Boulder City Council to review Marpa House redevelopment plans

BOULDER — The interactions between the University of Colorado student body and the wider community have come under more scrutiny after a raucous party on the Hill this month drew a law enforcement response, and that scrutiny is now being extended to plans to redevelop an historic group home into student rental housing. 

The Boulder City Council voted Tuesday evening to call up plans to redevelop the Marpa House property at 891 12th St. for further review and a public hearing, which has yet to be scheduled.

Developer John Kirkland, along with a group of investors who purchased the Marpa House in 2019 for $5 million, intend to “reconfigure and reconstruct the interior layout of the building to replace the high-intensity group living quarters and large party rooms with 16 separate and self-contained residential units,” planning documents show. Each unit of the building now dubbed the Ash House will be three bedrooms.

The Ash House was originally built in 1923 to serve as the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity house and was taken over in 1973 and converted into the Marpa House, which provided housing for members of the Shambhala community. 

In Boulder Planning Board meetings held before the March 6 incident on the Hill, residents raised concerns about noise, partying, parking, and overcrowding. Those concerns have multiplied in recent weeks. 

The board recommended approval of the redevelopment proposal with a host of conditions: limiting the number of cars renters are permitted, 24-7 onsite management, occupancy limited to one person per bedroom, quiet hours, good neighbor agreement with surrounding property owners and assurances that the units would be marketed to more than just students. 

Councilman Bob Yates urged opponents of the project not to get their hopes up about what the City Council can do to ensure the property doesn’t turn into a party house, but said he wants to look at what improvements could be made to the Planning Board’s conditions.

“The call-up will be a quasi-judicial hearing, so we’ll see how that goes with the evidence presented,” Councilman Aaron Brockett said. “We may only have edges to tinker around in here.”

In an email, a spokesman for the developer said, “Over nearly two years, the simple plan to update the interior of a dilapidated 1920s fraternity building with a historic rental license for 75 individuals into 16 individual apartments with a maximum of 48 people has earned unanimous landmark approval, unanimous approval of a Landmark Alteration Certificate, full planning staff support, and unanimous 7-0 approval from the Planning Board. In all, the project has been through six-plus-hours of neighborhood meetings, nearly 20 hours of city hearings, hundreds of hours of staff review, and the remodel plans are limited by 24 unique conditions of approval crafted by the City Attorney including the Hill’s most strict quiet hours policy, Boulder’s most comprehensive and binding good neighbor agreement, requirements for on-site management, and a parking reduction from the grandfathered level of [more than 100 space] to 12.”

The email continued: “We completely respect City Council’s right to call the project up for another public hearing and we remain hopeful the city will allow us to restore this beautiful landmark and do something constructive for the Hill neighborhood rather than have to operate it as a 75-person fraternity, shelter, group home, or other similar by-right use.”

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