Save Boulder by Stopping Sundance?
A friend of mine living in Boulder CO recently told me that Boulder will be hosting the prestigious Sundance Film Festival soon, and this would “ruin” Boulder.
I asked her why she felt this way.
I noted the only thing worse than living in a city that is worthy of hosting the high-status Sundance Film Fest is living in a city that is not worthy.
She responded by saying that when she moved here, she loved that Boulder was a “town and not a city.” She noted that she “chose to live here because it is a town, and Boulder has a saying....keep Boulder weird!”
She went on to say that “the weirdness is leaving quickly with dozens of wonderful Victorian homes being torn down and 6-8,000 square-foot [buildings were] being built in their place.” She noted that the City was not protecting such lovable homes with regulations designed to guard against loss of historic buildings. “Money trumps all,” according to my friend, and “if you have enough to pay off the City, you can build ANYTHING in this town!”
She asked if I knew about an 800-room, 12-story hotel being built in the city, and predicted the city would see many more such buildings as a result of Sundance coming to Boulder every year.
I responded by pointing out that Sundance has nothing to do with changing Boulder from a town to a city. By far, I told her, the main factors that transform Boulder ambiance from a town to a city are that large majorities of Boulder residents angrily demand that Boulder maintain and enlarge oversized roads and street intersections.
There is therefore a near consensus by residents, I reminded her, that Boulder keep a “city” ambiance rather than reverting back to a “town” ambiance. Most all residents do this, I informed her, by violently opposing any proposal to narrow and slow down oversized, high-speed roads, shrink the size of parking lots, or end socialistic requirements that lead to excessive provision of parking for new developments.
I asked her for examples of Boulder being “weird,” and asked how Sundance makes Boulder less weird.
I pointed out that Sundance has nothing to do with Victorians being torn down and replaced with larger and more ugly buildings. That is controlled by the elected City Council, which has stubbornly kept development regulations in place that require new neighborhoods look like Houston rather than a Tuscan village.
Furthermore, I said, Sundance has nothing to do with the idea that “money trumps all.” Can you cite a single example, I asked her, of where a developer corruptly paid the City money to get around city regulations? I told my friend that in my 20 years in Gainesville and 1.5 years in Boulder planning, I never saw a single instance of that.
I added that Sundance has nothing to do with the 800-room hotel or the 12-story building height. The blame for that, again, is with Council. The City Council has been negligent in not adopting, as it should, development regulations that prevent buildings from exceeding 10 stories in building height. The Council – not Sundance – is the reason that there are no requirements in Boulder that buildings over a story or two use traditional or classical design.
If Sundance is in Boulder each future year, I concluded, Council better stop spinelessly continuing to procrastinate on adopting the reforms I mention above. Of course, the main reason Council is procrastinating on implementing these reforms is that nearly all Boulder residents love monster roads. Nearly all residents also wrongly believe that stopping development will “protect” Boulder. Almost all residents also incorrectly think that stopping film festivals will “help” Boulder. There is a consensus that new development be required to provide gigantic, unaffordable parking lots.
As an aside, there are important-to-understand reasons why Boulder residents are their own worst enemies when it comes to these matters. Reasons that I have written about at great length in many other blogs, books, and speeches I have written over the years. Those reasons would require more commentary than I want to allocate to this essay.
Equally misguided is the near consensus view of Boulder residents that opposing density and opposing taller buildings is the key to saving “town ambiance.” That is also utterly untrue. Each of these misguided, counterproductive efforts, ironically, make it far more likely that “town ambiance” will more quickly change to (ugly) “city ambiance.”
Consider the following image set…
Oops.