Plans to build residences, offices and retail space near the Auraria campus in Denver have been derailed.
Denver-based Quadrant Properties wanted to redevelop 22 acres just north of the light-rail station at West 10th Avenue and Osage Street. But because of a failed deal between the Regional Transportation District and Union Pacific, railroad tracks – known as the Burnham lead – are now slated to run through the center of the property.
As a result, Quadrant has lost several deals that would have brought dozens of jobs to an area that sorely needs them, said Rick Patten, a principal of the firm.
RTD says the possibility of the tracks going through the site has always existed. Nonetheless, Patten said he feels deceived.
He said Quadrant purchased the property in July 2004 after RTD assured him it would not put the Burnham lead through the middle of it.
But the transit agency identified the site as a possible location for the tracks in an environmental impact statement completed about five years ago.
“Everybody knew where we were going,” said Henry Stopplecamp, RTD’s engineering technical-services manager. “I understand their concerns, but we haven’t deviated from the original plan.”
Running tracks through the center of Quadrant’s site always has been a possibility, but RTD wanted to buy a 60-acre site from Union Pacific, where it would have built a maintenance facility. That could have changed where the tracks went.
However, the price tag for the site, which included relocating Union Pacific’s maintenance facility, was about $100 million. That’s what RTD had budgeted for acquisition, environmental cleanup and construction of a new facility.
Now, the transit agency must either expand its existing facility at Elati and Mariposa streets or find a new location adjacent to a light-rail corridor. It has about $15 million to spend on a site.
The Burnham Yard is directly across from the light-rail station at 10th Avenue and Osage Street, considered the heart of the Lincoln Park neighborhood’s hope for revitalization. Patten said such revitalization will be nearly impossible now.
“If the tracks go through, it’s going to end up being a dirty industrial area,” he said.
It also will force the relocation of at least eight businesses in and around the site Patten has assembled, according to the recently released west corridor environmental assessment.
“They’re just decimating the area,” Patten said. “Effectively, RTD is creating a blighted area where businesses cannot sell or invest in their property for fear that at any time RTD will come in and condemn them.”
One of the city’s oldest public housing projects – the South Lincoln Park complex – sits on 15 acres to the east of the station. The Denver Housing Authority had planned to make infrastructure improvements to the 270-unit housing complex but put many of its plans on hold so it could coordinate its efforts with the city.
The city recently acquired nearly 3 acres adjacent to the station so it would have a voice in how development in the neighborhood occurs.
The Housing Authority and South Lincoln Park residents are still working with the city on the plan for the neighborhood, but without the Burnham Yard, redevelopment will take a different shape.
“It puts a certain limit on what’s possible,” said Chris Parr, the Housing Authority’s director of development. “Burnham Yard would have leveraged many, many other acres, and you’d have a very large contiguous site. It would have been a much larger multipartner initiative.”
Staff writer Margaret Jackson can be reached at 303-954-1473 or mjackson@denverpost.com.
