Quail Road Annexation Does Not Move Forward
Applicant Withdraws Proposal Last Minute at City Council Meeting
—This article has been edited for clarity and accuracy.
On February 4, the Longmont City Council was set to decide on the annexation and rezoning of four properties along Quail Road, totaling approximately 17.34 acres.
However, after a discussion process where multiple council members signaled their opposition, the applicant abruptly withdrew their application, bringing a sudden end to the consideration before the City Council could vote.
The annexation application covered properties located south of Quail Road, north of Clover Basin Drive, west of Wildfire Court, and east of Airport Road. The proposed zoning change would have allowed for the development of up to 310 residential units.
The annexation process began in March 2024 when the City Council authorized the acceptance of the application. After multiple reviews by the Development Review Committee (DRC) and a neighborhood meeting in April 2024, a formal annexation request was filed in May 2024. The Planning and Zoning Commission held a five-hour public hearing on December 18, 2024, ultimately recommending approval of the annexation in a 4-1 vote.
After a four-hour and forty-minute meeting on January 28, where the public was invited to speak on this subject, the City Council moved to continue the meeting on February 4.
At-Large Representative Sean McCoy encapsulated the sentiment of opposition at the start of the discussion.
“I think we can try to massage this out and do this just to have the applicant come and say, ‘I’m out,’” McCoy said. “I just don’t see that this is the best fit, and we really need to be looking at what’s the best fit for Longmont.”
Ward 2 Representative Matthew Popkin raised concerns about the availability of for-sale housing versus rental properties, emphasizing the challenges created by Colorado’s construction defect law.
City Manager Harold Dominguez elaborated on this issue, explaining the financial and legal challenges associated with building condos in Colorado.
“Frankly, no one’s building condos anymore in the state of Colorado, and that is because of the issues associated with the construction defect law. You have a 10-year window for claims, and when you hit that window, litigation is filed,” Dominguez said. “And so we had one developer in town that was building condos and got caught in litigation and communicated to, I think, that he's not going to do it anymore.”
Popkin also acknowledged the critical need for apartments in Longmont.
“We do need more housing of all types, for sale and for rent. As someone who made the jump from renting to homeownership recently and who has many friends looking at both options of a generation. I believe many people want to be able to own and move and raise a family here, there are many reasons to buy and many reasons to rent,” Popkin said. “And I just want to note that for anyone watching or for anyone here like those, decisions are not monolithic, and circumstances do vary widely. I appreciate and agree with all of those who understand that development makes sense on this site. But as I've said before, what we build, where we build, how we build matters.”
At-Large Representative Shiquita Yarbrough spoke about the importance of affordable housing and acknowledged the complexity of balancing different needs.
“I myself am not opposed to subsidized housing because I myself have lived in subsidized housing, and I needed that,” Yarbrough said. “I won’t be voting for this.”
Mayor Joan Peck reinforced the challenges of making affordable homeownership work in the current market.
“So you have to get your mind around the concept that we’re in a different world right now, it is not the same world I bought a house in at all. When my husband and I bought our home, our interest rate was 11 percent. We worked our tails off to make those payments and not lose our house,” Peck said.
After the discussion period of the meeting, before Longmont City Council could vote, the applicant for this proposal immediately walked up to the podium and withdrew their application. As a result, the City Council did not proceed to vote on the matter, and the annexation is no longer under consideration.
I commented on an earlier version of this article, correcting a quote attributed to councilor Yarbrough. It is good journalistic practice to note when an article has been updated, not just simply wipe out the old article and its comment pointing out the error.