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We do not accept donations.
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We do not have a GoFundMe page.
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We are not affiliated with any person or group that raises money at GofundMe.com.
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We are not affiliated with any group that accepts donations.
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If you donate to anyone for any reason, it is at your own risk.
When signing our Change.Org petition:
You may be asked to ‘chip in’ at change.org when signing the petition. We receive no money from what you chip in.
If you do ‘chip in’, 100% of the amount you ‘chip in’ goes to change.org to advertise the petition which is very useful to gain more supporters and is appreciated. However, we have no control over what change.org does with your money.
Many petition signers have chipped in and the petition is well funded at the present time. So if you ‘chip in’ at change.org, we suggest a smaller amount such as $20 max or even less than $10 will be useful. It is optional to chip in and perfectly OK to not chip in.
Thank You!
There is one small HOA across the street with only 45 townhomes. However, our change.org petition has over 4,000 signatures from metro area citizens and beyond.
So NO, this is not a NIMBY-based opposition. Far from it.
You decide.
Kairoi held a secret meeting with unannounced time or place and not open to the public. They allowed just three representatives from just one HOA to attend.
The Letter:
In a letter dated October 18, 2023, Kairoi Residential stated their intention to have “a discussion about this project with the “Lakewood community” because they “want to be a good neighbor”.
They even exclaimed: “We should have worked to have a community discussion.”
Kairoi further stated: “We have contacted City staff to schedule these discussions and to reach out to concerned residents about participating.”
However, Lakewood later announced: “The discussion for the proposed development at 777 S. Yarrow St. will encourage dialogue between Kairoi and the immediate neighbors” with no mention of the Lakewood community or reaching out or concerned residents.
So they had a secret meeting with three immediate neighbors! THAT was their ‘discussion’ with the ‘Lakewood community’.
The traffic study only includes traffic attributed to one of the two buildings Kairoi proposes to construct at the Belmar Park site.
The traffic study does not include the additional traffic generated by the 777 S Wadsworth building.
Kairoi is under contract to purchase 777 S Wadsworth yet has only presented the impacts of the 777 S Yarrow St project and has withheld the impacts of their other proposed building across the street which may include up to 1,200 additional residential units.
As a result, actual traffic generated by the two buildings could easily be 2-4 times the amount reflected in the initial traffic study.
The original traffic study also did not appear to include any estimate for delivery vehicles from Amazon, UPS, USPS, etc.
From a science perspective, protecting Belmar Park is largely about protecting biodiversity.
According to the United Nations, biodiversity is our strongest natural defense against climate change.
Because as we lose or degrade habitats such as Belmar Park, biodiversity declines including eventually losing entire species that become extinct.
It is critically important to protect habitats because the web of life depends on habitats to support biodiversity.
That is why the US Fish and Wildlife Service now “embraces Strategic Habitat Conservation (SHC), which focuses less on recovering individual species, and more on recovering habitats essential to a broad range of species.”
Without biodiversity, our well-being including even economic well-being falls apart.
Over half of global economic activity (sometimes called GDP) depends on nature.
If we prioritize building expensive housing over protecting habitats and biodiversity, what will you tell the kids when they grow up and there is not enough food to bring home? Or not enough water? Or not enough medication? We depend on the web of life for all of that.
The assumption for many years has been that high-density housing characterized by many people living together in a building would save energy compared to low-rise housing.
However, now that the energy use of high-density housing has actually been studied, it turns out that high-density housing uses significantly more energy per capita per year. Plus, the embodied energy of high-density housing is much higher.
“We estimate that downtown high-rise living in Chicago, IL accounts for approximately 25% more life-cycle energy per person per year than suburban low-rise living, on average, contrary to some common beliefs (best estimates were ~141 and ~113 GJ/person/year, respectively).”
The finding of higher GHG emissions also has been duplicated by Australian researchers:
High-density housing is more expensive to construct per square foot and is therefore not conducive to providing affordable housing. Developers do not build high-density housing that is affordable to low-income residents unless it is subsidized because the construction cost is prohibitive.
If ‘affordable’ uses the definition of annual rent not exceeding 30% of area median income (AMI), developers sometimes include a few units in that rental range. So if the AMI is $100,000 per year, annual rent of $30,000 would be considered ‘affordable’.
