Louisville planning leaders punt on Redtail Ridge decision after hours-long hearing

LOUISVILLE — After nearly four hours of presentations and public comment, Louisville’s Planning Commission opted to put off a decision on approval of development plans for Redtail Ridge, a massive project that would transform the long-vacant Phillips 66 property.

The board, which heard speaker after speaker Thursday voice concerns about the scope of the development, will pick up its public hearing and issue its verdict on June 25.

Denver-based Brue Baukol Capital Partners seeks is to develop the roughly 400-acre property that formerly housed the corporate headquarters for Storage Technology Corp. 

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The Redtail Ridge comprehensive plan and general development plan amendment request includes up to 5,886,000 gross square feet of building area and 2,236 multi-family residential units.

In May, Brue Baukol announced plans to scale back density. Those plans called for a total of 5.22 million square feet of new construction, down from previous plans of 6.4 million square feet. Of that current total, 2.25 million is planned for office uses, 1.8 million for a roughly 1,500-home senior-living community operated by Erickson Living LLC, 200,000 for hotels, 70,000 for retail and 900,000 for residential rental units. 

Medical-device maker Medtronic Inc. is expected to be the development’s first major office user. 

The company is planning a $133 million, 500,000-square-foot corporate campus on 90 to 100 acres. The new facility would create 500 to 1,000 new jobs in addition to the existing 500 employees already working in Louisville.

If all goes according to plan, construction could start this fall and the campus could be fully occupied by 2022, Medtronic facilities director Jim Driessen said.

A planned unit development request from Medtronic was on Thursday’s Planning Commission agenda, however that item was postponed to the board’s June 25 meeting due to time constraints.

One of the concerns about Redtail Ridge expressed frequently by members of the public is increased traffic congestion.

“Of course reactivating the site will increase traffic in and out of the site,” Brue Baukol vice president Jordan Swisher said.

But, she added, improvements to the roadway infrastructure and encouragement of alternative modes of transportation is expected to mitigate those traffic impacts. 

Specifically, the developer’s proposal calls for the extension and expansion of Campus Drive, expansion of Rockcress Drive, formerly Tape Drive, to include a stretch of four-lane arterial roadway and a two-lane collector street, and the addition of two new north-south collector streets. 

In addition to new roadways, Brue Baukol plans a series of public parks and trails. 

Brue Baukol would be on the hook for these infrastructure costs, estimated to total $95 million or more. 

Redtail Ridge will not add additional tax burden for existing Louisville residents, Baukol pledged.

The developer anticipates more than $5 million in near-term annual tax revenue when phase one — the Medtronic campus and the senior living campus — comes online. 

“This development has been crafted alongside the community — that’s the only way,” Baukol said. 

Another concern involves the potential for new construction to block existing views, particularly of the Flatirons to the west. The maximum height proposed by Brue Baukol is five stories. 

“For a lot of people, the concern comes down to ‘it’s just too big,’” planning commissioner Tom Rice said in reference to density and building size.  

Public comments from more than a dozen local people provided during Thursday’s meeting and submitted via email to Louisville leaders reflect these concerns.

“There’s really a lot to like about this project. The presence of Medtronic and its continuing presence in Louisville is perhaps tops among those,” said Bob Muckle, Louisville resident and former mayor. But “outside of the Medtronic and the Erickson component, it just seems too big.”

Not all commenters spoke in opposition to the project.

Avista Adventist Hospital CEO Isaac Sendros highlighted the importance of supporting a major primary employer like Medtronic. 

“This project would solidify its presence for years to come,” he said.

Should the Brue Baukol plans come to fruition, the Louisville site will see its first occupants in more than a decade. 

“Even if you’ve lived in Louisville your entire life, it’s possible that you’ve never stepped foot on this site,” Baukol said. “… Now it has the opportunity to become something beautiful and integrated into the Louisville community.”

Sun Microsystems Inc. acquired StorageTek in 2005 for $4.1 billion, and the workers from that company eventually were moved to Sun’s Broomfield campus. Sun was later acquired by Oracle Corp. in 2010.

In 2008, Sun sold the 430-acre property to ConocoPhillips for $55.6 million. The energy company announced plans to build a clean-energy research campus that would eventually create 7,000 jobs. But the subsequent spinoff of Phillips 66 (NYSE: PSX) from ConocoPhillips brought an end to those plans, and the property was put on the market.

The land was one of the sites submitted by the state of Colorado as a potential location for the Amazon HQ2 project, with the land under contract to Bancroft Capital. That deal never materialized.