Construction of the school is NOT yet guaranteed. If you oppose the construction of a school on the open lot next to our home, you will have a chance the oppose the school’s construction.
The piece of open space land in question needs to be re-zoned by the town of Parker before a school can be built there. Owners of the land have applied for a re-zoning permit, but it hasn’t been granted yet.
This means homeowners can fight the re-zoning permit at the town public hearing. If a re-zoning permit is denied, no school can be built.
Notes from School Construction Meeting
Let us give you an update on what happened at the last meeting on May 21st, 2019.
We started the meeting at 6 pm on May 21st, 2019 and there were about 60 homeowners collectively present from the Challenger Park Townhomes and Challenger Park Estates.
Representatives attending were 2 architects, 1 representative from the land owner, and the principal of the school at Southeast Christian church.
We learned that the zoning for the empty lot is currently zoned for sport fields. In order for a school to be built, the town of Parker must approve a re-zoning of the lot.
There was quite a bit of opposition for the school’s construction from both Challenger Park Townhomes and Challenger Park Estates communities.
FAQ from meeting
Why build this new building?
The current school at Southeast Christian does not have desirable facilities for middle school grades. It’s not optimal for student size and the new equipment planned for middle school aged students.
Which grades and how many students are planned for the new proposed location?
The new school is to initially house 175 students. The amount of students may increase in years after the school is built. They will be middle school students ranging from 6th to 8th grades.
What about building height? I’m concerned it will block views.
The maximum height of the building is estimated to be 35 ft or less. Which is expected to be two stories high.
Will there be a barrier between the Townhomes and the school?
As of this latest meeting…no. Many CPTH homeowners at the meeting asked for a barrier. The current architecture planning is a natural tree barrier. CPTH homeowners voiced their preference to have a physical barrier between the townhome community and the school.
Architects will try to preserve the existing access to the Newlin Gulch / Cherry Creek trail.
How about light pollution from lights / noise?
They don’t expect events to happen on the sport fields in the evening at the new school.
But what about traffic?
This was a heated topic and had the most concern. There were ideas of putting a stop light at the entrance to Challenger Park Townhomes (1) . It’s assumed that the road connecting Wintergreen and Recreation Dr. (2) would make traffic worse since anyone could drive through it. One idea was to make a traffic circle or U-shaped drive only accessible from Recreation Dr to eliminate traffic on Wintergreen.
Another risk is that the parking along Wintergreen (3) might go away if traffic to the school is high enough. They discussed making a dedicated one direction only (heading East on Wintergreen) turn lane into the school. No official plans on that yet. The City of Parker is going to do a traffic study.
If rezoning is successful, how soon will construction begin?
It will likely be at least 30 months (approximately spring 2021) before the earliest construction begins because the school is fundraising. It’s estimated to take 10 months of construction activities to complete build the school.
Ambiguity
We don’t know long-term plans of the school and by how much it might expand. The school ambiguously mentioned that there might be multiple phases in the schools plan but did not describe what the multiple phases include.That ambiguity made homeowners at the meeting nervous.
What can you do?
Before this meeting most of us thought there was nothing homeowners could do and the school was guaranteed to be built. That’s not the case at all.
The owners of that piece of land have already applied for re-zoning.
We’ll see a signpost on that piece of land within the next month or two telling us when the public zoning hearing will happen.
It is crucial that homeowners from Challenger Park Townhomes and Estates attend the zoning hearing to have the opportunity to sway the outcome of whether rezoning is granted or denied.
We’ll send another email out when we know more information.
Your Challenger Park Townhomes Board of Directors.