Central Park Redevelopment

Context

When the opening of the Denver International Airport meant the closing of the Stapleton International Airport in the mid-1990s, a coalition of business and philanthropic leaders in the city realized the unprecedented opportunity to guide the former airfield into an environmentally and socially rich “city within a city,” that could continue the legacy of Denver’s historic neighborhoods while creating an abundance of new housing built around a system of parks.

Caption: Central Park’s redevelopment features large open spaces that help restore Colorado’s high prairie ecosystem with native and naturalized plantings.

Jim Chrisman, former senior vice president with Forest City Stapleton and then Brookfield Properties, and now an independent consultant, worked on the project for 30 years and saw it transform from the “Stapleton redevelopment” into the Central Park neighborhood of today. Chrisman notes how the coalition of local civic leaders raised several million dollars to fund creation of a master plan known as the Green Book. The plan was completed in the early 1990s in anticipation of the airport closure in 1995. This plan, ahead of its time as the concept of “sustainable development” was still in its infancy, laid the foundation for and defined the ethos for the project. It also underpinned selection of family-owned company Forest City as master developers for the project in 1998, as recounted by Bill Vitek. Vitek is principal with landscape architecture firm Dig Studio, which has worked on the community’s design guidelines and a large portion of Central Park’s 1,116 acres of parks and open space.

The development’s style, master-planned by sustainability-minded firms HDR and Calthorpe & Associates, leaned more toward a “traditional, New Urbanist design concept where we had a much finer grain of housing types per block and per lot, and not the 40-acre superblocks that you see in the suburban projects” that were more popular at the time, notes Chrisman.

As Chrisman describes, “We pushed the envelope on having alley-loaded product. We went back to the old traditions of Denver, and no one was really doing that, but it really helps with the streetscape. We also pushed really hard on narrow streets.” These small design choices had a major impact on creating a pedestrian-focused public realm.

In addition to the urban design, parks were always central to this style of development. “Nearly 24 percent of the site is parks or open space,” says Vitek. “And the idea was always that if you had such a large percentage of the site being open space, you could do much smaller lots. You didn’t do one-acre lots, or half-acre lots. Even a quarter-acre lot is big out there. The overall premise was to use the community parks and open space as everyone’s backyard.”

Keeping the parks accessible was also embedded in other ways, as the parks are at the front of homes, with a public street in between. “Another decision we made was that no property would back up to the open space. There would always be public right-of-way between open space and houses, so all homes would front open space and everyone would have access to it, which is the exact opposite of the suburban model,” says Chrisman.

Finally, in equal importance to creating a nature-first community was making sure Denverites of many socioeconomic backgrounds could afford to live there. Far from creating a luxury gated community, affordable housing was a key goal from the start: “We [the Stapleton Development Corporation] wanted [affordable housing] integrated throughout the community. . . . We tried to locate it near transit and close to amenities, at modest scale and densities so it wouldn’t be just a big standalone project, and it worked very well,” says Chrisman.

To accomplish this, the master plan called for a diverse mix of housing types, from single-family to townhomes to apartment complexes, and the development also made sure to expand options in other ways: “Our product segmentation was very broad,” Chrisman explains. “We pushed for product diversity from the cheapest builders could build to the highest the market would support. We had a lot of ability for moving up and down.” Partnerships with nonprofit (and later for-profit) developers helped make this happen, as did initial donations of land and $30,000–$40,000 per home to ensure the income-restricted for-sale and for-rent units penciled out. Even today, there are income-restricted units for sale in the $200,000 range—a remarkable achievement in today’s urban housing crisis.

Amidst the impressive development of 12,000 homes and 5,000 apartments, 3.3 million square feet of existing flex/industrial space and 2.6 million square feet of retail, the themes of sustainability and climate resilience remain prominent. Landscape architects Dig Studio developed a network of open space and green infrastructure that prioritized use of native and naturalized plants, restoration of the Colorado prairie ecosystem, and natural management and conservation of water to create a more drought-, heat-, and flood-resistant community that supports wildlife and ecology, while providing a rich set of amenities for recreation, social gathering, and healthy living.

