Louisville officials could oppose development ballot measures

Opposition org touts Avista support

Economy & Economic Development October 6, 2025 3:58:34 pm

LOUISVILLE — Louisville City Council is scheduled Tuesday to consider a set of resolutions that, if passed, would formalize the board’s opposition to a pair of ballot initiatives related to zoning, affordable housing and impact fees.

Meanwhile, a group organized in opposition to the ballot initiatives said Monday that AdventHealth Avista has joined in its call for voters to reject the measures.

After gathering more than the required number of signatures and withstanding a protest brought forth by opponents, Love4Louisville, the organizers of the initiatives that are referred to as Ballot Questions 300 and 301, have succeeded in putting the matters to a vote in November.

While Louisville City Council’s opposition to the measures — one related to residential zoning and affordable housing on large tracts of land such as Redtail Ridge that are envisioned as mainly commercial, and another that overhauls the city’s impact-fee system to make developers pay for additional public infrastructure — would not remove them from the ballot, it would make officials’ position on the matter clear to voters.

Love4Louisville’s zoning-and-housing-related initiative is called “Rezoning For Affordability,” and, according to the group’s website, “has the potential to bring more affordable housing to our city. The proposed Louisville comprehensive plan envisions rezoning large areas (in Redtail Ridge and McCaslin corridor) from commercial to housing. Our initiative would require developers that build housing on these sites to include 30% affordable housing.”

The measure would also require that affordable housing be built on-site, eliminating the popular cash-in-lieu option that allows developers to cut the city a check rather than build homes.

The measure specifically applies to zoning in areas within Louisville’s Centennial Valley General Development Plan, ConocoPhillips General Development Plan (Redtail) and Avista Adventist Hospital General Development Plan.

Redtail Ridge master developer Sterling Bay LLC broke ground in May on the mega-development adjacent to U.S. Highway 36. For the better part of six years, developers had their sights set on building a 2.5-million-square-foot biotechnology- and health-care-centric business park on the empty, roughly 400-acre property, which was previously home to a massive Storage Technology Corp. campus before being purchased by a subsidiary of ConocoPhillips and razed.

Concerns from residents — mostly centering around flattening of the site, traffic, the size and location of public spaces, sustainability and economic viability — nagged the project for years, culminating in an April 2022 special election in which Louisville voters repealed a previous approval of the project by city officials.

After the election, allowable development on the site reverted to a set of land-use guidelines approved in 2010, and Sterling Bay has since worked through the city’s entitlement and approvals process in an effort to finally begin development on the Redtail site.

In addition to the several million square feet of planned office, lab and manufacturing space, AdventHealth Avista is expected to build a new hospital on the Redtail site to replace the existing facility at 100 Health Park Drive.

While the resolution before Louisville City Council this week acknowledges that the “City has a significant interest in improving the quality and increasing the quantity of affordable housing in the City,” it claims that there are existing mechanisms and policies in place to achieve those goals.

“Ballot Question 300, if approved, would undermine the balanced and reasonable approaches embodied in these policies by prohibiting residential development in the few remaining developable areas within the City unless stringent affordable housing requirements are met,” the resolution reads. The “affordable housing exception in Ballot Question 300 is overly restrictive and forecloses reasonable, flexible, and economically viable solutions to address housing affordability.”

Furthermore, the measure could be deemed in violation of state laws that prohibit “municipalities from enacting and enforcing an ‘anti-growth law’ affecting property,” according to the resolution, “and may lead to time-consuming and costly lawsuits against the City.”

Love4Louisville’s other ballot initiative, called “Development Pays Its Own Way,” aims to expand the types of infrastructure developers must chip in for through impact fees. “Louisville currently imposes impact fees for capital facilities including the library, transportation, and parks and trails,” the group’s website says. “Our ordinance would expand those capital facilities fees to include: open space, recreation, emergency services, municipal buildings, water, wastewater, sewer, flood control, and affordable housing.”

The measure would also require the city to conduct an impact-fee study prior to next June.

Louisville City Council’s resolution in opposition to the measure says that officials have “grave concerns about the implications of Ballot Question 301 if it were to be approved by voters,” in part because “the City already has a comprehensive impact fee ordinance that imposes impact fees on new development and is planning for a new impact fee study in 2026.”

The “addition of a significant number of new impact fees will likely deter development in the City and will undermine the City’s goal of improving the quality and increasing the quantity of affordable housing in the City,” the resolution reads.

AdventHealth Avista, a future Redtail Ridge tenant that could be impacted by development restrictions on the site, has endorsed opposition group Louisville Together’s efforts to encourage “No” votes on the pair of ballot measures, the organization said Monday. Louisville Together also claims support from Flatirons Habitat for Humanity, local affordable housing developer Thistle Community Housing, community organization Together Colorado, the Louisville Chamber of Commerce and the Downtown Business Association.

“Not a single name or organization is publicly listed in support of the extreme measures in 300/301, yet the most respected names in our town are lined up in opposition,” Tim Bierman, a former Louisville City Council member and Louisville Together organizer, said in a prepared statement. “That should tell voters everything they need to know to Vote No on 300 & 301.”

Love4Louisville did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday.