The City and Jefferson County have had a long-standing and documented desire to return Lookout Mountain to its former glory as an Open Space park. Golden has been negotiating with multiple property owners on Lookout Mountain to purchase land for Open Space in order to preserve the mountain backdrop.

The citizens of Golden are strongly in favor of protecting our boundaries and mountain backdrop.  In 2000, they authorized the city to spend $3 million specifically for the purchase of Open Space on the two table mountains, Lookout Mountain and Mount Zion.  Through a cooperative effort with businesses and Jefferson County Open Space, large quantities of land in and near Golden have been preserved as open space.

But Golden has an obligation to the voters to spend the remaining $2 million in bond money reserved for Open Space purchases. The City believes the Lookout Mountain Property is the best use of those funds as it is the largest remaining parcel of mountain backdrop in the Golden valley and sits between two other large areas of designated Jefferson County Conservation Open Space.

Lake Cedar Group (a major media conglomerate comprised of Channels 4, 7, 9 and 20) is one of the property owners on Lookout Mountain. The City has offered to purchase 64-acres of land from LCG that currently has no broadcast towers on it, and the Jefferson County Commissioners have denied LCG's request to rezone it for a supertower. Therefore, no tower can be built on that land. The City wants to protect the land from any development.

Through negotiations ongoing since September 2005, the City ultimately offered LCG $1.7 million for the property: $100,000 more than the appraised value. LCG refused to accept the City’s final offer, forcing the City to file a Petition in Condemnation (the start of eminent domain proceedings) to acquire the land for its best and highest use as Open Space on April 12.

The four towers LCG says it will take down in exchange for its new supertower are nonconforming to the county’s zoning regulations, and therefore cannot be upgraded to HDTV uses. As a result, these four towers will have to be removed in the next few years as their analog signals become antiquated. LCG is keeping Coloradans from getting HDTV by choosing not to follow the lead of its sister stations and building its tower on an already approved site in a less densely populated area on Squaw Mountain. 

We hope you will take more time to learn about the City’s position on this issue as we believe our position is in the best interest of both the citizens of Golden and the people of Colorado.  If you have further questions, please contact Communications Manager Sabrina Henderson at 303-384-8132.