Getting your player ready...
Where in the Denver-Boulder area are a thousand people showing up every week to tour three model homes? That would be at RidgeGate, the 3,500-acre master-planned expanse in Lone Tree – the same place where financial services giant Charles Schwab is creating a $230 million campus expected to house 2,200 jobs in its first phase; and where Sky Ridge Medical Center is roaring into a $107 million expansion that will add another 400 positions to the 1,000 jobs it already anchors.
A few blocks west, at offices of RidgeGate’s master developer, New York-based Coventry Development Corporation, Development Manager Darryl Jones is hearing spots advertising 250 jobs that will arrive with the opening of outfitter Cabela’s super-store, set to open Aug. 15, just west of RidgeGate Parkway’s exit from I-25. That activity, he says, merely hints at the job impact RidgeGate will have as the master plan unfolds from West Village, the current area west of I-25, into a larger East Village east of the freeway, where the bulk of an expected 20 million square feet of commercial office space will be built – served by two RTD Light Rail stations. Already RidgeGate is seeing anticipation for when RTD unrolls its next section of track south from Southeast Line’s current terminus at Lincoln Station, to a station site beside Sky Ridge, expected to open in 2017. From there, rails will cross the freeway and angle south to RidgeGate Station Park-n-Ride; with a third intermediary station set to follow as RidgeGate unfolds its future development. “Corporations prefer to be quiet about relocation planning,” Jones says. “But with Colorado ranked as one of the stronger markets in the country now, we happen to be particularly well placed.” Adding even more potential is a trend that Coventry’s team has noticed both here and at their fast-selling Springwoods Village campus in Houston, where ExxonMobil is a major tenant. “Corporations gravitate to master-planned communities like this,” Jones notes. “They want to offer their employees something unique, where they’ll be able to live, shop, play, and walk to things.” That’s exactly what homebuyers are telling Desiree James and Terri Disney at Montecito, Century Communities’ Mediterranean-styled luxury single-family homes, taking shape further west along RidgeGate Parkway, where the terrain rises toward open space and trails that overlook the Denver basin from exactly 1,000 feet above downtown. “These home sites are one of a kind,” says Disney, noting that buyers who have already contracted 29 homes since Montecito’s model opening around the first of the year, are arriving from three obvious sources: downsizing from Lone Tree’s popular Heritage Hills area; or moving to Denver from out of state, or from acreage areas further south in Douglas County, wanting better proximity to restaurants, shopping and urban attractions that RidgeGate offers. They also like the striking interiors by award-winning Godden Sudik Architects, luring improbable numbers of visitors to Century’s models (one a ranch with walkout, signifying RidgeGate’s popularity with down-sizing buyers). Prices now start at $499,950; but Montecito has already sold almost every home released to date, and has waiting lists for releases to come. With only 142 sites, buyers who want to be part of it need to be visiting the models (and two other homes that may become available in the near term) on view this weekend. You can see other builder sites to come, and two sets of luxury apartments, both close to the coming Light Rail station; along with the new-urban amenities already in place: 500-seat Lone Tree Arts Center; Lincoln Commons shopping center with Sprouts Farmers Market; Lone Tree’s rec center; the trails; and historic Schweiger Ranch park/education center. RidgeGate is west of I-25 on new RidgeGate Parkway; head west a quarter-mile to Montecito’s models. 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, shopping, single-family homes, premium apartments & rental townhomes. Just west of I-25 at Lincoln Avenue or new Ridgegate Pkwy exit
