Public Amenities Committee - Regular Meeting

Welcome back to this bi-weekly meeting of the South Platte River Committee of Denver City Council. Join us for the discussion as the South Platte River Committee starts now.

Good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for joining us. This is the South Platte Committee, July 22nd, 2026. I'm Councilwoman Torres. I represent West Denver District 3. We have one action item today. Before we get to that presentation, let's do introductions, and I'll start with anyone online.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Kevin Flynn, Southwest Denver District 2.

Thank you so much. And that's it? Okay. We'll go around the room for council members. I'll start on my right.

Laura Alvarez, Lucky District 7. Amanda Sandoval, Northwest Denver District 1.

Darren Watson, Fine District 9. Great. Thank you so much. Our item today is a permit to KSE LLC, parking LLC, about a right-of-way encroachment permit. So I'll turn it over to Stephen and Andy. Please introduce yourselves and take it away.

Good afternoon, and thank you for having us here this afternoon to present the Tier 3 right-of-way encroachment for the Wynkoop Crossing Bridge.

I'm Andy Rockmore. I'm principal at SAR Architects. I reside at 1550 Wynkoop Street in Denver.

I think I forgot that part. So Stephen Wilson, Community Planning and Development. Thank you. That's great. So I have just a couple of slides. So today's request is to allow the wine group crossing bridge to cross Speer Boulevard. And so through the Department of Transportation and Infrastructure, this is called a tier three encroachment, and it's only allowed with approval. So the location of the Wynkoop Crossing Bridge, although I think we're mostly familiar with it, I'll still do some recap. So it's approximately halfway between Wewata Street and Auraria Parkway, and it's indicated by the red arrow on the slide. And it will connect the Phase 1A of the Ball Arena redevelopment with the bridge circulation on the Cherry Creek side on the area that's currently a parking lot. The right-of-way encroachment is approximately 169 feet wide, and it goes entirely across the span of Speer Boulevard. And as you can see in the plan, the area that it covers, the encroachment area is represented with the blue polygon that's on the screen. So there is one other future council action that I'll cover, just identify now so that you're familiar with it. But there is a portion of a right-of-way vacation that'll happen along the, there's proposed for along the parking lot area and then also along a portion of the downtown playground. And if approved, that vacation will right-size the right-of-way so that it's a correct width all up and down Spirit Boulevard. That will be a separate request. And then I'm pointing it out now because we have anticipated that with this tier three encroachment and the tier three encroachment will automatically adjust if that right-of-way vacation is approved. In terms of project highlights, so the bridge is an opportunity to provide much needed connection between the future ball arena redevelopment and the historic downtown, lower downtown neighborhood. The bridge will have a 5% slope maximum. So as we talked about in previous meetings, there will be no elevators. It will be just stairs and ramps. As I mentioned, it's a suspended bridge that spans all the way across Spear Boulevard. It will enter into a promenade level, second level space on the Ball Arena Phase 1A development and then transition down to the entry level for Ball Arena. And then the bridge will maintain 20 feet clear height from Spear Boulevard so that maintenance of existing and future utilities can be done underneath the bridge with typical equipment. So that's just the highlights on the presentation. So South Platte River Committee anticipated, and then it would go through its typical process. So here today with me, we have Andy Rockmore, the architect for the bridge. so we could go over any of the slides that we presented previously. Are there any questions? And then we also do have Jason Proskovic, who could answer questions about the construction of the bridge. Matt Mahoney, who could answer questions about anything with the developer or the district.

Great. Thank you. Okay. Thank you so much. Let me acknowledge Council President Romero-Campbell has also joined us online and I'll open up the queue for any questions. I'll jump in and let folks kind of ruminate on the project. Stephen, thank you. Stephen, can you go back to the right-of-way vacation and what that includes when that comes back to us?

Yeah. The right-of-way vacation will include, so from the edge of Volker Lofts, there's sort of a triangular portion, and it will be roughly parallel to the sidewalk. Oh, got it. So typically in right-of-ways, you know, the roadway center line and then the curb and gutter and then the sidewalk are all typically parallel. In this instance, because beer volatility Boulevard is very old. The configuration along the edge there is inconsistent, and so the vacation would make that more consistent.

Okay. What's the vacation there for, or what's the right-of-way purpose now?

The area that's to be vacated. Yes. So children's playground goes over a portion of that now. And then part of the parking lot goes over a portion of that now. Okay.

So we're including the territory of it even though it hasn't been vacated yet. Once it gets vacated, it just becomes a part of the permitted area. Correct. Okay. Yep. Okay. Thank you. Councilwoman Alvarez.

Thank you, Committee Chair. My question is that the permit is revocable. So what does that look like and when would we revoke that permit?

