Interlocken got parkway ball rolling

BROOMFIELD – The first consultant representing Sun Microsystems’ interest in locating here called Don Dunshee at 10 in the morning on Aug. 2, 1995. And, yes, the Northwest Parkway had already shown up on all the maps, the president and chief executive officer of the Broomfield Economic Development Corp. acknowledges.

The reality is – then and even today – that the Northwest Parkway, which nearly every local official involved says is nearly a done deal, still has not received the final approvals needed to proceed.

But Dunshee says other issues were more important to Sun’s expansion decision than the proposed parkway. An important attribute to Interlocken business park was access off the Boulder turnpike, for example, not whether the new parkway would be built.

Whether it was on the maps or not, Dunshee and real estate experts as well as representatives of Interlocken business park and the city of Broomfield say the promise of the Northwest Parkway had little impact on the success of the business park at the 96th Street Interchange with U.S. 36.

It wasn’t a prerequisite for development, and it wasn’t a prerequisite for success.

Nonetheless, Interlocken’s management wanted to speed up construction of the parkway, and, to get the ball rolling, gave more than $1 million toward the non-profit parkway corporation even before the highway authority was established. Interlocken officials, says Interlocken’s Jim Long, subscribe to the philosophy that infrastructure needs to match the pace of development. Otherwise gridlock, such as that now found in southeast Denver, is inevitable.

Long adds that the trend nationwide is toward private toll roads because of the scarce availability of state and federal funds for highway projects.

And Long says he’s sensitive to the idea that Interlocken is deriving uneven economic benefit. These are regional issues of much larger consideration than Interlocken, he says.

“It would be foolish for me to say we don’t benefit from (the parkway),” he says. “But then I think that it is balanced by the funding we provide that’s commensurate with that benefit.”

Clif Harald, a spokesman for Sun Microsystems, says Sun’s management team has not evaluated the role the parkway might play in its future development and work force planning.

Sun did view the proposed parkway, Harald says, as a good indicator of regional planning. But it wasn’t one of the key factors in Sun’s decision to locate in Interlocken. More important were Interlocken’s proximity to the University of Colorado at Boulder and the metro area’s quality of life.

“It was a factor, but it wasn’t a make-or-break factor,” Harald says of the parkway.

If the parkway isn’t built, real estate experts say, it could impact Interlocken’s land values.

“Five years from now, if the Northwest Parkway is not there, the land won’t sell for what if would have if the parkway is completed,” says Rick Schreck, a former listing agent for Interlocken.

One reason the parkway is important to the area is because at build-out Interlocken will have the potential to house 20,000 to 25,000 workers. Those workers need to get to and from work, notes Dunshee, Long and others.

“There are a lot of people, believe it or not, that work (in Broomfield) every day that live north,” Dunshee says. “They live in Windsor. They live in Loveland. They live in Fort Collins. They live in Cheyenne, Greeley. And they’re driving down here every day.”

The parkway was “absolutely” a selling point for Phoenix-based Westcor Partners, which is developing FlatIron Crossing shopping mall, Dunshee says. And now that Interlocken and its surrounding area has developed as far as it has, Interlocken and businesses in and surrounding the park do care whether the parkway is built.

“They want to see the road system designed in a fashion that is going to maximize their investments and all the corporations that have built there – their investments – and minimize impacts on either employees in the park or shoppers at the mall,” Dunshee says.

Dunshee and Long say ultimately it was voters’ approval of the tax-increment financing to build the 96th Street Interchange and its completion that spurred Interlocken’s phenomenal development activity over the last three years.

“People really don’t have that history, or they forgot,” Long says.

The 96th Street bridge, he adds, was built to handle traffic projected for the Northwest Parkway instead of as only an access point for Interlocken.

And it is not that Interlocken is a white knight, he says. What makes Interlocken work is everything that has happened around it – it was driven by regional transportation plans that make it a hub or an urban center.

“It’s natural that the scale of development that has happened here would happen here,” Long says. “It makes sense. Yes, these companies, for example Sun, they look at (the parkway). That’s important to them. But it’s important to them all, too. All of these things started with the access.”

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