Wal-Mart Seeks Meeting on Neighborhood Market

The meeting will provide the design review committee up to 30 days to submit its comments on the design to Denver city planning staff. "Highlands Garden Village is a unique, award winning community that has continually sought public feedback on its building designs," says Keith Morris from Wal-Mart. "Even though it is a departure for us to design a building specifically for one site, in this case, we think it is extremely important. That's why we have carefully reviewed the neighborhood setting and design guidelines in order to design a building that blends in with existing architecture and the character of neighborhood."

As part of the Highlands Garden Village planned unit development adopted in 1998, the public has the opportunity to comment on the design of all buildings before the planning board considers them. Wal-Mart has elected to present the design to the community before formal submission to the city planning staff.

The role of the design review committee is to provide comments on design aspects of the project such as building orientation, preservation of neighborhood character, landscaping, public spaces and pedestrian access. The applicant can then elect whether or not to incorporate the committee's recommendations. HGV Land Co., LLC has incorporated many of the design review committee recommendations into the design of Highlands Garden Village.

Under zoning regulations, the commercial portion of the site can accommodate up to approximately 135,000 sf of commercial building space not including parking. With the 39,000-sf Neighborhood Market and the other currently proposed retail, approximately 75,000 sf of commercial building space is currently planned.

In addition to meeting with the HGV design review committee, Wal-Mart will post the design on the HGV website and make it available at the Woodbury and Smiley Branch libraries. This will provide the opportunity for broader community input on the design aspects of the project.

"The design review process has worked extremely well at HGV," says Chuck Perry, developer of the HGV site. "The guidelines for public comment are well established, not only on this project, but on others throughout the city. We are confident that the parameters established by the PUD and the stringent design guidelines will be fairly applied to the Neighborhood Market proposal."