What we know (and don’t know) about the Landmark Square apartments

A proposed apartment building has asked the city to sacrifice downtown parking for shelter and has divided residents of Laramie. The city council is scheduled to discuss (part of) the project tonight.

A view of Laramie showing the Bolton lot, which could be sold to a developer and turned into an 88-unit apartment complex. // Photo: Tony Webster

The possible construction of a six-story apartment building in Downtown Laramie has been the talk of the town this week — despite the fact that almost nothing about the project has been officially decided.

At its heart, the project asks Laramie residents to weigh two competing interests: the availability or abundance of parking in the city’s historic downtown district and the city’s severe need for more housing, especially for those residents priced out of the existing market.

Other big-picture issues are also at play, or bubbling beneath the surface — from private property rights to the distinct look and feel of such an historic area. Those supporting the project also point to the economic benefits of downtown residential development and the need to rethink our society’s reliance on cars.

As these concepts swirl around Laramie, informing debates in coffee shops, Facebook posts, and online polls, all eyes turn to the Laramie City Council, which is scheduled to consider the topic during its meeting tonight.

Below is a run-down of what we know (and don’t know) about the project, the arguments in favor and against it, and the stakes underlying what one member of city staff called an “unprecedented” development that could change the face — or at least the skyline — of Laramie’s downtown.

What’s actually happening?

At this point, the project is a twinkle in the developer’s eye.

What’s on the table is not the development itself. Instead, the Laramie City Council is considering a proposal that would clear the way for such a development to be brought to the table.

Landmark Square might be better known to residents as the First Street parking lot, or the Bolton lot — the area of (mostly) public parking abutting both First Street Plaza and the back door of Coal Creek Coffee and TAP.

The proposed apartment building would dominate what is now the parking lot, though First Street Plaza would remain as it is and open to the public.

While the parking is public, the property is not. Ryan Bolton owns most of Landmark Square, though a strip along Garfield Street is owned by John and Jodi Guerin, the owners of Coal Creek. An agreement between Bolton and the city designates the area as public parking, save for a handful of private spaces. The city maintains the parking lot itself by handling the striping and signage.

That agreement was signed in 1994 and expires in 2044.

An aerial view of the Bolton lot with parking spaces marked, shared by Laramie Main Street Alliance.

Now, the Stencil Group, a national firm specializing in multi-family housing, would like to build a 88-unit, six-story apartment complex where the parking lot currently stands. Stencil has been conversing with Bolton, angling to make the purchase, but will only do so if Bolton can be freed from his agreement with the city.

The Geurins would like Bolton to be freed from that agreement; they plan to sell their strip of the parking lot to Stencil for this development.

“This part of the downtown used to have buildings on it,” Jodi Guerin told the city council last month. “And the buildings are no longer there because when they became out-of-use and defunct, eventually they just deteriorated. And they bulldozed them and it became a parking lot, because that was the highest and best use at the time, because our downtown was in a decline.”

But things have changed, Laramie’s downtown has been revitalized, and those pushing for more affordable housing have been eying the downtown area as a district ripe for residential infill.

“Our downtown is now on an upsurge,” Jodi Guerin said. “And when we bought that property almost 30 years ago, we always thought that maybe there would be a possibility that we do something on the part of the lot in development. This has been coming for a long time. And whether it comes now or in 2044, it’s going to happen.”

The city council must now decide whether it will release Bolton from that agreement.

The council is scheduled to make that decision — or at least discuss it — during its meeting tonight. City staff has recommended that the council terminate the agreement.

“The termination of the Landmark Square Parking Agreement presents a strategic opportunity to address several long-standing urban development and housing challenges,” writes City Principal Planner Philipp Gabathuler in a memo to council. “By supporting this termination, the City Council will enable the further exploration of a project that not only meets current housing demands but also enhances the overall quality of life in Laramie through improved urban infrastructure and community-focused development.”

The meeting begins at 6:30 p.m., but the Landmark Square agreement is listed on the council’s agenda as the councilors’ final topic of the evening.

The case for convenience: Parking and its proponents

The city council hosted a work session last month to gather community input on the potential termination of the Landmark Square agreement. Jodi Geurin’s comments to council, quoted above, occurred during that work session.

But Guerin was far from the only commenter that evening.

Various downtown business owners and landlords turned out to defend the availability of downtown parking and object to the proposed project itself. They argued the city should not release the Geurins from the parking agreement and should not support the development at all.

The development, as currently envisioned, would provide 66 spaces for its tenants in a climate-controlled parking garage on the ground level of the building. It would eliminate the nearly 80 parking spots currently found in the Bolton Lot, replacing them with just 20 on-street public parking spaces.