That's a great question. And in terms of the mechanism, there are sort of three different levels for allowances in the right-of-way. They're all revocable. And we have other... permanent structures in the right of way in the city, like bridges or catwalks that have the same condition. So I think it's the typical condition. And actually, I'll ask Karen. We have Karen from DOTI. I don't know if there's anything you could add to it, but I think it's a typical DOTI process.

It's just normal for it to be revocable is what I'm understanding.

Yes, there's nothing different about this one. I covered it OK.

And just to clarify, as we've talked about in different hearings about the same or different issues with the same structure, is that any maintenance going forward will be by the maintenance district, correct?

By the Metropolitan district, I mean, thank you.

Yes, that's all I have. Thank you. Great. Councilman heights.

Thank you, Committee Chair. I want to thank CPD for considering some changes to the Tier 3 encroachment process. I'm glad that we have the opportunity to consider these. Since I joined Council, we did say no to one Tier 3 encroachment right after I started, which was in my district, and we had consideration about a second one. I don't know if we ended up saying no to that. But at any rate, the Tier 3 encroachments are rather standard. I don't know if we've... Actually, maybe this is a question for CBD. Have we ever... revoked a tier, well in the last decade, not ever, revoked a tier three encroachment against the wishes of the encroachment holder? I think the answer is no, but we have.

Thank you for answering my question.

Thank you, committee chair.

Thank you.

Miraculous memory holder.

No, I'm like, that was so fast.

Council members have to follow.

Sorry. I'm not sorry, but I've just, during my council presidency, Dottie had come to me numerous times asking me to change these tier three encroachments, wanting to actually not have them anymore. and wanting to streamline them and wanting to not have them come through the city council process. And I'll just say publicly that I'm not about relinquishing any of our rights. I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to do that. And as long as I'm on city council, I feel like we should be using these tier three encroachments to have dialogue. And in this case, actually, this tier three encroachment had us discover, had we not had to go through this, Councilman Torres and I wouldn't have been at the table as much into figuring out that we actually didn't own the land and we had to actually buy the land and that we had a lot of things going on and so I am a fan of keeping tier three encroachments under the purview of City Council and so I had to do this whole exercise Councilmember Hines of which ones have been denied and not and that's the most recent one I also asked you all to deny one not this class but I asked you all to deny one during COVID in my because it was in Highland and it was egregious and the neighborhood didn't want it. And that was my only way of leveraging with the developer to get something different. It didn't end up coming for us, but I was lobbying for you all to have, if it had, to vote it down. So I think that this is a good mechanism that we have to be able to get different outcomes when it comes to development in our right of way that we have purview over. So that's why I just, that's been at the forefront of my mind because I've been asked numerous times to look if I would be open up exploring getting rid of this under council's purview. And as council president, I was like, absolutely not. You can vet it through my colleagues and vote count around me, but I will be a no. So with that, Just want to say that thank you all for working with us. Thank you all for having this. I really appreciate you in this being an action item on today's agenda because I don't think we have tier three encroachments always come to city council. This one I was, again, worried about is I have to Councilmember Hines, I know you and I have commiserated about this at committee a lot. Bridges are a really good asset. And then they can be really, really challenging on our community if they're not built right, if they're not thoughtfully cared for. And so to your point, it's an encroachment. How do we, like revocable, how does it get revoked? I don't know. I've never experienced that before. I just have had to go through the whole, when the small cell towers, which aren't small, they're really big in our neighborhoods. Those were all tier three encroachments as well. And that's when I really dug into tier three encroachments when I was working for Council Member Espinosa. And they said they wouldn't make noise. The one across the street from me makes tons of noise. It's really pain. I don't love it. So, but back to this one at hand. I really appreciate all of the outreach you all have done. I appreciate that in the IGA that we got a copy of for the last committee that you all will be responsible for this. I'm glad that we cleaned up the entitlement so that when you go back we're not sitting around this table that the entitlement work will show who is responsible for what and that this is a mechanism for us to be able to understand what is being built within the city and county of Denver right away and that it for some reason it's a mechanism that comes to City Council it's a tool that we have and I will say that maybe it has stopped some of them like it is a Going through the legislative process, I understand, adds time to it. And sometimes time can be utilized in a different way. I think that we actually utilized this time and found some things that had we not done all of this due diligence, it wouldn't have come to fruition the way it had. You all would have been in a really hard place had we known that Union Pacific owned that land. How do you do a Tier 3 encroachment on land that's not in the city and county of Denver? So I really do believe that this is... Has been utilized the way that it should be and I'm a fan of having these come before this body So that it can remain a checks and balance and I don't have any concerns. I think the Once you I forgot about the vacation forgot about that. So thank you for reminding me that one question I have is that in the queue right now? Is that going through the agency processes? Yes, so I could look it up on Acela So I'll look it up and make sure I don't have any on how those verge together. I don't have any concerns right now, but I forgot about that vacation. So I'll check that out before it comes to the floor and make sure anything, any questions I have, I'll send them your way. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you. Yeah. The other one that we, the second termers voted on tonight was on exposition.