Lakewood has run financial modeling to evaluate whether Urban Infill Apartment housing is financially feasible to produce if a percentage of units are required to be ‘affordable’. Lakewood concluded:
Each of the prototypical housing developments are infeasible when hypothetical inclusionary zoning requirements are applied.
The estimated feasibility gaps range from approximately $14,000 to $49,000 per total housing unit when the hypothetical inclusionary zoning requirements are applied to each housing prototype.
Accordingly, a “mandatory” inclusionary zoning policy is not recommended for Lakewood.
Lakewood Strategic Housing Plan – May 2023 p.41
Living in a high-rise tower in the city is much less environmentally sustainable than moving to a house in the suburbs and adding to the urban sprawl, a shock new study has found.
In a revelation that challenges the long-held assumption that it’s more efficient to reside in a vertical village than a horizontal one, the three-year US study shows that apartment dwellers consume more energy, spend more of their time travelling and use their cars more.
“The findings are a little surprising to us all,” says Dr Anthony Wood, executive director of the Chicago-based Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH), a research professor in the college of architecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, and co-author of the landmark report.
Is the Initiative process in Lakewood a useful way to empower local citizens or is it just a huge rabbit hole?
In a nutshell:
Any Initiative that gathers enough signatures still has to be approved either by city council or else city council must send it to the voters to decide.
Even if approved by the voters, city council can repeal ANY Initiative after 6 months!
There also could be ways for City Council to bypass the intent of an Initiative passed by voters such as adopting an additional ordinance that provides an alternative method of compliance with any regulation adopted by voters.
If council did that, opponents would likely be required to challenge such action in court. If opponents did not have the financial resources to raise a challenge, the council action would remain in effect and it would then be up to the voters whether to remove council members at the next election.
Considering that city council seats are often unopposed, electoral consequences are not always available.
- Print, post and share flyers and materials: https://savebelmarpark.com/ Popular Resources
- Attend Lakewood City Council meetings and ask for the Eminent Domain procurement of the parking area at 777 S Yarrow St.
- Contact your city council reps and ask for the Eminent Domain procurement of the parking area at 777 S Yarrow St.
- Ask city council and your local city council reps to propose and adopt effective action to assure that requirements in the Comprehensive Plan such as seamless integration with the neighborhood are actually binding and enforced on any proposal to develop 777 S Wadsworth (not Yarrow St) before Kairoi closes their purchase.
- Invite neighbors, friends, and co-workers to participate.
- Sign the Change.org petition: https://www.change.org/p/protect-belmar-park-in-lakewood-co-via-eminent-domain
Please note:
The website is maintained on a volunteer basis with limited time availability. We apologize that questions or comments may not receive a response.
Thank You!
This was the first, and remains the only actively updated volunteer-supported web presence advocating for Belmar Park wildlife habitat protection.
In Summer, 2023, I came across the public information webpage for 777 S Yarrow St at the Lakewood Planning Department website. Over the next many weeks, my concern grew regarding the proposal for 777 S Yarrow St.
Contacted Roger Low who was then a candidate for city council in Ward 3, the same ward in which Belmar Park is located. We scheduled a phone conference and discussed concerns regarding the 777 S Yarrow Street proposal. Roger seemed somewhat open to considering mitigations if he were elected. It was encouraging that a potential member of city council might be supportive of protecting Belmar Park.
Subsequently, incumbent Anita Springsteen withdrew from the race which left Roger Low running unopposed for the open seat on city council to which he was elected.
Preserving Trees
Urged Polly Reetz, the Conservation Committee Chairperson of the Denver Audubon Society, to endorse the basal area method of tree replacements calculation. After reviewing the paper from Professor Coder, Ms. Reetz agreed and sent an email to City Council with that recommendation.
Unfortunately, City Council has taken no action and Lakewood still relies on the grossly inadequate caliper inch method of calculating tree replacements.
Later created an additional webpage explaining why the basal area tree replacement formula should be used to replace the many large condemned trees at 777 S Yarrow St.
Realized that a website would better publicize the issues with the huge apartment complex proposal and launched Save Belmar Park website.
