RexRun For PAWSitivity 2023

Saturday, August 26th

ARAPAHOE COUNTY FAIRGROUNDS 8AM-1PM the way of its approval.

Come join us on National Dog Day for a family fun 5K trail run/walk to raise funds and spread mental health awareness with the help of School Resource therapy dogs!

Still, the proposal has run into a procedural quirk: Larkspur doesn’t have the sta to plan out development like a large city would, the town’s attorney noted during an April 6 town council meeting. e town doesn’t have an o cial who can evaluate the developer’s design plan.

“What your (town) code says is the town planner shall approve or deny the site plan,” Dan Krob, who provides attorney services to the town, said at the April 6 meeting. “We don’t have a town planner.”

Larkspur Town Council voted to hire Baseline Engineering — a company based in Golden — as the town planner for the truck stop project at a June 1 meeting.

Town’s process e truck stop would sit at 255 Upper Lake Gulch Road, just west of Interstate 25. e town council already voted to change the property’s zoning — the rules for what can be built on it — from “PUD,” or planned unit development, to commercial in July last year after public hearings in front of the planning commission and the council. (A PUD typically denotes a special type of zoning for an area.) e town planner’s job is to look at the town code and determine whether the project meets the code, e council had voted 6-1 to appoint Doyle to “interview and vet” potential planners, with council representation in the interview process, to make a recommendation to council.

In the past, on smaller projects, the lack of a planner hasn’t come into play, Krob has said.

“So we have historically forgone the planner, used the planning commission and their expertise to give a recommendation to council for the decision,” Krob said at the April 6 meeting. A planning commission is a group of residents who are appointed to advise council on development matters.

But the land that would house the proposed truck stop has commercial zoning, and town rules say any commercial development has to include a site plan, according to Krob. A site plan lays out the proposed changes to a property.

Heather Yanda, the town clerk, told Colorado Community Media. e timeline for when the planner will make a decision is unclear because the project is still in what’s called the “referral review” process, where outside entities provide input on the project. ose referral agencies include the Colorado Department of Transportation, the Union Paci c Railroad, Colorado Parks and Wildlife and others, Yanda said.

“I know that Baseline and the developer were meeting either today or tomorrow to have a preliminary discussion,” Yanda said on Aug. 3. e planner, not the town council, approves or denies the site plan as long as the development is a “use by right” situation, meaning the developer’s right to build on the land doesn’t require higher scrutiny.

But if it’s a “use by special review” situation, the plan is in “the discretion” of the council, Krob has said.

Whether the project may fall under special review is a determination that the planner should make, Krob has said, based on the planner’s ability to interpret the town’s rules.

“Our code does not speci cally address a travel center or truck stop under use by special review or use by right,” Yanda said.

If the site plan is initially not in compliance with the town’s code, the developer could ask for variances — or exemptions — for certain aspects of the plan, Yanda said.

Finding a planner e town also brought in Sam Doyle, who said he’s a former president of a nancial rm called D.A. Davidson, to help in the process of nding a planner.

“We were one of the big underwriters” of metro districts “in the whole state,” Doyle has told the council.

(Metro districts are a type of government entity that carries out some government functions, such as the Highlands Ranch Metro District that oversees some services in that community.)

Ultimately, Doyle and others provided comments on the RFP the town sent to potential planners, Yanda said. (An RFP, or request for proposal, is a document that announces a project and asks for applications from those who want to carry out the work.)

“Sam did not interview or vet potential planners. e town council made the decision to hire Baseline from a handful of potential candidates,” Yanda said.