Lakewood joins growing Front Range revolt against blanket up-zoning

LAKEWOOD — When more than 6,000 Lakewood residents signed petitions last fall to challenge four zoning ordinances their city council had just approved, they were not acting in isolation. They were joining a pattern of citizen pushback against top-down densification that is now visible across Colorado’s Front Range, from Littleton to Greeley and now to Lakewood’s April 7 special election.

The day before Karen Gordey, head of the citizen opposition group Lakewood Citizens Alliance, appeared on The Kim Monson Show to discuss the upcoming vote, Greeley voters delivered a decisive answer to a similar question. On Feb. 25, Greeley residents voted 11,342 to 9,506 to repeal the zoning that would have enabled the $1.1 billion Cascadia development, according to Colorado Politics. That project, originally approved by a 5-2 city council vote, would have included an 8,600-seat arena, a conference hotel and an indoor waterpark across more than 800 acres, according to Colorado Politics, with more than 11,000 housing units planned, according to 9News.

A pattern emerges across three cities

The Greeley result was not an isolated protest. In November 2025, Littleton voters approved a charter amendment making it harder to build anything but single-family homes in large portions of the city, according to the Denver Post. Lakewood’s special election on April 7 will be the third such contest in five months.

In each case, a city council approved zoning changes favoring denser development. In each case, citizens collected enough petition signatures to force the question to voters. And in each case, the opposition crossed traditional political lines.

“When the petitions were being signed, it was everything from Democrats to Republicans, everything in between,” Gordey told The Kim Monson Show. “It’s also all ages. It’s not, you know, young versus old. It’s across the board. There’s even some renters that signed.”

That bipartisan character distinguishes this movement from standard partisan fights over housing policy. The common thread is not ideology but a demand for local control and meaningful public consent before fundamental changes to neighborhood character.

What Lakewood voters will decide

Lakewood City Council passed four ordinances in the second half of 2025 that collectively rewrote the city’s zoning code. The changes, contained in a nearly 400-page document officially approved on Oct. 13, according to the Denver Gazette, allow duplexes, triplexes and townhomes anywhere in the city, eliminate parking minimums near transit areas and for affordable housing, limit new home sizes to 5,000 square feet and encourage conversion of vacant or underused commercial buildings to housing. The new rules took effect Jan. 1.

The most contentious provision, Ordinance 2025-29, replaced the term “single-family zoning” with “residential dwellings,” a category that includes single-family homes, duplexes, triplexes and townhomes. Supporters say Lakewood never had true single-family-only zoning, since the city previously allowed accessory dwelling units, duplexes and group homes in residential areas. Opponents counter that the new language opens the door to far greater density than existing neighborhoods were designed to absorb.

Mayor Strom said in a statement to Denver7 that the changes “protect Lakewood neighborhoods from potential impacts from new state laws.” A city spokesperson described the 5,000-square-foot cap as a “guardrail,” down from the 18,000 square feet currently allowed under existing code, according to Denver7.

Opponents collected more than 10,000 signatures, according to the Denver Post, with all four petitions exceeding the roughly 3,500-signature threshold required under Lakewood’s Home Rule Charter, according to the Denver Gazette. Faced with the choice of repealing the ordinances or sending them to voters, the council unanimously chose a special election.

Process concerns and the council’s resolution

The timeline has been a central point of contention. Gordey told The Kim Monson Show that while the city points to a two-year comprehensive planning process, the specific zoning language was not presented to residents until early 2025.

“They rushed this through, in my mind,” Gordey said on The Kim Monson Show. “Now, there’s their side of the story that said we worked on this for two years. Well, they worked on the comprehensive plan for two years. And zoning was not presented to them until February or March of 2025.”

The council split the 400-page document across four separate votes through October 2025. Seventy-six residents spoke before council during the deliberations, according to Rocky Mountain PBS. The final vote on the complete update came on Oct. 13, and opponents had 45 days to gather petition signatures, filing them on Dec. 5, according to Denverite.

