Northglenn’s first house is about to undergo an ambitious renovation as the city shows residents ways to update their aging homes.
The 850-square-foot, 1960s-era tract home will gain a master suite, courtesy of the Northglenn Neighborhood Development Corp., or NNDC. The nonprofit group also plans to pop the top of a second home, doubling its size.
Like Denver’s other first-tier suburbs, Northglenn was built more than 40 years ago and has since been surrounded by newer suburbs. And like other aging towns, it is losing residents to newer suburbs with newer, more appealing homes.
It’s a problem with serious ramifications. As cities lose residents to those with bigger, newer homes, their tax bases fall, said Norman Krumholz, a professor of urban planning at Cleveland State University.
“Inner-ring suburbs now have almost 50-year-old housing infrastructure,” said Bill Sullivan, NNDC’s executive director. “We’re also landlocked and have no room for annexation, so what you see is what you get.”
Northglenn was built as a subdivision by developer Perl Mack and incorporated in 1969. Most homes were built between 1962 and 1972; about 75 percent to 80 percent come from fewer than two dozen original floor plans.
Once popular with young buyers who raised families there, those homes no longer resonate with today’s buyers. The smallish homes are often just one story, and many were built with only one bathroom.
“New houses have cathedral ceilings, large windows and laundry facilities near the bedrooms,” said Northglenn Mayor Kathleen Novak. “The bulk of our houses have none of that. What we have are well-built brick homes on large lots with mature landscaping.”
To make Northglenn’s homes more desirable, the city in 2004 launched NNDC to provide designs and a revolving loan fund for residents interested in sprucing up their homes.
Intern Echo Jimenez has been charged with finding ways to improve the most common floor plans and sharing those ideas with residents. Her designs range from small additions to massive overhauls that more than double the space.
Convincing owners to remodel is another challenge. “We’ve had difficulty getting people to bite the bullet and reinvest in their homes,” said Sullivan. Financing has also been a challenge because the value of the existing homes doesn’t support loans for costly renovations.
To prove it is possible, NNDC is doing the first two projects itself, Northglenn’s first home, at 320 E. 104th Place, and a second home at 1710 Leroy Drive.
The first home – called the Matchless and originally advertised for $11,700 – will get a 400-square-foot master suite. The home on Leroy – a 1,030-square-foot model called the Imperial that first sold for $13,900 – will get a second floor and as much as 1,500 square feet of new space.
NNDC intends to sell the completed homes to demonstrate the value of remodeling – to homeowners and lenders.
Housing experts laud the effort but note that sprucing up houses isn’t the only solution.
“Northglenn gets high marks for looking at an academic approach to its housing issue,” said Byron Koste, director of the real estate center at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
The city still needs to differentiate itself in other ways so more potential homebuyers will have a reason to seek it out, he added.
Staff writer Kristi Arellano can be reached at 303-820-1902 or karellano@denverpost.com.