Steve Grabowski, owner of the Spectacle Emporium, said the development will force people to walk three or four blocks to his and others’ businesses.

“Nobody’s gonna walk that far to a business,” Grabowski said. “That’s the number one complaint I get from people downtown is there’s no parking.”

Ryan Hershey, the owner of Digital Doctors Phone Repair, argued the same.

“We’ve been down here, asking you, begging you, please enforce your downtown parking codes,” he said. “That hasn’t happened. And now you want to take more parking away from us. That just seems irrational.”

The downtown area has nearly 1,150 parking spots, including 865 on-street spots and another 284 off-street, 78 of which are found in the Bolton lot.

That means the Landmark Square apartments, if they are built, will eliminate about seven percent of the public parking currently available downtown.

Grabowski, Hershey and other business owners are worried that less parking will mean less business.

But that might not be true.

Laramie Main Street Alliance submitted a letter of support to the city council, urging them to release Bolton from the Landmark Square Agreement and clear the way for the construction of the downtown apartment complex.

The letter points to LMSA’s own research showing that drivers might spend more per trip, but walkers, cyclists and those using public transit spend more overall and that those living downtown will frequent businesses near their home.

Graph: Laramie Main Street Alliance // Info: Laramie Housing Strategy 2020

“Downtown residents support homegrown economic development and a robust economy by spending their income in locally owned businesses that are walkable from their living unit,” the letter states. “They are vested in the success of the district, either as workers or consumers, reinvesting in the place they call home.”

LMSA estimates that a downtown resident renting a unit for $750 per month would spend more than $8,000 a year in the downtown area, buying groceries, meals, clothing, entertainment and more from businesses within walking distance of their front door.

With an additional 88 units downtown, these estimates translate to a $718,000 boon for downtown businesses.

Building more walkable, pedestrian-friendly cities has positive effects on public health, mental health and the environment. Laramie’s doing well on this front. When it comes to travel by means other than a car, Laramie is considered “very walkable,” with a Walk Score of 88, and extremely bikeable — a “biker’s paradise” in fact — with a perfect Bike Score of 100.

But building and maintaining walkable cities requires more than infrastructure; it also requires a culture shift away from the assumption that cars are the only or best way to travel within a city.

Councilor Micah Richardson touched on this point.

“I honestly think we have a walking issue more than a parking issue,” she said. “We’ve got to start to understand that walking four or five blocks is okay.”

The city council plans to discuss both public transportation and parking in the coming months.

The case for construction: Housing and its advocates

Laramie is in desperate need of more housing, according to every study either the city or state has conducted. According to those studies, the city lacks the housing it requires to meet current demand and must catch up, not only to its current demand, but to the growing demand brought on by a growing population.

The housing shortage, which is felt by both low-income residents and working professionals, has even started to stunt Laramie’s economic growth; companies considering a relocation to Laramie are frequently dissuaded from coming here when they realize how little housing would be available for their workforce.

“We know that there are businesses who had hoped to come here, could not find housing and said, ‘Sorry, we can’t do this,’” Councilor Richardson said. “Those businesses, if they can come here … are going to have employees who shop at your stores.”

Laramie’s 2015 Housing Study called on the city to meet some of that demand by increasing its downtown housing stock to 210 units by 2030. There are currently 95 units downtown “primarily located in the upper stories of commercial buildings.” The addition of 88 units at Landmark Square would bring Laramie within reach of its goal for this decade.

That 210 units is the housing Laramie needs, but there might be significantly more interest in housing that is next door to the shopping, restaurants, bars, green spaces and other services found downtown.

Building out new housing — both by refurbishing second and third floors and by constructing new multi-family housing — has long been the goal of advocates for the downtown area. LMSA Executive Director Trey Sherwood told the Laramie Reporter in 2022 there is no shortage of demand or space for downtown housing.

Affordable housing: Making it work, siting it right

Would the Landmark Square apartments qualify as affordable housing?

It’s difficult to say this early in the life of the project — and affordable housing has a broad definition that doesn’t always mean low-income — but Stencil Group CEO Nate Stencil told the city council at least some of the units within the building would be reserved for low-income renters.

“A good majority of the units within the building will be on the higher end of the spectrum for the community,” Stencil said. “And just because you need it. There’s no way you could ever dream of creating projects like this without rents that are a little higher. However, we will be bringing forth a plan that will identify a certain percentage that will be available to lower median incomes within the building to create a mixed income [building].”

Stencil said his company will pursue tax increment financing with the city. Sometimes called TIF, tax increment financing is a tool that allows local governments to incentivize development they would like to see.

TIF is complicated, but it boils down to this: the city government can invest in infrastructure now with money it expects to make in the future because of that investment.

