Getting your player ready...
Twenty years ago as DIA completed its first year of operation, boosters were chatting up how the airport could become an ‘economic generator’ in the voids of northeast Denver along the route to the airport. Even now there are vast empty spaces between DIA and the city’s edge (the terminal is 18 miles from downtown, 26 miles by freeway); but as Commuter Rail arrives from Union Station, developers are watching as opportunities taxi up to the gate here.
The 22.8-mile-long rail line, set to open late April, is giving buyers a whole new way of looking at Green Valley Ranch, the 4-square-mile master plan that was the earliest arrival along the corridor as the airport was being planned. “Light Rail is a game changer, creating lots of opportunities for jobs and housing,” says John Cheney, vice president of land development at Oakwood Homes, Green Valley Ranch’s developer. “We’ve seen consistent demand even with price increases.” That, says Cheney, is pushed along by homebuyers who are struggling to find amenitized communities with good access to downtown. Oakwood is taking advantage by creating new sites at the northwest end of Green Valley Ranch for some of its most popular collections – ones that will be close to a station being created along the rail route near 61st Avenue and Peña Boulevard. Three miles west, Stapleton – Colorado’s most popular new community – is pushing north of E. 56th Avenue on ground that was once a northernmost extension of old Stapleton Airport’s runways. “Everything has its time,” says Tom Gleason, vice president for public relations at Forest City Stapleton. “In terms of what we provide, that time is upon us.” Not only does the rail line create high visibility for commercial sites directly adjacent to Commuter Rail through Stapleton; but adds a sense of proximity to neighborhoods that will fill in a square-mile gap between 56th and the 15,000-acre Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge – long time habitat for eagles, now joined by a growing bison herd. “It will have the same character of Stapleton, but with different types of amenities,” adds Gleason.
