Coronavirus Update
Public Health References
CDC * Colorado * Jefferson County * City of Golden
Jefferson County’s case count page says that as of 3PM yesterday, there were 1,805 cases in Jefferson County (up from 1,793). There have been 94 deaths (unchanged) and 313 are hospitalized (unchanged). There are 147 known cases in Golden (unchanged).
The Safer at Home protocol is now in effect. Check the City’s site to learn more about what that entails. Everyone is still requested to wear a mask that covers the nose and mouth when leaving the house. City and County fire restrictions are in place. Clear Creek is closed to all recreational activities. The heart on Mt. Zion has turned back into an M!
Virtual Golden
6:30-7:25AM Virtual Dynamic Circuit
9-10AM Virtual Power Training
11-11:30AM Virtual Fit Family Fun
10:15AM Spanish Story Time with the Library
6PM Telephone Town Hall with Congressman Ed Perlmutter
6:30PM Golden Urban Renewal Authority Meeting
GURA will discuss the redesign of 8th Street and hear a construction undate on the Base Camp (Briarwood) project. Staff will update them on the COVID-19 loan program. GURA and the DDA jointly committed to offer $1 million in loans to help certain types of Golden businesses through the COVID crisis. Applications were due on May 5th and only $502,046 was requested.
GURA had planned to subsidize rents to ensure that new construction (such as Basecamp/Briarwood) includes some affordable units. They are concluding that these new apartments will be too expensive for GURA to subsidize. Therefore, GURA may instead consider subsidizing “existing” apartments.
When City Council changed our comprehensive plan to say that 45% of our housing should be affordable (in varying degrees), they stated that this affordable housing would be distributed throughout the city, so that we didn’t have concentrations of “affordable” or low-income housing. That means that more expensive areas such as the Base Camp/Briarwood development would need to absorb some of that type of housing. Now they’re concluding that subsidizing these new apartments would be economically infeasible.
Since the Comprehensive Plan was changed in November of 2017, Golden has added many new (and increasingly expensive) apartments and townhouses. None of them have included affordable housing, and it seems this new development won’t either.
Tonight’s meeting packet says, “…while the developer was (and is) willing to enter into a rent buy-down agreement to provide some affordable units, the GURA board was concerned that the gap between the rent affordable for a targeted household income range and the market rent of this brand new product would make such an agreement in this location less productive than a similar agreement for existing units.”
Where will those “existing units” be–in the older neighborhoods? Will we put more affordable housing in the Central Neighborhoods, along with the two Jefferson County Housing Authority projects?
Do we still plan to ensure that all neighborhoods absorb a share of affordable housing, or will we continue to discover that expensive neighborhoods are, in fact, too expensive to include affordable housing?
Golden History Moment
For those of you who don’t check email over the weekend, on Saturday I posted a then-and-now photo of Lookout Mountain & Mt. Zion. On Sunday, I wrote about 1920, when we were trying to change our disreputable ways.
Here’s some recent Golden History: Rotary Club of Golden members built the Rotary Amphitheater along Clear Creek during the summer and fall of 2004. It was a special project to celebrate Rotary International’s centennial year, 2005. Think of that the next time you stroll by it!