Because development raises the value of a lot, it also raises the property tax revenue received by the city for that lot. Estimating how much additional revenue the city will receive allows it to invest that amount in the development itself, perhaps by building out city infrastructure, comfortable in the knowledge that it will be reimbursed when that lot is developed.

TIFs run for a set window of time — after which, the property owner continues to pay (the now higher) property taxes.

Entering into such an agreement also gives the city another opportunity to provide input on the project.

“We would be coming back with an application for tax increment finance for the project,” Stencil told the city council. “So obviously, that’s a key component to make a project like this work. So that is really where the council is going to have a lot more opportunity to learn more about the project, suggest certain items, decide if they’d like the project to move forward or not.”

But the business owners who attended the April 24 meeting are not convinced. Many asked why these apartments should be built downtown when it will take away a parking lot and there are other locations available throughout the city.

“Yes, this town is behind on housing, we do need some housing developed in the town, but not downtown, not right there,” said Billie Eckhardt, owner of the Bent & Rusty. “We need to spread it out a little bit. We’re already really congested. This is the most congested part of this town.”

Councilor Richardson pushed back on these comments.

“To be honest, I’m tired of hearing: ‘I know that housing is really important, but this isn’t the place for it,’” Richardson said. “Every time, it’s like, ‘This isn’t the place for it, let’s put it somewhere else’ … To me, housing people and giving people a place to be and bringing more businesses to our community will likely override the need for parking.”

Correcting the record: The city council is not being sneaky, despite highly publicized claims to the contrary

A common refrain in discussions about the development — both during the April 24 council meeting and in follow-up coverage — was that the proposal came out of nowhere or “without warning.”

“I don’t want to lose track of the fact that this is the first time I’ve been invited to have a conversation with you all tonight,” said Anne Brande, owner of Ludwig Photography. “How fast is this going to roll for the people of Laramie and are they going to be informed?”

Immediately following Brande’s comment, Mayor Brian Harrington replied:

“I would note this is the council’s first conversation on the subject.”

Mayor Brian Harrington listens to a commenter during an earlier April meeting of the Laramie City Council. // Photo: Ashton Hacke

But the mayor’s response did not stop similar comments.

“I only found out about this today, just by word of mouth, by sheer luck,” said Brett Glass, a downtown business owner and landlord. “This hasn’t been adequately aired to the public and we haven’t had a chance to really consider it … The city planning office seems to be trying to bypass the planning commission and the public and ram this through and they seem to have taken I guess what you would call a radical urbanist agenda, cramming people together into a small urban space and eliminating cars and parking.”

But it’s not clear how people could have been informed at any point before now without being privy to the private conversations between the developer and the owners of the lot.

“At this point in time, we do not have a site plan application that has been submitted,” Gabathuler said. “The only thing being considered here is an existing agreement … My understanding is it can be published in an agenda a week before the meeting and no other notice is required.”

But city staff felt the community should have ample opportunity to comment on the possible termination of the Landmark Square agreement, so they went beyond their legal duty and called for an additional work session.

“We felt it was very important for a discussion of this sort to be taken with this type of project [which is], I would say, unprecedented in modern downtown Laramie,” Gabathuler said.

Mayor Harrington reiterated the point.

“I would ask the public to restrain themselves from assigning motives to staff,” he said. “You are all here, this meeting is happening, because our staff is proactive in inviting you to this room … Our staff did not present anything with a motive.”

Comments about policing and immigrants

While most comments for or against the development have fallen back on concerns about parking, housing or downtown’s walkability, some have veered into the conspiratorial or judgmental.

Specifically, Darci Kite of Cartouche Day Spa and Billie Eckhardt of the Bent & Rusty have commented to council or in the press that they are concerned about the type of people who might move into such a downtown development.

The view from the council chambers podium at City Hall. // Photo: Jeff Victor

During the meeting, Kite took to the microphone twice. During her first comment she said she “had concerns that it’s going to be for low-income” but did not elaborate.

She did, however, elaborate with her second comment.

“If you are even thinking about putting in — and not that I’m against it — low-income housing, along with that also comes other problems,” she said. “Have you talked to the police force? They are out in the low-income housing apartments now …”

Harrington interrupted.

“Let’s be careful with that train of thought,” he said. “I gave you a second chance and you’re just rehashing. Please wrap it up if that’s the direction we’re going.”

Kite returned to her seat.

Sometime after the meeting, Billie Eckhardt, owner of the Bent & Rusty, told the Cowboy State Daily she had concerns the development “could be part of a larger pattern to ‘gentrify’ Laramie, or perhaps turn it into a ‘sanctuary city’ for refugees.”

No other supporting or counter-evidence is provided next to this claim in the story from Cowboy State Daily, and no one involved with the project has talked about setting up the apartment building with refugees in mind.