Climate Resilience Strategies

Green infrastructure and flood control

The open spaces at Central Park increased the park system of Denver by an impressive 25 percent. As Laurel Raines, founding principal at Dig, describes it, Central Park’s green space is “a system of parks. And what is really effective about this system is that there’s the layer of the parkways . . . [that] are extensions of Denver’s historic parkway system,” says Raines. “The parkway systems knit the new development back into the existing fabric of Denver.” But that’s not all, as there are also large regional parks like Central Park, which is what gives the redevelopment its name and forms the system’s center at 80 acres. “It’s a very large park. Then there’s all the trunk [or core] open space system, which is run by Denver Parks. The trunk open space system acts as a contiguous fabric through the entire development, and it is primarily a natural system.” Finally, there’s the system neighborhood parks, or pocket parks, which reach as small as half an acre and are meant to give each neighborhood its identity, relates Raines.

Caption: In addition to large core, or “trunk” spaces, the neighborhood features many linear parkways that extend out into the neighborhoods, expanding access to parks while creating biodiversity corridors. Homes front directly onto these parks but do not restrict public access.

This is the heart of Central Park’s resilience strategy, notes Vitek. “Twenty-five years ago we didn’t call it green infrastructure, but it really was serving the same functions. And I think that’s what’s key in any parks and open space planning today is that it has to serve multiple purposes. It has to serve stormwater management and water quality, recreation, ability for greater mobility, and habitat creation.”

In addition to the broad restoration goals, Central Park also naturalized systems for water treatment, quality, and flood control. The south side of the site was in a floodplain, and occasionally airport runways used to flood, so the entire floodplain needed opening up and redesigning. “The first major large open space, Westerly Creek, was designed to take all the pipes that used to go under the ground for the airport and bring them through in a natural waterway through the center of the park and act as a flood control as well as water quality measure. And within the first year or two, the entire calculated drainage area filled up. It was like a lake. It certainly proved the point that it was needed and served its function,” says Vitek.

Caption: This network of large parks, parkways, and neighborhood “pocket parks” offers multiple opportunities to capture and retain stormwater, reducing flood risk and helping recharge groundwater supplies.

Additionally, Chrisman describes how the development team decided to work on a larger scale of water quality management. “We also made a decision that we were going to have regional water quality measures. What you typically see is someone buys five acres and they would have their own small detention pond, and [others do the same] and you have a whole bunch of properties with little detention ponds and it doesn’t look good and I don’t think it’s efficient from a water quality standpoint. We regionalized all that and had regional detention ponds that all properties would flow into.”

When major, hundred-year storms hit Denver in 2013—in Chrisman’s words, “just ridiculous amounts of rain”—the system was tested and passed with flying colors. “That Westerly Creek corridor was able to manage it. There are photos of the water almost up to the bridge, but it managed the water successfully.”

Native plants

The natural landscapes of the Central Park natural system were primarily designed as a restoration of Colorado’s historic ecosystem. Vitek and Raines explain that design guidelines for common and private land prioritize the creation of “Colorado-scape,” an evolution of the idea of xeriscaping, which focuses on use of native and naturalized plants that are adapted to the arid climate and do not need extra irrigation, in place of imported eastern lawn grass species. These plant species also attract pollinators and support biodiversity, and studies show they help with the urban heat island effect, because their roots are so much deeper than lawn species that they help more water evaporate from the soil and cool the area. Finally, they do not spread weed seed into the National Wildlife Refuge, which is adjacent to the neighborhood.

Caption: Landscape design focused on plants suitable to Colorado’s ecosystem, which would support pollinators and the larger food chain while also helping reduce water use for irrigation and enhancing the parks’ ability to cool their surroundings.

This evolution, as Vitek describes, was a shift in philosophy from the City Beautiful movement that shaped Denver in its early days, based on eastern U.S. designers’ ideals of lush lawns, to what he calls the “City Ecological” ideal focused on the no-less-beautiful but more appropriate local aesthetic of Denver’s high prairie landscape. This focus has rewarded people and nature, providing what Vitek calls “an opportunity not only for connective recreation, but connective habitat,” as they even saw beavers move in shortly after the fences came down around the old airfield.

