Capitol Hill Church Allowed to Turn Parking Lot Into Housing After Changes to Planned Height

First Baptist, located at 1373 Grant Street, owns a neighboring 18,750-square-foot parking lot and has spent more than a year trying to get approval to convert it into an apartment complex. The problem: It’s situated in Denver’s Civic Center Historic District, where the Landmark Preservation Commission calls the shots.

At a hearing on May 2, church leaders found out that their proposal was denied, but not dead entirely.

First Baptist was asked to make changes to the plans, including decreasing the height and size of the project, and then ask the LPC for a re-evaluation. At a hearing on July 25, church leaders were able to finally convince the commission to let them go move on to the next phase of planning.

“We’re excited,” says First Baptist property chairman Kenton Kuhn.

The church’s parking lot is located in a zoning district that allows for mixed-use development with a height limit of eight stories — but church leaders had hoped to take full advantage of the Expanding Affordable Housing policy that Denver City Council passed in 2022 to get around that standard. The policy allows developers to increase heights if a structure includes a certain amount of affordable housing.

Under that policy, First Baptist would be allowed to build twelve stories if at least 10 percent of the building’s units were affordable. However, because the project falls in a historic district, it needed approval from the LPC first.

At the May 2 hearing, the commission said it was shooting down the church’s twelve-story proposal because of its “overwhelming mass.” During the July 25 hearing, one LPC member, Gary Petri, said he had issues with the nine-story development, too, but approved the updated plans anyway.

“This is a substantial improvement from the past application, but it is still a massive building on a street with buildings that are much smaller-scale,” Petri said. Despite his “strong reservations” and the commission’s initial ruling, LPC members unanimously approved the new proposal.

First Baptist plans to use the money it generates from the development project to fund current and future initiatives aimed at helping the community, including providing affordable housing. “Our whole reason for doing this is, at the end when it’s built, the income will help us do two things, and that’s establish a foundation to continue the mission of the church and to help people in Denver with shelter and hunger,” Kuhn explains.

The church’s mission, according to its website, is to be a “center of activity for Capitol Hill where people of all walks of life and systems of belief can experience conversations rooted in hope and filled with a passion to serve the needs of the broader community.” Because the development proposal has been reduced to nine stories, Kuhn says that First Baptist won’t realize as much economic gain, but “it will still be a great help for the mission of the church.”

First Baptist currently hosts one of Denver’s safe outdoor parking areas for people living in their cars. Kuhn says the church plans to continue hosting the SafeLot for as long as possible, at least until construction begins on the development project — which is at least a year away.

Now that the church has the LPC’s approval, it must get an okay from Denver’s Department of Community Planning & Development and complete a more comprehensive architectural design. That design will then go before the landmark commission one last time..

Since the CPD already gave the project preliminary approval before it sent church leaders to the LPC, Kuhn says he anticipates that things will go smoothly.

“We are excited to have cleared this task, and we are moving forward with all of the other tasks that will need to be done,” he tells Westword. “We’re very grateful for the help of the city staff. Without their help, we wouldn’t have gotten the approval that we did.”