Louisville officials move toward repealing Redtail Ridge approval

LOUISVILLE — After a citizen petition forced the Louisville City Council to reconsider its decision to approve plans for the large-scale Redtail Ridge development proposal or send the matter to a special vote of the residents, Louisville leaders opted Tuesday night to start the process of repealing their approval. 

The Louisville City Council, on a 4-3 vote, approved an ordinance on first reading that would roll back their approval of Denver-based developer Brue Baukol Capital Partners LLC plans to build as many as 3 million square feet of office, industrial and flexible-use buildings at the long-vacant, former Phillips 66 (NYSE: PSX) site off U.S. Highway 36. 

The council, which has a slightly different makeup than it did prior to the November election, had previously approved the project with the same 4-3 margin. 

Mayor Ashley Stolzmann joined councilmembers Kyle Brown, Maxine Most (a new councilwoman) and Chris Leh in favor of repealing approval.

Councilmembers Dennis Maloney, Deborah Fahey and Caleb Dickinson voted against the move.

Had the dissenters prevailed, the council had pledged to vote unanimously in favor of sending the question to voters in a special election in April.

Tuesday’s decision prolongs the already nearly two-year long approval process Brue Baukol has endured in an effort to get Redtail Ridge off the ground. 

After more than a year of hearings and several iterations of the plans, the project was approved by the Louisville City Council in late September.

Throughout the city’s development-plan approval process, which was put on hold last year after city leaders balked at the scope of the ambitious proposal at the roughly 400-acre site that formerly housed the Storage Technology Corp. headquarters, concerns have been raised both by officials and residents about loss of open space, economic viability, traffic congestion and environmental degradation. 

The City Council placed a series of conditions on the approval of the plans such as a 3-million-square-foot cap on development, increased public-land dedications and a minimum of three megawatts of solar power on site.

While these conditions were enough to initially win over the support of a majority of the council, some in Louisville remained unconvinced. 

Almost immediately after the project was approved, opponents began circulating a petition seeking to overturn the decision.

The petition garnered more than 700 signatures, nearly double the amount required by the city. 

A second reading of the ordinance to repeal the Redtail Ridge approval is tentatively set for Dec. 21. A public hearing will be held prior to a vote on second reading and a final vote on the matter will be held early next year.

Should the ordinance pass, Redtail Ridge’s developers will be sent back to the drawing board. 

Brue Baukol, which purchased the roughly 400-acre property in December 2020 for $34.93 million, “is committed to restoring this abandoned site into a sustainable space that can meet the needs of Louisville’s residents and businesses for generations to come,” company co-founder Geoff Baukol said in a statement provided to BizWest.

Discussion prior to Tuesday’s City Council vote centered not on the merits of the project but on the responsibilities of the board and the rights of the electorate. 

“We should let the citizens speak on this,” Maloney said, summing up the arguments made by those who opposed repealing the City Council’s prior approval. “To do anything else would be out of bounds of the referendum process.”

Several council members referred to a “vocal minority” of city voters who pushed the council to reconsider its approval. This phrasing was met with derision by residents during a public comment session. 

That vocal minority doesn’t speak for the entirety of the community, and the council ought not reverse itself on the whim of fewer than 1,000 signatories of a petition, some city leaders said. 

“The people have been speaking,” Sherry Sommer, one of the petition’s organizers and a former Louisville City Council candidate, said during public comment. “We’ve been writing, collecting signatures and working hard.”

Stolzmann noted that the City Council may be in a better position to re-evaluate the issue than the general public, due to the complexity of the proposal and the city’s land-use code. Council members, presumably unlike the average voter, have sat through more than a dozen hours of hearings on Redtail Ridge and have spent many more studying documents related to the project. 

“I know the work will be done, but it’s a lot of work to be put onto the community,” she said of a potential ballot measure. 

Leh said, “Frankly I don’t like either option,” but opted for what he considered to be the lesser of two evils and voted in favor of repeal on procedural grounds. 

“A quasi-judicial process [in which the City Council applies the strict criteria of city code to a specific development application rather than judging a project based on an individual’s opinion of its merits] isn’t a popularity contest,” he said, therefore the issue is better suited for address by the City Council rather than a special election. 

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