Remember the Tom’s Diner saga?

Denver’s protocol for allowing people to nominate buildings as city landmarks against a property owner’s wishes has been controversial for years. The City Council is now poised to tweak its process for reviewing landmark applications with equal treatment in mind.

“What we keep hearing is it feels unfair to people who are owners of property that might be designated for some reason or another,” Councilwoman Amanda Sawyer said at a committee meeting covering the rule changes last month, adding the tweaks will help level the playing field.

The council on Monday approved a bill that grants building owners “a reasonable opportunity to present their case regarding the proposed designation” as part of the public hearing process. That “reasonable opportunity” applies to landmark designations for specific buildings where the owner did not consent to the application and to applications to create historic districts that contain properties where one or more owners oppose being in a district. Once a building is designated as being historic or being in a historic district, there are strict rules governing its appearance and many changes must be approved by the city.

In simple terms, that reasonable opportunity means that property owners will be given time to deliver a presentation stating their case against landmark status in front of the council. City planning department staff already deliver presentations on each application while owners must sign up to speak as part of the public hearing. Those speaking slots are capped at three minutes each.

The bill passed as part of the council’s consent agenda without discussion, signaling broad support for it. It must come back before the council for a second reading next week before it becomes law.  A companion measure that makes specific changes to the City Council’s rules of procedure to codify the presentation requirement is also in the works. Those changes would include allowing speakers in historic district hearings to pool time to allow for longer presentations.

Changes to the landmark process have been discussed for years.

Councilwoman Kendra Black worked with Sawyer and Councilman Kevin Flynn to develop the hearing changes making their way through the council process now. But in 2019, after the owner-opposed effort to turn the Tom’s Diner building at 601 E. Colfax Ave. into a city landmark got national attention, Black was talking about going much further. One idea on the table then was requiring a super majority of the council — 10 out of 13 voters — to approve a landmark if the owner of the property opposed it.

Other changes to the process could still happen at some point but Black said in last month’s committee hearing that these changes, worked out with the city’s planning department and nonprofit preservation organization Historic Denver, are the only ones moving forward at this point.

“There could be three presentations before the public hearing actually starts,” Black said of the ways the rule will change historic district hearings specifically. “If you are in favor of it or not in favor of it, you get the same opportunity.”

There have been 18 owner-opposed landmark designation applications filed in Denver since 2010, according to Black. Just one of those, the Beth Eden Baptist Church property at 3241 Lowell Blvd., was made a landmark against the owner’s wishes. The most recent denial came in May 2021, when the council voted unanimously against landmarking KMGH Denver7’s TV station building at 123 Speer Blvd.

Even landmark applications that are voted down or pulled before reaching the City Council can delay redevelopment projects and change the trajectory of a building’s future. In the case of Tom’s Diner, the applicants pulled their designation paperwork before it reached the council but the deal that diner owner Tom Messina had in place to sell to a developer fell apart in the meantime. Instead of the building being torn down to make way for apartments, Messina sold it to a preservation-minded real estate company that is now renovating the angular structure with plans to reopen it as a restaurant.