Getting your player ready...
Ride one of Light Rail’s E/F trains south to its terminus in Lone Tree, and you’ll be getting close to RidgeGate, the 3,500-acre master plan that’s already lured its own new exit on I-25, along with Sky Ridge Medical Center, 500-seat Lone Tree Arts Center, Lincoln Commons with its 24,000-foot Sprouts Farmers Market, and a thousand residents living in everything from custom homes to urban-style townhouses. RTD planners, meanwhile, already have their sights set on REAL southern terminus of Light Rail – not one, but three stops inside RidgeGate itself, to start construction around 2014.
The first of those stops will be at Sky Ridge – getting a reputation for patient-friendly services, and ready to build permanent flight-crew quarters for its Air Life helicopter serving a Level III trauma center. A half mile west, Houston developer Fein Real Estate Development completed Miramont last year — 243 luxury apartments with premium amenities…already 92% occupied, 98% leased. “A lot of the allure is the meeting of urban and open space,” says Jason Schlanger, Fein’s vice president of development, in explaining the remarkable lease-up. “You’re very close to employment centers; but also to open space. Denver is a lifestyle market and people want to be close to urban attractions, but close to the playgrounds, as well.”
Builder John Keith of Harvard Communities, pioneer of some of Denver’s most creative new-urban concepts, discovered that for himself earlier this year. While planning 31 urban-styled homes with 3-car garages and courtyards (you can find more on ‘ParkSide at RidgeGate’ at LiveBerkeley.com) he climbed into the bluffs of RidgeGate’s open space, the high ground that marks the south end of the Denver basin. “Now I go down early Sunday mornings and climb it, exactly 1,000 feet higher than downtown,” Keith says. “RidgeGate’s trails are the real deal.”
“What’s great about RidgeGate,” Keith adds, “is that it’s the south end of the Tech Center; great amenities, and right on the highway.” Darryl M. Jones, development manager for Coventry Development, points out that what you see in RidgeGate now is just the start. Its six-square mile master plan extends another two miles east of I-25 along Ridgegate Parkway; and even figuring in 1,200 acres of open space, only around an eighth of the expanse has been developed.
You can find current residential opportunities in RidgeGate from Century Communities (Courtyard homes from $300s, new Belvedere single family homes from $400s; Terrace townhomes from low $300s, and Row Homes from under $200,000) west of I-25 on RidgeGate Parkway.
If you go…
WHERE: RidgeGate, master-planned community in Lone Tree designed around Light Rail, parks, trails, Sky Ridge Medical Center, Lone Tree Arts Center, Lone Tree Rec Center, Lincoln Commons shopping, variety of homes and apartments arriving. Just west of I-25 at Lincoln Avenue or at new Ridgegate Pkwy exit.
PRICE: From low $200s to $1 million
WEB: RidgeGateColorado.com
Mark Samuelson is president of Samuelson & Associates, a homebuilding/real estate communications firm. You can e-mail him at mark@samuelsonassoc.com.
