Colorado’s small cities are going urban.
As more people discover they want the ambience of big-city living but without the high-stress environment, “new urbanist” developments are popping up throughout the state.
It’s most noticeable in Front Range communities such as Boulder, Golden, Fort Collins and Loveland, but even mountain towns like Buena Vista are embracing the notion of walkable, high-density communities.
“All these towns are embracing this idea of concentrated activity and population, to provide a focal point for their community that has a vibrancy and is exciting,” said Kelly Davis, principal of Colorado-based OZ Architecture. “They’re mimicking what we’ve seen in larger cities.”
Some cities, such as Fort Collins, have codes that require higher-density developments to encourage pedestrian activities. The trend is, in part, a result of a shift in demographics.
“It wasn’t that many years ago that we were considered an agricultural and ranching community,” said Steve Olt, a city planner in Fort Collins’ planning department. “New urbanism is more palatable now than it was 15 to 20 years ago because the makeup of our community has changed – where the people are coming from, who they are, the types of environments they used to live in versus where they are now.”
Smaller towns can bring people back to their cores by creating interesting downtown areas, said Davis, whose firm is designing projects in Boulder and Golden. “Greenfield development created as big a vacuum in our smaller cities as it did in our bigger cities.”
Jed Selby and sister Katie plan a 315-unit community on a 40-acre parcel along the Arkansas River in Buena Vista that will increase the town’s size by a third. They envision a new-urbanist community with dense development that mingles homes, offices and shops amid plazas and parks. The project’s focal point is the river, on which the Selbys have built the world’s longest white-water kayak park.
“When we started, … we had places we liked and places we didn’t like,” Jed Selby said. “The one thing the places we liked had in common was they were typically downtowns.”
In Boulder, a turn-of-the-century grocery store at 700 Pearl St. will be transformed into six luxury condos. Nearby construction at 1115 Canyon has started on a commercial and residential building that will include 24 condominiums and 44,000 square feet of office space.
In Golden, NexCore Group is about to start work on Gateway Station, a mixed-use development in the heart of town with 16,000 square feet of street-level retail and restaurant space beneath 7,500 square feet of office condominiums. Thirty-four luxury residential condominiums top off the third and fourth floors of the project.
“Our projects are complementing things that are already there,” said Greg Venn, president of NexCore. “There is already an existing retail corridor and shops and restaurants that create more than just a condominium complex.”
While McWhinney Enterprise’s 3,000-acre master-planned community at U.S. 34 and Interstate 25 in Loveland has garnered much attention, another development in the heart of Loveland will give the community of 51,000 a more urban feel.
The O’Connor Group and Legacy Partners are just months away from delivering the first of 200 apartments in their $25 million Lincoln Place downtown. The project also includes 22,000 square feet of ground-level retail space, a 290- space parking garage and a 9,500-square-foot plaza and breezeway.
Boulder companies also are driving the trend by expanding to nearby communities as opportunities for projects become more scarce, said Michael Leccese, executive director of ULI Colorado.
O’Connor and OZ Architecture are based in Boulder.
“Smaller towns have seen it succeed and realize there’s a demand for downtown housing and retail,” Leccese said. “The banks have seen it works and are not afraid of financing it.”
Staff writer Margaret Jackson can be reached at 303-954-1473 or mjackson@denverpost.com.
