Plans OK’d for 352 new Broomfield apartments

BROOMFIELD — A plan to build a new 352-unit apartment community along Wadsworth Boulevard in Broomfield cleared a key hurdle this week as the city and county’s Planning and Zoning Commission consented to the project and moved it along to the Broomfield City Council for final approval.

The development, known as Wadsworth Station, calls for a two-phased community — 276 units in the first phase and 76 more in the second — of studio, one-, two- and three-bedroom units to be built on a vacant, roughly 20-acre site at the southeast corner of Wadsworth Boulevard and West 116th Avenue.

Boulder’s Mountain View LLC, led by Jeffery Sanders, is Wadsworth Station’s developer. The firm also developed the Mountain View at Palisade Park apartment complex nearby in Broomfield. 

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Sanders said he’s been working with planning staff for two years to get the Wadsworth Station project off the ground. 

Earlier plans included a workforce housing element aimed at serving those who earn less than 80% of the area median income, Sanders said. During conversations with Broomfield’s Housing Advisory Committee, he said it became clear that the board was more interested in traditional affordable housing for those earning less than 60% of AMI. 

Eventually both of those options were scrapped in favor of Mountain View making a cash-in-lieu payment of more than $2 million to avoid affordable housing requirements altogether.

The developer’s plans for some of the community’s buildings directly abutting the busy Wadsworth Boulevard concerned some on the Planning and Zoning Commission.

“I’m not thrilled with having [one of the buildings in phase 2 of the project] right up against the street,” commissioner Jennifer Mickelson said. 

Commissioner Jake Carias had a different take and noted that he “love[s] transit-oriented developments.”

“If you’re creating an urban environment where everyone is a bit closer together, the traffic flow [in front of apartments close to the roadway] isn’t so bothersome,” he said.