The Meeting at the Church
Soon after the website went live, City Council Member Anita Springsteen, who had just withdrawn from her reelection bid, announced she would co-host a public meeting at the Phillips United Methodist Church. I agreed to author a public announcement and invitation to this meeting that was published in the Lakewood Informer. Several dozen residents attended this meeting.
I previously informed the other co-host that I would join via ZOOM since she said that option was available. However, the meeting co-host did not provide any support for usable ZOOM audio and allowed another person to also login and rudely talk over most of the meeting on a private phone call despite repeated requests to mute their microphone so their phone call would not block the meeting audio.
The ZOOM host has the ability to mute microphones in order to control background noise. This ZOOM host never muted anyone’s microphone.
Participants and hosts on ZOOM conference calls are typically respectful and attentive to the call since they usually have a common shared purpose. It was peculiar, to say the least, that the ZOOM host did not monitor this whatsoever and that this other person refused to mute their microphone.
In-person attendance at this meeting included Lakewood City Council members Anita Springsteen and Rich Olver. Also in attendance was former Planning Commission member Cathy Kentner.
The announced purpose was to discuss submitting a Resolution at an upcoming city council meeting to stop or mitigate the proposed apartment development at 777 S Yarrow St.
You might think that since they called a community meeting to discuss a city council resolution, that someone would actually have a resolution or at least an outline of one in hand to discuss. You would be wrong.
Neither the hosts nor anybody in attendance at this meeting authored a resolution or even an outline despite calling a meeting for that purpose. This was a meeting for supporters of Belmar Park attended by various city council members, a former planning commission member, various attorneys and dozens of other community members. None of them authored a resolution or outline. Weird.
It turns out, I authored the only resolution for consideration at the meeting. Yes, at the same meeting I was excluded from due to the bizarre ZOOM issues that were permitted, I also provided the only resolution for consideration. If you think that is also strange, I would agree.
City Council Meeting
Councilor Springsteen presented my Resolution to City Council but changed it to mitigate rather than deny the major site plan as I had proposed in the original resolution. That was the final city council meeting for Councilor Springsteen who concluded her term of office that night.
City Council refused to take any action.
The Gofundme Fiasco
Several people including from the meeting at the church described above later met at a home and discussed a Gofundme page to raise money.
One of them emailed me and stated that Gofundme requires an external website in order to accept donations. They were all aware the Save Belmar Park site was already online and it was stated that if I did not want to use this website for their Gofundme campaign, they would create an additional website for that purpose.
However, GoFundMe does not require an external website to accept donations. The whole purpose of GoFundMe.com is to accept donations on behalf of groups and causes so that they don’t need to build websites just to accept donations. Yet the fact this person made that false claim seemed to be one of their justifications to develop a copycat website even though doing so would obviously require unnecessary time and expense.
The Amazing Refusal of Help to Fix a Misleading Website
Later that same day, it was disclosed they had already registered a .ORG domain name the day before. Kathy Kenter was thanked for assisting them in getting a domain name registered.
The domain name they registered is still non-functional even after many months and now late in 2024 and still tells the public there is no functioning Save Belmar Park website there which misleads the public.
Early on I offered to redirect their non-functional domain name to this working website to fix that problem and they refused the offer. So when unsuspecting members of the public find their non-functional decoy website, they may logically conclude there is no Save Belmar Park website. If they support protecting Belmar Park, why do they prefer to send that negative misleading message to the public?
When is it reasonable to conclude that they do not support protecting Belmar Park?
Anyway, it would appear they were planning a copycat website all along while pretending as if I was being given a choice to use this website instead.
Although knowing this, I still volunteered this website in good faith and thousands of dollars were raised while their donation button was displayed here.
I also repeatedly asked why it was a good idea to build a second website but nobody responded.
I even persisted and tried to explain that their understanding was not correct and there is no requirement for a separate website to accept donations at Gofundme.com.
Once they realized that we all knew gofundme was not a valid reason for a website, were they glad there was no need to go to the bother and expense and effort to build another website just to accept donations? That would be a reasonable response. After all, they had supposedly been facing the prospect of having to build a website for the sole purpose of accepting donations. That significant task was no longer on the table. They were now free to focus their efforts on protecting Belmar Park in more productive ways.
