Denver is under a virtual roofing construction freeze as city planners figure out how to get around the green roof requirement passed by voters last year.
The best option so far to comply with the bizarre and unworkable regulations, is not to comply at all but just buy your way out of it. Or dig up some energy standards already being met.
A planning panel is busy creating lots of loopholes, such as mixing solar with some green space, energy efficiency, meeting other green standards, or paying a bribe that the city can use to buy green space somewhere else, pay for water quality, “urban forest expansion” or buy solar panels for poor people.
The only remaining mandate is that roofs be cool.
Like this?
Now that voters have had time to reflect on their mistake in supporting this well-meaning, but poorly thought-out hipster plan, they might be willing to look the other way.
But we fear it’s only a matter of time before the environmental vultures descend on Denver and force them to follow the law down to the last tumbleweed, hiking the price of real estate and affordable housing in the process.