Designing for Complete Neighborhoods: What We Covered at RMLUI's CBA Panel

On March 6, 2026, Noah Stout presented at the Rocky Mountain Land Use Institute (RMLUI) Annual Conference at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law. The panel, titled "Designing for Complete Neighborhoods: Municipal Roles in Community Benefit Agreements," brought together practitioners, academics, and law students to dig into how CBAs actually work — and what it takes to make them enforceable, equitable, and durable.

The RMLUI conference is one of the premier land use law and planning events in the Mountain West, drawing attorneys, planners, city officials, and academics from across the region. This year's CBA panel came directly out of the real work Stout Law and its coalition partners have been doing in Denver — negotiating the FC Summit Community Benefits Agreement on behalf of West-East Neighborhoods United (WENU) and advocating for stronger municipal frameworks to support CBA negotiations citywide.

Who Was on the Panel

The session was moderated by Stefan Chavez-Norgaard, a Teaching Assistant Professor at DU's Scrivner Institute of Public Policy and Josef Korbel School of Global and Public Affairs. Panelists included Keith Meyer (INC/community organizer), Jeanne Granville (Fresh Start Denver), and DU Sturm College of Law students Natalie Afshar and Hobie Malik. Noah Stout presented on municipal frameworks and CBA enforcement.

What We Talked About

The 90-minute session was structured around four main topics. The moderator opened with a framing of why CBAs have become more central to land use law — particularly as large-scale development projects increasingly rely on public land, public subsidy, or public approval processes that give communities legitimate leverage.

Noah's segment focused on municipal frameworks: the structural challenges communities face when trying to negotiate CBAs without dedicated city support, and what better-designed frameworks look like. Too often, communities come to the table without legal counsel, without access to development data, and without any formal city infrastructure to help them negotiate on equal footing with well-resourced developers. Denver has an opportunity to change that, and this panel was partly about making the case for what a city CBA support structure could actually look like.

The case study segment drew on diverse examples from across the country, looking at how other cities have built CBA ordinances, advisory committees, and third-party enforcement structures into their development processes. The Denver Summit FC agreement was one of the examples in the room — a real, recent Colorado CBA that the community fought for and won.

Noah and Prof. Chavez-Norgaard closed with a practical discussion on implementing and enforcing CBAs over time: how you set up monitoring and reporting obligations, what data tracking looks like, when third-party enforcement mechanisms matter, and how you build transparency into a long-term agreement so it doesn't just collect dust after the groundbreaking.

Why This Conversation Matters Now

Denver is in the middle of a stadium boom, a housing shortage, and a political moment where neighborhood organizations are more organized than they've been in years. CBAs are one of the sharpest tools communities have, but they're only as good as the legal structure behind them. A handshake deal with a developer isn't a CBA. A vague MOU isn't a CBA. A CBA is a contract — and it needs to be built like one.

The fact that DU's RMLUI brought this panel to one of the region's top land use conferences reflects how much the conversation has moved. CBA law is no longer a niche topic for housing advocates. It's a mainstream question for planning, real estate, and municipal law — and Stout Law intends to stay at the center of it.

Working on a CBA or Development Project?

Stout Law works with neighborhood organizations, nonprofits, and coalitions navigating large-scale development projects in Denver and across Colorado. If your community is facing a development deal and you want real, enforceable commitments — not just a seat at the table — contact us to talk through your options.