On exposition.

There's a wall that we said no to.

And then I think there was going to be one on Uwada and Ballpark. Remember when they were going to vacate and then they were going to encroach in the right of way? That was going to be a problem.

They're not guaranteed for sure. Andy, can you or somebody from your team talk to me a little bit about timeline and what construction would look like on this?

Yes. In a sense of that. Defer to Jason. Good afternoon. Jason Proskovec with Kiewit. I'm an area manager and also project director for this project. And of course, we're going through the design process right now and getting through those gates, which is pretty important. We're currently looking to start the shaft construction in march of next year so the shafts are nine foot diameter deep shafts on both sides of the bridge and then there's a huge buttress concrete buttress on the ball side really this this arch has thrust it's really thrusting in one direction so that huge buttress really takes a lot of that load and after we do the foundations then we'll put what we call a false deck over spear so it's really a bridge to build the bridge and that really is for public safety and also you know the it will also support the arch so there'll be columns coming out of this false deck that will really support that arch then you put the arch up and then you have the cable hangers coming down And then we actually build a precast deck on this false deck in concrete. And then we'll do the closure pours. And then we tie the suspension cables to the deck. And then we slowly, we call it guitar tuning, Stephen, right? Then we slowly put the load into that arch and remove that false deck from the bridge. And then remove the false deck, and then we have a bridge. It's like that simple. I'm sure it is. Can you tell me a little bit about traffic flow? Yeah, so on Spear, that will be a challenge that we're working through, through street occupancy and with the team. You know, we will... need to close directions of spear down from time to time just to install this false deck. And also when we're installing the major components of the arch, I mean, these are huge structural steel components, around 500 tons of steel. in that in that arch structure um so we'll have to work with you know with street occupancy with the city to figure out the right times to close a direction of spear for you know for some time um there will be some night work We will try to limit that. I mean, we're well aware of the noise variance process and have worked with that before in the past. So there's still a lot of things to work through. But ultimately, public safety and traffic safety is paramount to us in making sure that we can work together to construct this bridge safely.

And I'm having a hard time visualizing the medians from Auraria Parkway all the way up to like the Zuni or I-25 area. You're not able to keep two-way continuity? You have to fully close one direction or the other?

From time to time, yeah. And on a daily basis, I mean almost daily basis, we will need to have a right lane or left lane or center lane closure just to facilitate getting construction equipment and concrete and things like that in and out of Speer because we want to be good neighbors for Volker Lolfs and that community as well. So yeah, that part of the plan is still under development and we'll work closely with the city throughout that.

One request that I'd make for particularly, I'm thinking Councilwoman Sandoval, Councilman Hines and myself, whose districts I think that most directly touches. If you can keep in touch with us about what traffic changes are going to look like during construction, because we'll likely be seeing calls come through that we want to be able to say this will be the case for this period of time or there's a point of contact at Queue-It that we encourage you to contact, like just things like that so we're prepared for any resident impact in advance.

Yeah, very, very helpful there to communicate with y'all and also having a, you know, robust public information, right? So people know two weeks ahead of time, you know, month ahead of time when things are going to happen so they can plan, you know, their life around what's going on.

Okay. All right. Well, this will be an interesting. Councilman Sandoval.

So where will you do staging? So the precast concrete has to come staged somewhere. Will you be using ballerina land to stage all, because there's going to be heavy equipment coming in. Where will you, because I... Is it the sequencing, the bridge has to be built and then the land is going to be developed or it's all happening at once?

They work together. They do work together. So really that first buttress abutment is on the development side. Yeah. And so we have our own shoring that we work together with the vertical teams. Yeah. to get that constructed, but then everything starts to get really tight, to your point, right? And, you know, the precast will come from an off-site precast facility, and we'll try, you know, most of our just-in-time deliveries is what we call them, and have many staging areas within the ball arena property, because space it will be very, very tight. But very, very solid logistics for daily deliveries of what we need to get the project completed.

Okay, thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Jason. Thank you. I don't have any other questions in queue. With that, I'll take a motion and a second. Motion by Councilwoman Sandoval. Second by Councilman Hines. Everybody okay moving this forward?

Yeah. Thank you.

Councilwoman, Council President Romero-Campbell. Yes. Thank you. Thumbs up. Okay. This moves forward to the floor. Thank you all so much. Appreciate it. We have one, two items on consent. If you have any questions, come to me or Alyssa. Thank you, everybody. Thank you, George.