Firestone OKs new Union height limit
Firestone OKs new Union height limit
Buildings can now be up to 75 feet tall
FIRESTONE — Firestone leaders unanimously approved a plan for the Union development Thursday night that would allow a building as tall as 75 feet on the site.
That’s 20 feet taller than the tallest building approved by the Longmont City Council last year when it was considering LifeBridge Christian Church’s request to annex into the city.
This has caused some concern for residents in neighborhoods surrounding the development, many of whom have spoken at public hearings held when developers were seeking approval from Weld County and Longmont.
“I don’t understand why you have to have such a tall building,” said Duane Leise, an Elms at Meadow Vale homeowner, a neighborhood that borders the Union development. “Is a bigger building going to help the poor or help the sick?”
The annexation, zoning and outline development plan for the Union development — proposed by LifeBridge’s business arm, 4C — calls for about 1,200 residential units, a commercial front, a senior living center and a religious civic center. The religious area would be the tallest section of the plan, with a height of 60 feet and the possibility to go up to 75 feet
“In terms of the building-height issue, what’s next or what the whole development will look like, there’s more steps in the process,” Firestone Mayor Chad Auer said.
During Thursday’s Firestone Town Board meeting, concerns regarding the height did come up, he said.
However, Auer said town staff is working closely with the developers and will work to make the project acceptable to Firestone residents as well as Union’s neighbors.
“I’m comfortable with where they are heading,” Auer said. “It is going very well and very smooth.”
The plan also calls for a strip of residential buildings that are 45 feet tall and could extend to 55 feet.
When Union’s developers sought approval to annex into Longmont city limits, neighbors asked for building heights that would fit in with surrounding buildings and would not obstruct their views.
“There’s a lot of people out there who have this as their No. 1 issue,” Leise said. “We’ve had an appraiser out here who said it could bring a 15 percent decrease of our home values.”
This consideration was taken seriously when working on approving the plan, said Brad Schol, director of planning and development for Longmont.
“The height concerns were really examined closely,” he said. “We had very limited areas with the maximum height.”
The highest building structures outlined in the plan with Longmont were 45 to 55 feet, Schol said.
4C worked for two years to annex into Longmont before withdrawing the application in January. The group submitted an annexation application to Firestone in March, and it was approved May 8.
That doesn’t mean 4C will be breaking ground any time soon. Firestone and Longmont are both trying to annex right of way along Colo. Highway 119 and Weld County Road 26 — Longmont to maintain a buffer around the city and Firestone to annex Union and the nearby Firelight Park property.
Kacia Munshaw can be reached at 303-684-5334 or kmunshaw@times-call.com.
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