Lend Lease could start work later this year on a new sustainable community in Aurora that would include a mix of homes, shops, restaurants and offices.
Located on 500 acres at the southwest corner of Interstate 70 and E-470, Horizon Uptown will have about 3,800 residences housing about 8,000 people and 1.3 million square feet of retail, comprising 400,000 square feet of neighborhood retail and 900,000 square feet of large-format and lifestyle centers.
It also will have up to 4 million square feet of office space, targeting the health care, aerospace and defense industries. About 11,000 people could work at Horizon.
The town center and a kindergarten-through-eighth-grade school will border two sides of a central park.
Lend Lease, a development company with its U.S. headquarters in Denver, got zoning approval for the project last week. The company anticipates its conceptual plans will be approved in the next three months.
All commercial buildings in the project must meet the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Gold standard. Homes will be built to either Colorado Built Green standards or those established by the U.S. Green Building Council.
Home-management systems will measure consumption of water and energy. A website, also known as a community portal, will allow residents to check consumption, said Greg Ochis, Horizon’s project manager.
Lend Lease also has been talking with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory about the possibility of equipping each home at Horizon, as well as its development at the former Lowry Bombing Range, with electric cars.
“GM and Toyota have announced publicly that they hope they’ll be introducing a plug-in model by 2010,” said Terry Penney, technology manager for advanced vehicles at the NREL. “If I were the governor of Colorado, I would be saying all new development must be looking at plug-in ready. It takes a long time to develop an infrastructure.”
Margaret Jackson: 303-954-1473 or mjackson@denverpost.com
