If you go
What: Lafayette City Council
When: 6 p.m. Tuesday
Where: 1290 S. Public Road
More info: View full agenda at: bit.ly/2liOOhS
The Lafayette City Council will weigh an approval Tuesday night for the redevelopment of Carpenter’s Mobile Home Park in Old Town into a high-density subdivision.
The 2-acre development would include 35, 1,000-square-foot residential units at 811 E. Baseline Road — which sits across from the city’s treasured historic grain silos and along the entryway to those traveling into Lafayette from the east — has garnered some resistance from Old Town residents.
“Baseline Road has evolved over time and became a major regional traffic route in Boulder County and beyond,” city officials said in the plan’s staff report. “With the change of conditions in this particular area, the component of successful and desirable residential living along Baseline Road has changed.”
The 2-acre subdivision would include four buildings with 35 residential units. The four-building complex would include two, 10-unit buildings; one, nine-unit building, and one, six-unit building. The 10- and six-unit buildings will run parallel to Baseline Road and the nine-unit building will run parallel to Dounce Street.
“We didn’t have a ton of interest in keeping the property as a mobile home park,” said Graham Bailhache, of BV Builders, the Lafayette-based contractor behind the subdivision.
BV must first rezone the property from R2 (single- and two-family residential) to R4 (multifamily residential), according to sketch plans. The R4 zoning designation allows for a maximum of 18 dwelling units per acre . The builders are proposing 17.58 dwelling units per acre, according to Bailhache, who purchased the lot under the entity 811 Baseline Road LLC last year for roughly $1 million.
As is the case with most dense development proposals within Old Town, however, the plan does not come without its share of resistance.
“I think the city could have done more to assist with the preservation of the mobile home park,” resident Karen Norback said Monday. “It provided some extraordinarily low rentals for residents; we had affordable housing on that property and now it’s gone.”
The three-bedroom option for the slated development would most likely rent for roughly $1,700 per month, according to Bailhache.
“I would have liked to see that mobile home park preserved and improved,” Norback added. “If the city says we need affordable housing, let’s step in and save that affordable housing. We shouldn’t just move in and dislocate the people there and replace it with something that is ugly.”
The development relocated a handful of residents within the mobile home park, though both residents along the property and city officials haven’t cited any conflict.
“The city worked with the developer to ensure the mobile homes that could be relocated to other sites were, and that residents were provided ample notice and stipends to help with relocation,” Lafayette spokesperson Debbie Wilmot wrote in an email on Friday.
In October, the Lafayette City Council voted on an emergency ordinance establishing an immediate moratorium on all new residential construction in the city’s Old Town district in hopes of pushing back against any further loss of its historic past.
The measure would later fail underneath the weight of public resistance.
Anthony Hahn: 303-473-1422, hahna@dailycamera.com or twitter.com/_anthonyhahn
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