On June 11, 2026, Kensing LoHi threw itself a party. From three to six that afternoon, the sales team at 1643 Boulder Street welcomed buyers and browsers for a grand opening that doubled as a hard hat tour wrap party, the kind of event that signals a building has moved from renderings to reality. The project, developed by Urban Green Development with sales led by Mor Zucker of Team Denver Homes, offers 35 condominium residences ranging from 550 square foot studios to 1,820 square foot three bedrooms, priced from roughly $485,000 to $2.2 million.
Here is the number that matters more than the ribbon cutting: the building's parking garage holds 24 spaces.
Thirty five homes. Twenty four spots. Do that math and roughly one in three buyers at Kensing LoHi will close on a condo without a deeded space in the building, even at prices well north of a million dollars. That is not a knock on the project. It is a preview of the question every LoHi buyer needs to ask before they write an offer, on new construction or century old brick.
The city is rewriting the curb at the same time
LoHi's parking crunch is not new. What is new is that Denver's Department of Transportation and Infrastructure has spent the past few years building a formal curbside area management plan for the Highlands, one of only a handful the city has prioritized. A draft version circulated in 2023 laid out specifics: paid two hour parking with a two hour limit on the streets closest to the restaurant core, a three hour limit on the blocks just outside that zone, and a Highland Area Permit that exempts residents and their guests from those limits. The paid hours run from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. and skip Sundays and holidays.
As of September 2025, Denver's transportation planning team confirmed the Highlands plan was still one of four curbside management plans actively in progress across the city, alongside Cherry Creek, 7th Avenue near the Governor's Residence, and the area around Empower Field. By May 2026, buyer-facing guides to the neighborhood were describing the program in the present tense, meaning it has moved from draft to daily operation on LoHi's streets.
Across Denver, the residential permit that exempts a household from posted time limits runs $20 or $25 a year, renewed annually. That is a modest cost on its own. The real cost shows up when a household without a deeded or assigned space has to plan its evenings and weekends around a two hour meter in the commercial core and a three hour limit just past it, in a neighborhood where street parking was already the scarcest amenity long before the city started managing it formally.
Deeded, assigned, or nothing: the words that decide your routine
Walk through active LoHi listings and you will notice how often "deeded parking space" gets called out as a feature rather than assumed as a given. One recent listing highlighted a rare deeded underground parking space alongside a five piece primary bath, treating the garage stall as a comparable selling point to the soaking tub. Another advertised two full deeded spots, one secure and one outdoor, as a headline feature of a top floor unit. A third flagged a single deeded spot and storage as part of what made a unit at Ayr Lofts worth calling out by name.
The word doing the work in all of these is deeded. A deeded parking space is conveyed with the title to your unit, recorded like real property, yours to keep, sell, or rent subject to the association's rules. An assigned space is different. It is typically a license granted by the homeowners association, which means the association's governing documents, not your deed, decide whether that spot stays with your unit forever or gets reshuffled down the road. And in a meaningful share of LoHi's older mid-rise buildings, there is no dedicated space at all. Residents rely on the same curb the city is now actively metering.
Buyer guides focused specifically on LoHi condo and townhome comparisons make the pattern explicit: townhomes are far more likely to include a deeded one or two car garage, while condos more often offer assigned stalls or lean on the street. Properties with secure, deeded parking tend to carry a resale premium and see stronger demand when they hit the market, precisely because so many of their neighbors are competing for curb space under a program that now charges for the privilege.
What this looks like across product types
| Product type | Typical parking arrangement | What to verify before you offer |
|---|---|---|
| Pre-2015 mid-rise condo | Assigned stall or street reliant, no garage guarantee | Whether the HOA declaration lists parking as a limited common element or a licensed privilege |
| New construction condo (2024 to 2026) | Structured garage, but often built below one space per unit | The actual ratio of spaces to units, not just the presence of a garage |
| Modern LoHi townhome | Attached one or two car garage, deeded with the unit | Whether the garage is deeded outright or shares a driveway easement with a neighboring unit |
Kensing LoHi's 24 spaces for 35 homes is the clearest illustration of the middle row. A building can be brand new, fully amenitized, and still not deliver a one to one parking ratio. That is worth confirming unit by unit rather than assuming the marketing photos of the rooftop deck and the ground floor retail space tell the whole story.
The HOA paperwork that actually answers the question
The listing description will not tell you whether your specific unit carries a deeded space, an assigned one, or none. The association's records will. Before writing an offer on any LoHi condo, ask for:
- The declaration, bylaws, and articles of incorporation, which spell out whether parking is deeded, assigned, or a limited common element
- The current budget and the most recent reserve study, which shows whether the garage or any parking structure has upcoming repair costs baked in
- Meeting minutes from the last 12 to 24 months, which often surface parking disputes before they become special assessments
- The master insurance certificate, including how it treats garage and structured parking areas
- Any disclosures of pending litigation, since parking allocation disagreements are a common source of association conflict in dense urban buildings
In Colorado, common interest communities operate under state rules plus each association's own governing documents, which means two buildings a block apart can handle the exact same 24 space garage problem in very different ways. One might rotate assigned spots on a waiting list. Another might let owners buy and sell deeded spaces independently of their units. You will not know which until you read the paperwork.
What this means if you are choosing between new and old
If you are comparing a unit at Kensing LoHi against a renovated Victorian a few blocks away, the parking conversation should run in parallel with the price per square foot conversation, not after it. A newer building brings structured parking into the price, but not always in a one to one ratio, and the curb outside is now metered and time limited under a city plan built specifically for this neighborhood. An older building may lean on the street entirely, but if it sits outside the paid two hour zone and inside the more forgiving three hour buffer, day to day parking might actually be simpler than in a shinier building closer to the restaurant core.
Neither answer is automatically better. The point is that parking in LoHi has stopped being a lifestyle footnote and become a line item worth pricing into your offer, the same way you would price in a special assessment or a short remaining roof warranty.
A few questions worth asking directly
Does every unit in a new LoHi building come with parking? Not necessarily. Kensing LoHi's 35 residences share a 24 space garage, so ask specifically whether the unit you are considering includes a deeded space or whether you would be relying on the street.
What does a Highland Area Permit actually get you? It exempts your household from the posted time limits within the plan's boundaries, which run south of but not including West 32nd Avenue, east of but not including Umatilla Street, and west of I-25. It does not create a guaranteed parking space. It simply removes the clock on street parking you can already find.
Is deeded parking worth paying more for? Buyer guides focused on this specific market consistently describe deeded, secure parking as a premium feature that narrows days on market and supports stronger pricing at resale, which suggests other buyers are already pricing it in whether or not it shows up as a separate line on the closing statement.
Parking in LoHi is not a detail you sort out after closing. It is written into the declaration, priced into the garage, and now managed block by block under a city plan built for this exact neighborhood. If you are weighing a specific building or comparing new construction against an older conversion, Dianne Goldsmith has spent 25 years reading these documents for Denver buyers and can help you figure out what a listing's parking language actually means before you write an offer. Get your free home valuation and let's talk through what you are really buying.
