Lessons learned from ‘Shifting Suburbs’

Our Oct. 29 TOD Best Practices seminar drew more than 220 participants to the Arvada Center  for a keynote and presentation on reshaping suburban areas around transit as compact, walkable communities.

                In his folksy Birmingham drawl, keynote speaker Ed McMahon (a senior research fellow of ULI) discussed how today’s suburbs must keep pace with change to remain economically vibrant. Using case studies from around the nation, McMahon included the following observations:

–“The old strip mall model is dead”: In the last 30 years, we have built suburban retail spaces five times faster than the pace of retail growth

–Retail formats are changing including a ground floor Home Depot under housing in NY and two-dozen grocery stores in DC anchoring mixed-use buildings

–In recent years even Wal-Mart has introduced downsized stores from 4,000 to 15,000 square feet

Speakers then presented case studies from two TODs under transformation in Metro Denver.

Belleview Station. Architect/planner Trey Warren presented a master plan for the 50-acre site divided into six urban blocks with office, hotel and 300k sf of retail. Holland Partners is building 352 apartments representing the first phase of building out this plan. Developer Steve Clarke discussed plans to build a 345k sf office building designed by Gensler. He reported that it is still a huge challenge to finance buildings with less parking. Lenders are requiring 3.5 spaces per thousand square feet at a cost of $20k per space. “You have to provide the parking as if there were no transit.”

On the more positive side, Clarke said that TOD office buildings have close to zero vacancy in the Tech Center and lease up three times as fast as non-TOD.

Arvada Olde Town. Maureen Phair of the Arvada Urban Renewal Authority reported on efforts to plan nine acres of RTD parking as a site attractive to developers. Trammell Crow was recently named as master developer. Bill Mosher of Trammell Crow.

See links under “Events” on the ULI Colorado homepage for the full powerpoint presentations.

Thank you also to our event chairs Dan Cohen and Cassie Wright, and to our sponsors: DRCOG, Arvada Urban Renewal Authority, Prime West, Trammell Crow Co, Carmel Partners, Fehr & Peers, IBI Group, Gensler

Watch ULI Colorado Facebook for Tari Ensign’s photo album.