Green light for Stapleton plan in Denver

New urbanist project will take housing production to a new level. The Stapleton Airport redevelopment in Denver is the largest urban infill project in the US, according to developer Forest City. Certainly, the plans call for one of the most rapidly developed new urbanist projects ever. Buildings are scheduled to start coming out of the ground in the spring of 2001 at a pace that will make Celebration, Florida, look slow. Denver Mayor Wellington Webb announced a final agreement with Forest City, a $3.5 billion firm specializing in urban development, in February, 2000. The developer then unveiled plans for a million square feet of retail. Master planned by Calthorpe Associates, Stapleton is the first new urbanist project attempted by Forest City, although the company has major experience in urban locations. The firm’s entire development portfolio is within cities, including projects in New York City, Boston, District of Columbia, Richmond, and Cleveland, according to Forest City spokesman Hank Baker. Because of the company’s size, infrastructure financing could be guaranteed for Stapleton. In preparation for Stapleton, Forest City officials toured Celebration, Kentlands, Harbor Town, and other new urbanist neighborhoods and towns. The company got a lot of ideas from these projects, Baker says, but Forest City will modify its approach to allow faster rates of construction. In addition to the retail, Forest City anticipates building 800 residential units (500 homes and 300 apartments) and 100,000 square feet of office space in 2001. After that, the company plans 500 to 700 new housing units a year. (The largest new urbanist project to date, Celebration, has averaged about 300 housing units per year). Ultimately, the project will have 12,000 homes and apartments and more than 13 million square feet of commercial space on 2,935 acres. An additional 1,116 acres will be preserved as open space. Forest City agreed to pay $79.4 million for the developable land, to be purchased over a 15-year period. Architectural guidelines are currently being created for Stapleton by three firms — Calthorpe, Wolff-Lyon, and EDAW. Because these will be guidelines — and not a pattern book or code — the regulations will be looser than those in, for example, Celebration or Kentlands, Baker says. “The guidelines will acknowledge five or six architectural styles that are native to Denver,” he explains, “but they will also allow builders to come in with their own styles. There is flexibility built in.” The developer, however, will not be the final arbiter of what meets the guidelines. That will be the Design Review Committee, a panel of architects, planners, and other professionals appointed by the Stapleton Development Corp., a public entity created by the city. The Stapleton Development Corp. serves as a “watchdog,” making sure that Forest City meets its obligations on the formerly city owned property. The Design Review Committee will ensure that Forest City does not stray from new urbanist principles, Baker says. “We need to figure out how to take a new urbanist approach, driven by lively streetscapes, and still achieve the reality of production building,” Baker adds. The fact that the site is less than 10 miles from downtown and directly connected to the city grid will greatly enhance the new urbanist approach, he adds. The project’s town center will consist of a main street and a square. It will be anchored by a 60,000 square foot grocery store, a hotel, a bank, a drugstore, neighborhood service stores like a coffee shop, bakery, and dry cleaner, a town hall, live/work units and lofts. Shops on the main street will have offices or apartments above. On a site north of the town center, automobile-oriented big box development will be permitted. Forest City is still trying to figure out a plan for such development. About a dozen different housing types are scattered throughout the project, including townhomes, apartments, stacked flats, cottages around small greens, live/work units, various types of single homes and estate lots. “Were aiming for a range of housing comparable to what is found throughout the region,” says Baker, with for-sale units starting at under $100,000 and topping out at over $500,000.” Site preparation for the development has involved recycling more than 200,000 tons of asphalt from runways.