Planning and Zoning Commission recommends approval of PUD for 401 Inglewood Parkway

Planning and Zoning Commission members voted 7-0 on Jan. 7, 2025, to recommend that City Council approve ZON2024-002, a Planned Unit Development (PUD) rezoning for 401 Inglewood Parkway that would allow the redevelopment of the roughly 6.2-acre parcel into a multi-phase project anchored by a 260-unit apartment building and a potential hotel.

The PUD, submitted by Kimco Realty, would change the site from its existing MUB-1 (Mixed Use, Central Business District) zoning with a Transit Station Area (TSA) overlay to a site-specific planning and development district. The applicant asked to lower the TSA’s minimum density requirement from 75 dwelling units per acre to 40 dwelling units per acre because a drainage easement bisecting the site consumes about 1.1 acres of the property.

Will Charles, Planner II with the Community Development Department, told the commission that the property at 401 Inglewood Parkway was the former Hobby Lobby site and is roughly 6.2 acres. Charles said the PUD application proposes a 4- to 5-story, 260-unit residential building for phase one and a detached parking structure to replace much of the existing surface parking. "This originally came in for a preliminary application meeting back in August of '23," Charles said, and staff recommended support of the PUD with conditions calling for compliance with any affordable housing requirements approved by City Council and certain off-site traffic, ADA and impact-fee measures.

The applicant team described outreach and design. Claire HaVelda, legal counsel for the applicant, said the team conducted two neighborhood meetings and numerous stakeholder conversations and that the PUD was intended to "strike harmony and balance" between the single-family neighborhood north of the site and higher-density development near transit. Mark Rickards, director of development for Kimco Realty, described the drainage easement as a major design constraint and said the applicant agreed to expand the easement area by 15 feet on either side to remove buildings from directly over the box culvert.

Victor Rochelle, director of public works for Englewood City, told the commission that a $65,000 multimodal fee-in-lieu offered by the applicant would be used for nearby pedestrian and bicycle improvements identified in the city's Walk & Wheel plan. "That money would be allocated to fund improvements, say from the walk and wheel plan that are immediately adjacent to a project of this nature," Rochelle said.

Members of the applicant’s design team described site plans that place building mass along the public streets (Ahladi, Floyd and Cherokee) and create a central, semi-public open area above much of the drainage easement. The team indicated the project would reduce the existing surface parking footprint and provide a structured parking garage; parking counts were discussed at length and various figures were cited at different points in the hearing. Will Charles’ presentation referenced reducing surface parking to 146 spaces with the remainder of demand met in a parking structure; the applicant’s later comments referenced a 360-space structured garage plus approximately 100 surface spaces. The commission heard questions from members about how parking would be managed, whether parking would be charged, and how the project could avoid spillover parking onto neighborhood streets.

The Inglewood Downtown Development Authority provided a conditional letter of support, and Hillary Portel, executive director of the DDA, spoke to that support during the hearing. Portel’s statement asked that the project incorporate "middle income workforce housing if that is something that City Council adopts as part of the affordable housing task force recommendations," requested up to 5% (the DDA noted 5% in its letter) of units be fully accessible to meet Type A ADA standards, and asked that the east frontage offer a landscape buffer to support the planned Little Dry Creek Greenway.

Public comment included one in-person speaker, Sam Koenig, who said he supported the project because of its proximity to transit and nearby employment centers. "This is the type of apartment that'd be great for a family like mine," Koenig said.

Commission discussion before the recommendation focused on several recurring themes: (1) the drainage easement and coordination with Mile High Flood District and potential future Little Dry Creek improvements; (2) parking quantity and design, including the risk of either overbuilding or under-providing parking; (3) preserving or relocating the Montessori early childhood education center that currently uses a city-owned playground outparcel adjacent to the site; and (4) ensuring the project meets the design goals of the TSA overlay while allowing the applicant’s specified deviations.

The commission’s recommendation included staff’s conditions (compliance with any affordable housing requirements adopted by City Council before building permit submittal; completion or funding of specified off-site traffic and pedestrian improvements; and payment of applicable impact and open-space fees) and additional recommendations reflected from the DDA letter (excluding a requirement to submit to an extra design-guidelines committee). Commissioners explicitly asked staff and the applicant to pursue adding dependent care/early childhood education as an allowed use in the PUD to help retain the Montessori provider in the neighborhood. The commission also requested that the applicant’s drainage analysis note the existence of the Mile High Flood District Little Dry Creek study and the potential implications for future off-site improvements.

A motion recommending approval of ZON2024-002 as conditioned passed unanimously (7-0). The commission’s recommendation will be forwarded to Englewood City Council for final action; no City Council date was specified in the public hearing record.

Two items of substantive follow-up remain on the record: the commission asked staff to (1) work with the applicant to refine sidewalk and ADA language for a shared frontage (the applicant requested a "best efforts" clause where portions of sidewalk cross property owned by a neighboring parcel), and (2) ensure the drainage analysis and future coordination with the Mile High Flood District and the Little Dry Creek Greenway planning are documented in the file.