PLEASE only sign this petition if you live in Louisville, Colorado.

The City of Louisville is in the process of developing small area plans for the South Boulder Road and McCaslin Boulevard corridors.  The decisions made in this process will irrevocably shape the future of Louisville.  If we want to prevent more crowding, maintain our small town character and fiscal sustainability, the City Council should not vote for additional high-density housing.  Please sign this petition to let the City Council know you want to prevent redefining the Louisville we cherish.

Louisville has recently approved vast amounts of high-density housing. In the past few years around 1,000 high-density units have been constructed, approved for construction or are in the approval process.  The net affect of these actions and proposals will be to alter Louisville’s small town character and reputation as a great place to raise a family and retire. If we continue on this path we will have more crowding in our schools, streets, parks, open space and recreation center. 

To understand what is happening let us look at Louisville’s planning history.  For decades Louisville has had a Comprehensive Plan that calls for a balance of commercial and residential properties.   At the same time, Louisville chose to surround itself with open space to provide an enduring livable community knowing that it would eventually limit the size of our community. The plan has always been to provide a balance of housing types and to maintain a commercial tax base to offset the costs of providing services to the community.

We have now built out our residential zoning.  Since we do not have space for more residential units, there are some in the community that want to continue residential growth through densification.  To accomplish this, it is being proposed we rezone commercial property to allow for high-density residential.  This high density residential often masquerades as mixed use, but Louisville’s experience with mixed use is to have a small amount of commercial dominated by multi-story residential units.

Along with causing crowding, rezoning commercial property to allow high-density housing upsets the land use balance necessary for our fiscal sustainability.  This sustainability can only be maintained by having large-scale commercial developments.  It cannot be maintained by small-scale neighborhood retail in mixed-use projects. Our fiscal sustainability relies, for a large part, on having retail uses that attract non-resident spending.

The main question to be answered in the Small Area Plan process for South Boulder Road and McCaslin Boulevard is:  What do the citizens of Louisville want their city to be like now and into the future?  Please sign the petition and let the City Council know that you want our city to be fiscally responsible and to maintain its small town character.