Updates to controversial Downtown Superior project to be reviewed Monday

SUPERIOR — The developer behind the Coal Creek Innovation Campus in Downtown Superior — a controversial project that was initially given the nod last year by Superior town officials before a lawsuit and a rare approval repeal halted progress — is taking another bite at the apple. 

Superior master builder RC (Ranch Capital) Superior LLC and San Diego health care real estate developer PMB LLC have updated their plans for a mixed-use anchor for Downtown Superior near the intersection of McCaslin Boulevard and Main Street in hopes of assuaging concerns from neighbors and city officials who torpedoed the 2022 proposal over issues related to building heights and massing, exterior building aesthetics and market demand for office space. 

The updated plan from PMB, formerly known as Pacific Medical Buildings and one of the developers of the Superior Medical Center, a 60,000-square-foot facility that was one of downtown Superior’s first commercial projects, will be reviewed by Superior planning officials Monday evening. It calls for two life-sciences focused office-laboratory flex buildings, two large parking structures, hundreds of multi-family residential units and thousands of square feet of ground-level retail and restaurant spaces.

“This new final development plan aims to solve all of those prior concerns with a new design that provides a more balanced mix of uses, more consistent architecture and building articulation, new publicly accessible open spaces and commercial uses extending out to McCaslin Boulevard, and shorter buildings,” the developer said in a memo to Superior town planners. 

The first element of the new plan — referred to as Final Development Plan (FDP) 11 — encompasses two life-sciences buildings, one of 110,734 square feet and the other of 176,085 square feet; 6,636 square feet of commercial space spilling out onto Main Street

at the northwest corner of Main Street and Marshall Road; and a 193,431-square-foot parking garage with more than 600 spaces, according to the memo.

The biotech flex spaces would be “designed to provide a best-in-class offering for commercial life science tenants,” according to PMB. “… Companies occupying Downtown Superior are likely to be in early or growth stage research and development of new life-saving drugs, prosthetics, medical devices, or the ancillary study of biological data analysis or genomics. Large-scale manufacturing will not be conducted at Downtown Superior, as that requires (good manufacturing practice) space, which is more akin to a flex industrial building type. The anticipated tenant program is projected to be approximately 40% office space and 60% laboratory space.”

The two flex buildings could accommodate as many as about 900 workers, according to a PMB memo. 

The other element of PMB’s updated Downtown Superior plans — known as FDP 12 in planning documents — proposes a 302,000-square-foot, five-story, 270-unit apartment building, alongside an amenities area and small retail space. This portion of the project also includes “a 404-space parking garage to serve residents, guests, and public commercial customers,” Superior planning documents show. 

At nearly 950,000 square feet of total construction, the new proposal is significantly larger than the previous plan. The building-use types in the updated plans are more diverse as well. 

The 2022 plan for the Coal Creek Innovation Campus included four life-sciences-centric office and laboratory buildings totaling more than 366,000 square feet. PMB estimated development costs at $280 million, and said last year that the site could eventually house 1,200 workers. 

The approval process for this earlier iteration of the Downtown Superior proposal was unusual. 

After a sometimes contentious, four-plus-hour Superior Board of Trustees meeting in August 2022 — one that included a potential swing vote abandoning her post before casting a vote — the out-of-state developer was granted approval on a 3-2 vote to move forward with the Coal Creek Innovation Campus.

Then-Superior Trustee Laura Skladzinski, who attended the meeting virtually, logged out prior to casting what could have been a deciding vote.

Before leaving the Zoom meeting, Skladzinski spoke in opposition to the project, saying that she doesn’t believe that “the life sciences campus will activate downtown.” If Skladzinski’s non-vote were cast and recorded as a vote in opposition to the development, approval would have failed. 

In a blog post after the meeting, Skladzinski, who was not reelected last November, wrote that she “suspected a vote would be 4-2 in favor of the life-sciences campus being approved” and took issue with the board’s decision to extend the meeting beyond 11 p.m.

“As I have stressed repeatedly, it doesn’t make sense to extend board meetings late into the night – after a full day of work and five hours of the board meeting, our concentration and reasoning abilities are weak,” she wrote. “It’s also clear that extending our meetings encourages us to waste a lot of time in the beginning that could be spent on much more important issues.”

Skladzinski’s failure to vote cast doubt on the legitimacy of the board’s decision to approve PMB’s plans and galvanized opposition.

In mid-September 2022, a petition was circulated demanding that the Superior Board of Trustees repeal their approval or send the matter to the voters in a special election.

While signatures were being gathered, two Superior residents sued the town, its elected officials and project developers. The complaint, filed in Boulder County District Court by Daniel Rice and Lauren Schneidewind, argued that the board erred in failing to follow its own rules regarding trustees who are present for a meeting but don’t cast a vote on a particular agenda item.

The petition was ultimately accepted, nullifying the need for the lawsuit and sending the Coal Creek Innovation Campus approval back to the Superior Board of Trustees for a November 2022 vote on whether to repeal their previous decision. They did so on a unanimous 6-0 vote. 

“We’d like to do more community outreach” before bringing update plans back before town officials, PMB representative Bill Jencks said during the November 2022 approval-repeal hearing. 

Monday’s Superior Planning Commission meeting begins at 7 p.m. at Superior Town Hall.

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