Although the City of Denver publicly agreed to give a developer 145 acres of land at Denver International Airport in exchange for the Park Hill Golf Course, and the Denver City Council signed off on the 145-acre deal, the Mayor’s office quietly added on another 20 acres of DIA land for the developer, increasing the amount of land provided to the developer by about 14%, a CBS News Colorado investigation has found.
“That’s disrespectful,” said City Council Member Shontel Lewis, who didn’t know extra acreage had been added to the deal until after it closed on Oct. 2.
Lewis said Denver Mayor Mike Johnston “has a responsibility to bring us into those conversations after we make those deals.”
She was not the only city council member irked at learning that the deal they signed off on had been altered by the city in recent months, without the council’s knowledge.
City Council Member Kevin Flynn told CBS Colorado, “I just think that 14% more property doesn’t sound ‘de minimis’ to me, it sounds more ‘de maximus,’ and I think we should have been informed. I would have liked to have known before the closing.”
The city, on Oct. 2, finalized the deal to obtain the 155-acre Park Hill golf course land by giving the golf course landowner, Westside Investment Partners, 145 acres of land south of the airport that Westside could develop. Both parcels of land were valued at just under $13 million, according to the city.
But according to documents reviewed by CBS Colorado, the city of Denver began working months ago to give Westside another 20 acres of its land near the airport.
“We found that there was a fiber line that ran underneath the site, which was a major fiber line that connects a huge part of the airport and a lot of businesses in the area,” Johnston told CBS Colorado in an interview.
CBS
He said the fiber line couldn’t be moved, impacting the developer’s ability to build on or redevelop the land. He said 32 of the 145 acres being given to the developer were impacted by the fiber line. So the Johnston administration struck a deal with Westside that was never revealed publicly until Monday, giving the developer another 20 acres at the site to remedy the problems that were discovered during the due diligence process.
But none of this was disclosed to city council members until well after the deal was signed and closed this month.
“With no material change to the contract,” Johnston said, “there wasn’t a reason under our current procedures to do that.”
“There wasn’t a need for an additional council vote,” he continued.
Asked if there was a transparency issue, Flynn responded, “I think there is.”
Documents obtained Monday by CBS Colorado as part of a Colorado Open Records Act request show the city knew as early as July about the fiber lines that ran under the DIA site, impacting the ability to redevelop the land. Denver Real Estate Director Lisa Lumley authored a memo on Aug. 22 about the fiber lines, concluding that “approximately 32.25 acres are needed to supplement the existing site.”
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In a follow-up memo, Lumley wrote that because of the underground fiber lines, “Damages equated to 32 additional acres.”
In an Oct. 1 letter from the city to Westside Investment Partners, Lumley wrote that a “contingency payment” amounting to over $1.5 million was being established, “in case the city is ultimately unable to deed such additional 20 acres, (contingency payment) will be deposited in escrow pending resolution of whether the FAA will assert jurisdiction over the proposed conveyance of the additional acreage.”
The FAA had until Monday, Oct. 27, to file an objection or seek an extension to review the additional acreage that was inserted into the deal.
Jesse Lyman, the FAA’s manager of the Denver airport district office, said he could not comment on the agency’s position on additional acreage being added to the deal or if the FAA would object.
Andrew Klein, the founder of Westside Partners, said he was prohibited by non-disclosure agreements from discussing the land swap and additional acreage with CBS Colorado. He said, “it is what it is.”
Hyoung Chang/The Denver Post via Getty Images 
Laura Swartz with Denver’s Department of Finance said, “Denver City Council was fully briefed several weeks ago. No further council actions are needed since the transaction has stayed within the value terms ($12.7 million) agreed to by council.”
Johnston told CBS, “there was no additional cost to the city to solve it this way.”
Swartz said Denver would celebrate the opening of Park Hill Park on Oct. 28. It will be open during daylight hours for limited uses like walking and jogging.
