Redtail Ridge taking baby steps through Louisville approval process, still no vote

LOUISVILLE — After more than five hours of questions and testimony from staff and developers — the fourth time in the last two months such a hearing has been held — the Louisville City Council has still not held a vote to approve development plans for the Redtail Ridge project. 

City leaders held a special meeting Tuesday evening in hopes of getting to a vote, but public comment and discussion about a slew of potential conditions that could be placed on the development took the meeting to nearly midnight. The plan review was continued to a future meeting tentatively scheduled for Sept. 21. 

Denver-based developer Brue Baukol Capital Partners LLC is attempting to transform the long-vacant, former Phillips 66 (NYSE: PSX) site next to U.S. Highway 36 into a large-scale mixed-used commercial development with about 3 million square feet of new construction.

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Concerns about traffic, sustainability and the quality and quantity of open space on the site have been raised by community members and city leaders throughout the process. 

This is Brue Baukol’s second bite at the apple.

Initially, the company sought to turn the parcel into a 5.22 million-square-foot live-work development anchored by a new corporate campus for medical-device maker Medtronic Inc. and a roughly 1,500-home senior-living community operated by Erickson Living LLC. Additional planned components included offices, retail space and apartments. 

Medtronic skipped town for a nearby site in Lafayette, and locals spoke out against the housing portion of the project, arguing that thousands of new residents would strain city resources and exacerbate traffic congestion.

“There is likely no perfect development plan that will satisfy everybody’s interests and opinions,” Councilman Jeff Lipton said Tuesday.

Prior to council discussion Tuesday, Brue Baukol co-founder Geoff Baukol said the company is willing to consider a series of concessions aimed at alleviating some concern.

Those concessions include adding 20 acres of open space to the more than 60 acres already committed to that purpose, agreeing not to build a gas station on site, realigning Campus Drive to ensure a smooth flow of traffic when additional cars are added to the transportation network on site, and increasing the commitment for the creation of solar power from two megawatts to three. 

“We’ve made meaningful changes,” Baukol said of the revised proposal.

Still, members of Louisville City Council are pushing for more.

Through a prolonged series of informal straw polls taken Tuesday, city leaders have begun to amass a list of proposed conditions to be placed on the development plan.

Those include much of what Brue Baukol has indicated that it will agree to, plus others related to further limits on total commercial square footage, increased green-building standards and commitments to pay for certain infrastructure improvements.

Louisville city attorney Kathleen Kelly said her staff will compile and review these conditions, which can be further modified, approved or rejected at a future meeting. 

“This is a healthy process. This process has made us better and made the development better,” Baukol said. “I really feel like the community should feel good about the fingerprints it has on this development.”