Open Letters of Opposition to the Proposed Development

Many in the surrounding community oppose the proposed development of 186 new homes along Baseline Road. There are many reasons to oppose this development which are documented in the open letter below.

Resident Letter:

Lafayette Planning Division
Attn: Steven Williams, Planning and Building Director
Jacob Nitchals, Planning Manager
Planning Commission members Darcia Thomas, Frank Phillips, Dahvi Wilson, Joe Schoenbeck, Zachary Mettler, Bill Watson, and Brianna Lehman
City of Lafayette
1290 S. Public Road
Lafayette, CO 80026
planning@lafayetteco.gov

Dear Director Williams, Lafayette Planning Department, and Lafayette Planning Commission:

We respectfully urge denial of the proposed annexation and residential development at 8600 Baseline until the applicant demonstrates compliance with Lafayette's annexation criteria and Comprehensive Plan. The pre-application review fails to meet many of the City's stated planning goals, as detailed below.

The annexation and zoning request filed June 16, 2026 is both premature and ill-advised. It conflicts with past planning precedent, imposes severe infrastructure demands, pays lip service to a handful of the City's development goals, and would create a financial deficit the City cannot afford to absorb

The developer meets some minimum criteria for annexation — adjacency to city-owned property and inclusion in the Urban Growth Boundary — but meeting those criteria does not obligate the City to approve it. In 2017, the Planning Commission unanimously rejected a lower-density proposal of 86 homes on this same parcel, for reasons that have not substantially changed. We trust you've reviewed that thorough staff report, which concluded plainly: "Staff recommends denial of the annexation request." The current proposal more than doubles that density, to 185 units. A new Comprehensive Plan has since been adopted, but the underlying inadequacy of this site for annexation and large-scale development remains. The City's criteria require evidence of adequate utility capacity, efficient service delivery, transportation impact analysis, fiscal sustainability, and consistency with community character — none of which this proposal comes close to meeting.

Fiscal impact. Lafayette depends heavily on sales and use-tax revenue to fund operations, yet new residential development doesn't reliably generate corresponding sales tax — especially when residents shop elsewhere. Given the site's location on Lafayette's western edge, future residents would live closer to Louisville, Boulder, Erie, and their retail centers than to Lafayette's own commercial core. Likely destinations for groceries and big-box shopping — King Soopers in Louisville, Costco in Superior — sit outside city limits. BVSD's neighborhood schools for this address (Coal Creek Elementary, Louisville Middle School, Monarch) are all in Louisville. This is a textbook case of retail leakage: service demands stay in Lafayette while taxable spending leaves it. Before any annexation is considered, the City should publish a full accounting of infrastructure extension costs, roadway improvements, and added police, fire, parks, and public works burden — costs that would outlast any short-term revenue from building permits

Community character. The Comprehensive Plan calls for intentional growth that reinforces Lafayette's identity. This site does the opposite: geographically and functionally, it belongs to the Louisville-Boulder corridor, not to Lafayette's established neighborhoods near Old Town. It is difficult to see how annexing it constitutes a "logical extension" of the city rather than an isolated outpost. Approving a project of this scale would undercut the Commission's own prior findings and years of community input insisting that Lafayette's western boundary remain a buffer, not a bridge, against becoming an extension of Boulder. A drive west on Baseline past the railroad tracks makes clear this proposal would leapfrog the City's otherwise consistent focus on contiguous development. The new Comprehensive Plan doesn't erase that history, and it doesn't resolve Baseline Road's traffic constraints, either. The City's own Zoning Conversion Map shows this is a classic "flagpole" or "cherry-stem" annexation — a pattern that studies consistently show costs cities more in services than it returns in property tax revenue (see attached links).

Open space and habitat. Four separate jurisdictions — City of Lafayette, Boulder County, Louisville, and City of Boulder — have already purchased and protected wildlife and buffer land adjacent to this property. The two ditches crossing the site, along with surrounding social trails, provide an increasingly rare migration corridor, wildlife habitat, and recreational resource. We encourage anyone weighing this proposal to see it in person before deciding.

Considering annexation on the strength of a preliminary design is putting the cart before the horse, and a poor use of city resources. Has the developer — or the City — completed an annexation impact report, utility-capacity analysis, fiscal impact study, or traffic study measured against the new Comprehensive Plan's priorities? If this project doesn't align with the City's own goals, and the developer hasn't shown it can, why is annexation on the table at all?

