Landmark Preservation Commission Poo-Poos Church’s Plan to Turn Parking Lot Into Affordable Housing

Denver’s Landmark Preservation Commission has turned down a Capitol Hill church’s plan to develop a parking lot into a twelve-story apartment building with affordable housing, which would exceed the minimum height standards mandated by the city.

Leaders of the First Baptist Church of Denver, at 1373 Grant Street, have spent the last year working on turning the 18,750-square-foot parking lot adjacent to the church into residential housing.

Kenton Kuhn, the property chairman of the church, says they had already gotten preliminary approval for the project from the city’s department of Community Planning & Development. But because the church-owned lot sits on the very edge of the Civic Center Historic District, before moving forward the church needed to get approval from the Landmark…