After fire, a new rule: Why one Lakewood property can’t be rebuilt as before
By Lakewood Informer | Lakewood Informer Subtack
When a Lakewood resident bought a burned-out single-family house to rehabilitate it, he had no idea Lakewood would say no. The house had been vacant and neglected, allowing homeless to move in and cause a fire. The result is an unusable, dangerous eyesore. But those considerations were not as important to Lakewood as changing the property to high-density.
The new owner thought he would do the neighborhood a favor and fix it up. He had no desire to build high-density and no reason to think he could not replace one single-family home with another.
Unfortunately for him, Lakewood has been eliminating single-family zoning for years. During the 2012 rezone, many properties were changed from single-family to multi-use without ...