The newest Interstate 25 interchange opens this morning 2.3 miles south of Lincoln Avenue, officially kicking off development of a 3,500-acre master-planned community expected to double the population of Lone Tree.
The RidgeGate Parkway exchange was built with $18 million from the community developers and about $7 million from the Colorado Department of Transportation.
When complete, RidgeGate will include 12,000 new homes and about 23 million square feet of office, retail and civic space.
By comparison, the Denver Tech Center has 22 million square feet of rentable space, although it is spread out over a greater area than RidgeGate, said Keith Simon, project manager for Coventry Development.
New York-based Coventry is the design, construction and management firm for RidgeGate, which will occupy all but 100 developable acres remaining within Lone Tree city limits.
There has been work on the property, including Sky Ridge Medical Center, which opened in 2003. Construction began in February on Miramont at RidgeGate, a 244-unit apartment complex with street-level shops and services.
Simon said the planned community, which will more than double the population of Lone Tree — now just over 10,000 — will incorporate features of New Urbanism, the development movement that puts a premium on community and discourages automobile traffic.
“We want RidgeGate to offer the very best of all that Colorado has to offer: Boulder’s integration with its beautiful open space, the unique charm of Cherry Creek North and the scale and character of the central Denver neighborhoods,” Simon said.
RTD plans to extend light-rail service into RidgeGate, adding three new stations and terminating at the new I-25 interchange, according to Pauletta Tonilas, spokeswoman for RTD’s FasTracks program.
About 1,000 acres of the property will remain as open space, including the historic 40-acre Schweiger Ranch southeast of the interchange. Dilapidated ranch buildings, which date to the early 1900s, will be restored or renovated and then opened to the public as a museum/working farm, Simon said.
The 1,000 acres of open space is included in the 3,500-acre community.
The RidgeGate property was purchased in the late 1960s by Denver Tech Center developer George Wallace.
Wallace ran into financial difficulties in 1972 and lost the land, which was then purchased by an unnamed family in Greece. Coventry was formed by the family to plan and develop land it owns around the world.
The city of Lone Tree incorporated in 1995 and annexed the RidgeGate property in 2000, Simon said.
Mike McPhee: 303-954-1409 or mmcphee@denverpost.com
