For nearly three years, Tom Wootten and Lloyd Herrera have been working on a deal to redevelop an 8-acre site in a largely industrial area near the Alameda light-rail station. The property, RTD’s old bus barn at the southeast corner of West Alameda Avenue and South Santa Fe Drive, is in the heart of an area that’s ripe for redevelopment.
Just a half-mile to the south, at the former Gates Rubber factory near the Interstate 25 and Broadway light-rail station, Cherokee Denver and Joseph Freed and Associates are developing a 50-acre site with shops, restaurants, offices and residences.
Still, the area surrounding the Alameda station, sandwiched between a shopping center and mainline railroad tracks, has remained largely untouched. The tangle of tracks and confusing I-25 interchanges haven’t appealed to developers searching for sites with easy access.
But with the Colorado Department of Transportation planning infrastructure improvements and the city pushing forward on a plan for the neighborhood, property owners are considering what could be.
“The emphasis of all station-area plans is how to link the station to the existing neighborhood and create clean patterns of blocks,” said Peter Park, community planning and development manager.
The city will hold a public workshop about the station area from 6 to 8 p.m. Wednesday at the Denver Design Center.
Like most landowners in the neighborhood, Wootten and Herrera don’t have firm plans for their site.
“It will be mixed use, but not as dense” as the nearby Gates redevelopment, said Wootten, managing director of Ross Consulting Group. “But it doesn’t require the same level of infrastructure or public subsidy.”
The development team, which calls itself Alameda Station LLC, plans to build a pedestrian bridge from its site across the heavy rail tracks to the park-n-Ride lot on South Cherokee Street.
CDOT’s plans to reconfigure interchanges also will improve access to the area. The first phase, expected to cost $25 million, includes replacing the Alameda interchange and minimal widening of I-25. Subsequent work includes replacing the Santa Fe Drive and Sixth Avenue interchanges and widening I-25.
Because none of the projects is funded, it’s not clear when work will start.
Warren Cohen and Jim Frank are the largest landowners in the area. They own the 60 acres that include the Denver Design District, a group of home-furnishing showrooms, and Broadway Marketplace, a 500,000- square-foot retail center anchored by Kmart, Sam’s Club and Office Max.
Their property includes most of the land south of Alameda to Exposition Avenue between the light-rail tracks and Broadway.
With both centers nearly full, the owners aren’t in a hurry to redevelop their property. But they are working with consultant CRL Associates Inc. on plans for the land.
“It’s really premature to comment about our long-term vision, other than that we would love to provide housing for our tenants and customers as a long-term plan,” said Jo Frank, who manages the properties. “We have a lot of miles to go to see exactly what that means.”
Bill Sirois, RTD’s manager of transit-oriented development, said the property owners have long-term plans for more density on the site.
“They’ve got a fairly stable income stream from the retail that’s there, and those are pretty long-term relationships, so it may not occur real soon,” he said. “But over time, as values go up, the idea of doing more than a big box there becomes more of a reality.”
RTD’s 2-acre park-n-Ride lot is another opportunity for redevelopment. RTD has been approached by developers interested in the site, including Wootten and Herrera, and Cohen and Frank.
RTD would consider selling the site if the developer would replace the roughly 300 parking spaces either in a parking structure on the site or at another location, Sirois said.
“Our policy is we want to remain whole,” Sirois said.
Others are getting ready for the activity that’s sure to come. K&G Petroleum recently demolished a gas station and removed the tanks to prepare the 30,000-square-foot site on the northwest corner of Alameda and Santa Fe for development.
“We’d like to do a build-to-suit of whatever business would work in that area,” said Darby Tucker, who handles business development for K&G Petroleum. “We’d love to see Starbucks or someone talk to us.”
Margaret Jackson: 303-954-1473 or mjackson@denverpost.com