On Feb. 10, the council took the additional step of passing a resolution, 9-2, urging residents to vote “no” on all four ballot questions, meaning a vote to keep the zoning changes. Councilmembers Jacob LaBure and Paula Nystrom voted against the resolution, according to the Denver Gazette.

“I am upset that the city council and mayor are even considering a resolution to tell the Lakewood citizens how they are supposed to vote on a ballot question regarding the zoning ordinance,” Lakewood resident Leanne Thompson wrote in public comment on the city’s website, according to the Denver Gazette.

The ballot structure itself has generated confusion. Because the questions ask whether to repeal the ordinances, voters must vote “yes” to overturn the zoning changes and “no” to keep them. “Confusingly, the question on the ballot is whether to repeal the 2025 zoning ordinances,” one user wrote on Lakewood’s Reddit page, as reported by the Denver Gazette. “So vote no if you’re in favor of the zoning changes.”

The state mandate behind local fights

Lakewood’s zoning rewrite did not happen in a vacuum. The city was responding in part to the Transit-Oriented Communities Act (HB24-1313), a 2024 state law requiring certain municipalities to increase housing density near transit stops. A companion law, HB24-1304, banned local parking mandates for multifamily housing, according to the Denver Post.

Six home-rule cities, including Arvada, Aurora, Glendale, Greenwood Village, Lafayette and Westminster, filed suit against Gov. Polis and the state in Denver District Court in May 2025, arguing the laws violate the constitutional provision granting local governments authority over their own jurisdictions. The lawsuit also challenged a Polis executive order directing state agencies to prioritize more than $100 million in grants to cities that comply with the housing mandates, according to the Denver Post.

“The city is the one that has the master plan and is making that all happen, and it’s done with their citizens,” Westminster Mayor McNally said, according to the Denver Post. “There’s nothing else but local control at the hub of why we jumped in and said, ‘This is wrong.'”

This state-versus-local tension adds a layer to Lakewood’s contest. Whether or not voters repeal the ordinances, the underlying state mandates remain in effect, and the legal challenge by six cities has not been resolved.

Fiscal pressure compounds the stakes

Lakewood faces its zoning fight while simultaneously absorbing a $42 million TABOR refund to 177 telecommunications companies after the Colorado Supreme Court ruled the city had imposed a business and occupation tax without the voter approval required by the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights. That refund represents more than 13% of the city’s 2026 budget, according to the Denver Post.

The fiscal strain raises a practical question: if denser development proceeds, does the city have the financial capacity to manage the infrastructure demands it would create? Regina Hopkins, whom the Denver Post described as a lifelong Lakewood resident, said the city is “trying to urbanize Lakewood and change the entire character of Lakewood for residents,” according to Denver7.

The Greeley precedent and what comes next

The Greeley result offers Lakewood petitioners both hope and a cautionary tale. The citizen group Greeley Demands Better gathered the required 4,586 signatures to force the special election and won despite being significantly outspent by the project’s backers, according to Colorado Politics.

“We were definitely nervous about the election because we were outspent by so much,” co-chair Brandon Wark told Colorado Politics.

But the Greeley victory also came with legal complications. Developer Martin Lind, CEO of Water Valley, sued the city to void the special election the day before the vote. A spokesperson for the pro-development advocacy group Greeley Forward warned that the repeal could transfer more than $100 million in debt from the developer to the city, according to Colorado Politics.

Ballots will be mailed to all active registered Lakewood voters ahead of the April 7 election, according to the Denver Gazette. Supporters of the zoning changes, organized through the group Make Lakewood Livable, argue the reforms are essential. “Too many things, from making rent to ever owning a home, feel out of reach for most people in Colorado,” campaign manager and former councilmember Sophia Mayott-Guerrero told the Denver Gazette.

Whether Lakewood follows Greeley’s path or charts its own course, the broader pattern is clear. Across the Front Range, residents are using the direct democracy tools available to them to demand a voice in decisions that will reshape their neighborhoods for decades.