As Colorado has experienced greater challenges with water scarcity, the landscaping selections have become more water conscious. “The old guidelines from the south and the new guidelines from the north [of the development] are different. For instance, just the plant palette alone that is suggested is more water conserving than it used to be,” says Raines.

In addition, these native and naturalized plants also include tens of thousands of trees (nearly 40,000 officially, and Vitek and Raines suspect it may be closer to 50,000) that also help cool the area, support biodiversity, and enhance human mental wellness through their biophilic benefits.

Reclaimed water

Lastly, the area uses Denver’s reclaimed water system, also known as purple pipe water (sewer water that has gone through sufficient treatment for nonpotable reuse). This water now irrigates the larger parks in the system, significantly reducing water withdrawals for irrigation.

Energy efficient buildings

As a key aspect of sustainability, many buildings in Central Park have been designed to LEED standards or Energy Star requirements. By virtue of these achievements, Central Park has become the largest Energy Star community in the state.

Value Creation

Added amenity and enhanced user experience

The parks and open spaces create significant amenity value for Central Park as places for recreation, exercise, and connecting with nature, improving quality of life for residents and Denverites and attracting large numbers of users.

Avoided losses, energy savings, water savings, and reduced operational costs

The natural flood control and floodplain protection measures significantly reduce the potential for property damage from heavy storms and river flooding. Additionally, the high level of energy performance required for buildings and the drought-resistant plantings both reduce energy and water use and associated utility bills for residents and owners.

Awards and recognition and marketing advantage

As development has unfolded, Central Park has attracted numerous awards, including a 2006 ULI Award for Excellence, a U.S. EPA Environmental Achievement Award, and the prestigious Stockholm Partnerships for Sustainable Cities Award from the King of Sweden, among others. This recognition as an international model for large-scale, sustainable redevelopment creates significant competitive advantage and marketing opportunities.

Business development and enhanced property value

The high-quality design and execution of the homes and communities in Central Park have created high demand and a strong pool of occupants. From 2010–2019, Central Park appeared six times in RCLCO’s lists of the year’s top 10 best-selling master-planned communities in the United States. As Vitek notes, “study after study will show that communities that have more parks have a higher premium value for properties and sales. . . . Additionally, Central Park stood the test of time during the COVID-19 pandemic, because sales there continued, while in other places they really dropped off.”

Raines and Chrisman both highlight that resale within the neighborhood is one of the biggest sales pools, constituting 40–50 percent of sales every year and demonstrating a high level of satisfaction and desire to remain in the neighborhood. As Raines puts it, “This is a beloved neighborhood. It’s very common for people to move from one house to another, to another.”

Although in a large, master-planned community it can be hard to attribute success to a single factor such as parks, Chrisman believes it has much to do with the exceptional amount of green space created. Though he notes the location was hampered by an Air Force base to the south, an Army medical hospital to the east, and an Environmental Protection Agency Superfund site to the north, the parks were able to overcome those barriers. “They really did create value in the long run, especially with the way we had the houses fronting the parks. It created immediate value for their homes as well as overall value, because it created demand for people to want to be there. And there’s no way to prove it, but if we’d had only 400 or 500 acres of parks [instead of the 1,100], I don’t think it would have done as well.”

Lessons Learned

• Embed sustainability from the beginning. Central Park’s champions, the group of leaders in the Stapleton Redevelopment Foundation who began the master-planning and development process, were committed to environmental and social performance from the start and ensured the execution matched the original vision of the Green Book. Sustainability is best achieved when it informs every choice made throughout a development’s life cycle.
• Find the right partners. Similarly, sustainability can be difficult to carry out unless all partners throughout the value chain are committed. The Foundation was able to find the right development partners, from Forest City and Brookfield to design consultants Dig Studio, HDR, Civitas, and Calthorpe & Associates, to the multiple builders involved, to align on aiming high for the redevelopment.
• Design for the long term, even if ahead of one’s time. Sustainability is still not mainstream in real estate, but when the redevelopment planning began in the early 1990s, sustainability was far from reaching the levels of acceptance it has today. Nevertheless, the development team realized its potential as a strategy to create lasting value, and as modern demand for ecologically and socially oriented communities continues to rise, the development is well-positioned to capture even greater value.