The burden of proof belongs with the applicant. Until transparent analyses of infrastructure capacity, fiscal impact, transportation effects, and community character are provided, any consideration of this annexation is premature.

Thank you for weighing these concerns, which we believe are shared by many Lafayette residents and voters.

References:

Resident Letter:

I am writing regarding a recent application for annexation and rezoning submitted by developer Jack Bestall for the property located at 8600 Baseline Rd. I understand that he applied for annexation on June 16th and announced this at the June 24th Planning Commission meeting. Please note that I’m not positive that I understand this process completely, so if it is premature to be expressing my input at this time, please forgive me. This process is confusing.

My home of 18 years is in the Nyland Cohousing community, located directly west of 8600 Baseline. I do not speak on behalf of Nyland, I’m only speaking for myself, but I can tell you that you will be hearing from many area residents as this process unfolds.

I’m extremely concerned about the possible annexation of this property. I caught wind of this possibility several months ago, and I have been tracking this, along with many concerned area residents (NOT just people who live at Nyland). We’ve recently learned that this application has been submitted, and I want to state in no uncertain terms that I feel this property should not be annexed, for all the same reasons that were stated in the staff report from 2018 when a different developer attempted to annex and build a much smaller project. I realize that there is a new comprehensive plan (parts of which are a work in progress, if I understand this correctly, especially the Land Use Code), and I sincerely hope that the current staff, planning commission, and City Council will see that a development of 185 units (the figure Jack Besthall presented in his Pre-Application meeting) would be detrimental to this area. The last developer was only planning to build 66 or 88 units. Area residents turned out in droves to write in and speak at public meetings, and it got shot down in a 7-0 vote. Droves will turn up again.

My main reasons for opposing this annexation are as follows:

  1. Impact on traffic flow (near railroad tracks on the skinny part of Baseline, next to water plant)
  2. Impact on evacuation routes/fire safety (we are in a higher-risk area in this section of Baseline, per Fire Chief’s report)
  3. Cost to Lafayette of providing utilities, especially sewer, a huge infrastructure investment of our tax dollars
  4. Limited potential sales tax revenue (people here tend to shop in Louisville and Boulder, not Lafayette)
  5. Incongruous nature of higher-density housing in this rural zone (“cherry stem” annexation)
  6. Impact on wildlife (abuts Open Space on two sides)
  7. Impact on quality of life (abuts Open Space on two sides)

A couple of quotes from the prior staff report:

P. 14: “Due to the design of this project, staff believes a good number of existing habitat areas will be negatively impacted. This sentiment is also echoed by the City of Lafayette Open Space Advisory Committee (LOSAC), Louisville Open Space Advisory Com, and Boulder County Open Space staff.”
Pages 17/18: “…will not enhance the quality of life for current or future residents.” Does not provide a “compatible transition to existing neighborhoods.”

I realize that the slow-growth initiative that was in place a few years ago no longer applies, but all of those same concerns still apply today. This property is NOT the best place to build.

A small history piece that you may be unaware of. When property owner Steven Tzap purchased 8600 Baseline two years ago, he was in conversation with a few people from the IDD (Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities) community about building a SMALL residential community, surrounded by lots of land in a nice rural setting, maybe to include a little farming and some equestrian therapy. A few of those IDD community parents came to take a tour of Nyland to see what we’ve created here on our land, which is how I know about this history. I gave them the tour. I thought that was great, and so did many of my neighbors. We would have welcomed that with open arms. But somewhere along the line, the plan seems to have morphed into a much larger (and undoubtedly more lucrative) residential development with a little IDD housing thrown in to help get a proposal to pass. The IDD community parents were devastated when they learned of this change.

You will be hearing from MANY concerned parties if this moves forward, as was the case last time. It is our hope that the Planning Commission will stop this in its tracks, as happened in 2018.

When we heard about this possible development a few months ago, one of my friends started a petition on Change.Org. This petition now has over 2300 signatures of individuals who oppose this annexation and development, so I know that we are not alone in opposing this. If annexation is approved, we will definitely challenge it. Getting the needed 3% to send it to the voters of Lafayette will not be hard for us. I deeply hope that staff/commission/council can see that this particular property is the wrong place to build.

Please decline this annexation.