Westminster – Over the past five years, Frances Falbo has watched the neighborhood surrounding her family’s restaurant decline as new residential developments and shopping centers popped up to the north and west.
In early days, the neighborhood was known as Goat Hill, had no sidewalks or sewers, and was populated with poor farmers. Westminster annexed it several decades ago.
“Goat Hill has always been a low-income, family-type thing,” said Falbo, whose family has for 46 years owned Bova’s Italian Restaurant at West 72nd Avenue and Federal Boulevard. “Now there’s a lot of problems with gang-related stuff – graffiti and tagging.”
She’s hopeful a proposed light-rail station nearby will breathe new life into the area and into her business.
With buyers increasingly priced out of northwest Denver’s gentrifying neighborhoods, Westminster is hoping to lure them northward. City officials have devised a plan to create a vibrant, urban center around the light-rail stop planned for West 70th Avenue and Irving Street, a 10-minute ride from Denver Union Station.
They have identified a 124-acre parcel bounded by West 68th and 72nd avenues, Federal and Lowell boulevards as a potential site for transit-oriented development. The area is bisected by the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad and holds a mish-mash of tired houses, worn-out apartment buildings and small industrial businesses.
Planners envision condos and apartments, offices, specialty retailers and a community park. They see the greatest potential for commercial development to the north of the tracks. To the south, on a 30-acre floodplain that has always been viewed as “the other side of the tracks,” a park is planned that would serve Westminster’s neediest residents.
The city’s highest percentage of seniors, minorities and residents with disabilities and lower incomes live in its southern quadrant. That area also holds the Westminster Senior Center, the public library and two small parks. Its 96 small businesses offer an eclectic range of services but don’t provide the character necessary to create a vibrant environment.
Even though the northwest light-rail line won’t open until 2015, developers are staking their claims around the last stop before Union Station.
Last year, Icon Investment Group bought a 7-acre site, the largest piece of vacant property in the study area. Icon is trying to buy several more parcels between that site and Federal Boulevard so the company can take a more comprehensive development approach, said Andrew Klein, Icon’s president.
“We like to buy property in areas that are currently out of favor but believe will go through a gentrification process,” he said.
The rest of the 124-acre development area is made up of 60 parcels ranging in size from 1 to 7 acres, a challenging prospect for investors trying to assemble property for larger developments.
Assemblage is also expensive, since many of those properties include improvements that generate cash flow for their owners. That means values range from $15 to $25 a square foot.
At those prices, estimated lease rates for newly developed commercial space would have to be as much as $25 a square foot to make projects financially feasible. Prices for condos would have to be set at more than $200,000.
“The city is active in trying to provide financial incentives to developers,” said Tony Chacon, the city’s project coordinator. “The area is in the Urban Renewal Authority, so we can use tax-increment financing. We’ll be looking at other mechanisms over the next year.”
The biggest help the city can provide to developers is allowing them to maximize density in the area, Chacon said.
The area can support at least 800 residential units, 390,000 square feet of retail space, 184,000 square feet of office space and 67,000 square feet of industrial space, according to the South Westminster Transit Oriented Development Study.
The city wants to serve the rail station with structured parking rather than a surface lot, but it will have to figure out how to pay for it, said Bill Sirois, manager of transit-oriented development for FasTracks. The Regional Transportation District already is trying to cut costs after a draft analysis found that FasTracks could cost $2.5 billion more than the $4.7 billion originally forecast.
Several developers also are working on projects outside the study area. Carlson Group is planning to build about 200,000 square feet of commercial space and 250 residential units on about 30 acres of vacant land southeast of Federal and West 72nd Avenue. And Carma Colorado Inc. plans to build an estimated 150,000 square feet of commercial space and up to 1,200 residences on 144 acres on West 70th at the former Sundstrand Aviation location.
That’s just the type of development Falbo wants to see. When Sundstrand closed in 2004, she noticed an appreciable decline in business at Bova’s.
Staff writer Margaret Jackson can be reached at 303-954-1473 or mjackson@denverpost.com.
