comes from Clarion Associates’ website. The statement about small area plans comes from footnote 40 of the county’s September draft.
