In 1997, I coined the term “Athena cities” to describe communities like Lakewood and Centennial.
In Greek myth, Pallas Athena was never a child but sprang full grown from the mind of Zeus. Lakewood likewise was born as an adult, with 92,000 residents the day it was incorporated in 1969. Today, Lakewood/Athena is a mature community of about 145,000 people – and facing a midlife crisis.
The key to understanding Athena cities like Lakewood and her younger sister, Centennial – born in 2003 with 103,000 residents – is that many of their neighborhoods are much older than their municipal government. Unlike modern Aurora, which grew from an original core under a city master plan, Lakewood and Centennial were superimposed upon neighborhoods and commercial areas that had already developed as a maze of special districts with little or no coordinated planning to weave them into a coherent whole.
Lakewood has spent 36 years replacing those special districts with a unified municipal service structure. It boasts a well-regarded police department, a fine system of parks and trails, and a generally high quality of life – while maintaining the lowest sales tax of any metro-area city, 2 percent. But it’s now running into the same problems that beset aging inner-ring suburbs across the nation.
“Recycling the suburbs” is probably the most important urban issue facing America today. In the ’60s, urban advocates fell into the trap of talking about “inner-city problems” as if what were actually human problems were somehow confined to core cities. By the 1990s, many of those core cities – including Denver – were enjoying renewed economic and social vitality. But inner-ring suburbs such as Lakewood, original Aurora, Englewood, Littleton, Arvada, Wheat Ridge, old Westminster, Northglenn, Thornton, Commerce City and others were working to renew their economic base and preserve their residential neighborhoods.
Like every older community, Lakewood has faced the challenge of renewing aging shopping centers. Lakewood rejuvenated the Westland shopping center and is now transforming the old Villa Italia site into the Belmar urban village, blending residential, commercial and retail development.
Most important of all, Lakewood wooed Greg Stevinson’s Denver West development that includes Colorado Mills, its neighboring Village and Plaza complexes and auto dealerships. Denver West paid about $20 million in taxes last year, including $6 million to Lakewood. Stevinson reports that 71 percent of the sales taxes paid at Colorado West come from shoppers who don’t live in Lakewood.
Colorado’s recent economic slowdown and the decline of its older commercial base has forced Lakewood to cut $13.5 million from its operating budget over the last five years, to a current $72 million. Without the influx of cash from Colorado West, most of it paid by non-residents, the cuts would have been much deeper. But it’s worth noting that Stevinson didn’t have to build in Lakewood at all.
“Our business has been in Lakewood for 11 years,” Stevinson recalled Thursday. “Before that, it was in unincorporated Jefferson County. It took six or eight annexations to bring it all into Lakewood. We decided to come in because if we stayed outside of Lakewood, we’d suck out all the sales tax revenue and kill the city.”
Stevinson credits Lakewood City Manager Mike Rock with helping lure this cash cow into the city. “We were fiercely independent, but we got to working with Mike when building our center. He’s an honorable guy whose word is his bond. He was a huge advocate for helping us get a project done in Lakewood, on time and on budget,” Stevinson recalls.
Yes, that’s the same Mike Rock who’s been vilified by the Rocky Mountain News and other detractors for such supposed sins as his $750-a-month transportation allowance and attending a convention of developers [including Stevinson] in Las Vegas.
Stevinson believes Rock’s critics have a not-so-hidden agenda of trying to discredit a proposal now under discussion to ask voters to hike Lakewood’s city sales tax to 3 percent, still lower than Denver’s 3.5 or Aurora’s 3.75 percent. The Denver Post will analyze that plan in detail when it is finished in August. For now, it’s time to tell the misdirection artists to stop throwing rocks at Rock and start talking about the future of Lakewood.
Bob Ewegen is deputy editorial page editor of The Denver Post. He has written on state and local government since 1963.
