Council Approval of the Williams Village II Redevelopment: How They Voted
Date of Vote: November 20, 2025
What happened:
City Council unanimously approved the final Use Review for the Williams Village II redevelopment project at Baseline & 30th. This approval allows the mixed-use, multi-building redevelopment of the current Williams Village shopping center site. The project includes several hundred new residential units, ground-floor commercial space, and a heavily pedestrian-oriented internal design.
The application triggered a special use review because it exceeded certain thresholds in the code, primarily maximum residential density, building height parameters, and site layout changes that required enhanced review. After multiple rounds with Planning Board and significant design revisions, Council approved the final plan without additional conditions. Council approved the measure unanimously.
Why it matters:
Williams Village II will be one of the larger redevelopment projects Boulder has approved in recent years, bringing hundreds of new homes near major transit corridors and campus. Supporters view it as an opportunity to add needed housing and revitalize an aging commercial site.
However, the project also highlights Boulder’s deeper tensions around density, parking minimums, transportation ideology, and commercial viability. The final design is extremely pedestrian-centric (including a woonerf-style layout), and commercial success may hinge on accessibility, parking, and neighborhood impacts.
This vote is a case study in how Boulder’s land-use decisions are increasingly shaped not just by zoning or need, but by ideological pushes in design requirements, even when developers raise feasibility concerns.
Jenny’s Take:
I went into this process expecting to rank this vote as center-left. I support redevelopment of this area, and the site absolutely needs reinvestment. But after watching both Planning Board and Council discussions, it became clear the final design was driven more by planning ideals than by what’s realistically feasible.
Council directed the developer toward a woonerf-style (“cars last”) design, pushed for multiple experimental circulation concepts, and asked them to “invent something” when they raised concerns. The result is a beautiful plan, but one that may create real-world issues:
- Commercial viability with very limited, inconvenient parking
- Overflow parking into the already-impacted Martin Acres neighborhood
- No on-site affordable-housing requirements
- Design decisions driven more by ideology than functionality
I hope it succeeds. But Boulder should ground major redevelopment in feasibility, accessibility, and long-term neighborhood impact, not experiments that place the burden on residents, nearby communities, and small businesses. Based on these issues I am ranking this vote at far-left.