But they were not relieved that building a web site was no longer necessary. Instead, they then raised new complaints with this website.
They cited certain website features they wanted that were actually already implemented including links to a list of upcoming City Council meetings and contact info for city council members. The fact that gofundme was not a valid reason and that only then did they suddenly want other features that were already available suggests they were not looking for those features. They were looking for some excuse to say they just had to build a website. And they never came up with that excuse since they never found anything they needed that was not already available on this website.
The features they asked for were also not implemented in the website they finally launched many months later (as of 8-2024). In my opinion, the whole fiasco raises the question what these individuals are actually seeking. What is their true agenda?
One of their members indicated she would build their new website but that never happened. She later admitted she had never built a website. Another member of their group eventually agreed to build their website since the first member who tried could not get it done.
That new person contacted me and asked if they could simply copy the content from this website over to their website! So this website you are now on that they were inventing fake complaints about, it turns out they were actually perfectly happy with this website so much so that they wanted to copy it directly and then claim it is their website! Yes, in spite of their complaints, they were happy with a copycat website! You can’t make this stuff up!
But why would they need a whole new website if they would have been happy with a direct copy? What purpose would be accomplished by having two similar or identical websites? Whatever their reasons, it obviously was not about any so-called new features or about gofundme.com.
I declined their bizarre request to copy this website.
Change.Org Petition Has Over 6,000 Supporters!
The Protect Belmar Park petition on Change.Org now has over 6,000 signatures. The petition requests that a buffer zone be established via Eminent Domain between Belmar Park and the proposed apartment complex. The Denver Post Editorial Board subsequently published an editorial that also strongly recommended such a buffer zone be established.
Some of these individuals have formed sub-groups.
One group has gathered thousands of signatures for an Initiative petition that removes the fee in-lieu verbiage in Lakewood’s Municipal Code. Developers use the fee-in-lieu option to avoid providing open space with their projects. It does not appear the Initiative petition has any limitation of fee-in-lieu being re-implemented by city council.
Unfortunately, ANY Initiative petition approved by Lakewood voters can simply be repealed by city council after 6 months which was the fate of the Strategic Growth Initiative that many voters in Lakewood mistakenly thought would have permanent impact on managing growth. City council eventually repealed it.
Maybe there is one, but we are not aware of any Initiative petition ever approved by Lakewood voters that was not repealed by city council. After all, if city council actually likes an Initiative effort, they can pass an ordinance to the same effect! You do not need an Initiative if city council agrees with your purpose. City council can simply adopt your idea as an ordinance. Or repeal it if they don’t like it.
Another faction is still raising money to ‘protect the integrity of Belmar Park’ and they have also retained an attorney. However, they have not raised any legal issues that would result in a permanent denial of the major site plan.
Nevertheless, they are asking for money. They initially requested $250,000 as a GoFundMe goal. They have only raised $17,000 through August 2024. They have since lowered their original $250,000 ask to only $60,000 without explaining why if they only need $60,000, they originally asked for $250,000.
We strongly recommend supporters of Belmar Park avoid these distractions. Continuing the scheme of having distracting or decoy websites and domain names that may not function at all or that require unnecessary added cost is a strange approach. Nor is it a strong strategy to divide up into sub-groups with hazy objectives.
We invite Belmar Park wildlife supporters to join our mailing list and sign the Change.org petition (if you have not already done so) which will allow true supporters to focus our collective power so we can have a much stronger and more unified message to decision makers and to the public.
Our home page also lists volunteer activities available if you support protecting Belmar Park.
A purpose of this website is as an additional venue to report news and information related to Lakewood, Colorado with emphasis on Belmar Park. We also advocate for community action to save Belmar Park from adverse influences which may include major demolition, extreme construction, tree removal, habitat destruction, habitat degradation, etc. within or close to the park.
The logo includes the words ‘Support Community Action’ and is meant to encourage the shared value that constructive community action can help preserve and enhance the many important benefits and features of the park including the bird and wildlife habitats. Therefore, we urge everyone to share this common value and advocate on behalf of preserving and enhancing Belmar Park.