New Urbanism’s old hat wears well

During four days in mid-June, Colorado was center-stage for architects, planners, builders and developers who share a passion for a planning, design and land-use scheme known broadly as “new urbanism.”

The Chicago-based Congress for the New Urbanism chose Denver for its 17th annual conference, a decision that was driven in large measure by the pace of new urbanist-inspired development in metro Denver and Boulder and, to a lesser degree, the more-northern Front Range.

In short, the region has come of age, according to those who hold the movement’s concepts near and dear.

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“I feel I’m in the midst of a full and wholesale cultural shift toward new urbanism,´ said Michael Tavel, a Denver architect and key organizer of Colorado’s chapter of the national group. “In the metro Denver area, including Boulder, there’s been a huge shift.”

The principles that the new urbanist movement’s proponents press forward with evangelical fervor are not all that new. In fact, they have their roots in the ways European cities grew during the 16th and 17th centuries.

New urbanism definitions – none of them brief – are sprinkled with words such as walkable, infill, adaptive reuse, preservation, energy efficiency, live-work, transit-oriented. The New Urbanists’ nemeses are suburban sprawl, auto-centric development and what the movement calls the “soullessness” of most modern real estate development projects.

Challenges for the advocates of new urbanism, especially in regions like Northern Colorado where examples are fewer and more scattered, lie mostly in practical and financial barriers that every architect, planner and developer deal with daily.

Money troubles

“Some of the obstacles are in the financial market,´ said Justin Larson, who founded JCL Architecture Inc. in Fort Collins with a distinct orientation to new urbanist ideas. “We have to sell things in this area that don’t have comparables, and that’s hard. In a place like Denver, you have 20 other commercial projects that serve as comparables for a proposed project. We have a couple of projects that the banks aren’t going to touch because of the lack of comparables, especially in this economy.”

Nonetheless, Larson has found success with projects such as the Lofts at Magnolia redevelopment at the northwest corner of Mason and Magnolia streets in Old Town Fort Collins, and has even exported his new urbanist thinking to Wyoming, with a redevelopment project in Cheyenne that will transform the historic Greer Building on Central Avenue into four stories of mixed retail and office space.

Experiences of Northern Colorado developers who have chosen the new urbanist tag for their projects illustrate the point that Larson makes about financial challenges. Ten years ago, Fort Collins developer Bill Neal used the term to describe his vision for Rigden Farm, a sweeping, 500-acre commercial and residential project on the southeast quadrant of Drake and Timberline roads in Fort Collins.

By the time Neal died in a 2004 plane crash, Rigden’s new urbanist focus had gone fuzzy, with homes by cookie-cutter national homebuilders that feature walk-out basements and yawning, three-car garages outnumbering those that were much smaller, wrapped with front porches and with garages tucked away on back alleys.

Enter the Boulderites

At the same time, Boulder developers and architects at the forefront of the movement were investing heavily in Old Town projects.

Wolff Lyon Architects and Wonderland Hill Development Co., both Boulder-based firms that adhere to the ideas of new urbanism, in 2004 opened Mason Street North, a mixed-use development that put 20 residences and 16,000 square feet of commercial space on the market.

Three years later, Boulder development, architecture and construction company Coburn Development Inc. opened the first phase of Penny Flats, a project that will eventually offer 147 residential units and 30,000 square feet of retail and office space.

The Mason Street North properties hit the market with home prices and commercial lease rates that pushed higher than most other downtown offerings. A 700-square-foot, one bedroom flat sold for about $150,000, while commercial leases were in the range of $17 to $19 per square foot.

“‘Community’ has a price,” Wolff Lyon cofounder John Wolff said when final approval was granted for the project. “People have demonstrated they are willing to pay more for ‘community.'” Six years later, the residential properties are at last sold out, and just four of the 12 retail and office spaces remain available.

Mason Street’s promise

It is significant that Mason Street North and Penny Flats lie at the far-north terminus of the proposed Mason Corridor, because it is that proposal that many new urbanist thinkers say presents the greatest opportunity for expansion of the concept in Northern Colorado.

Even architects and planners who don’t hang their hats on new-urbanist hooks agree that the basic tenets of the movement will push the region toward more responsible development and land-use decisions.

“I think that whole movement deals with attitudes of how we will live in a manner that’s going to extend our natural resources for future generations,´ said George Brelig, founder and president of RB+B Architects Inc. of Fort Collins. “The tendency is going to be to move toward higher-quality living space, and to higher density. We’re also going to have to look for transit alternatives that get us away from dependency on cars.”

Outside observers, such as Denver architect Tavel, say that the way Northern Colorado’s landscape has developed over the course of 50 years works against new-urbanist approaches to design and land use.

“One of the things that’s really hurt Fort Collins and Loveland is the placement of Interstate 25,” Tavel said. “Because of that, because it was aligned way out there to the east, it’s really sucking the energy out of the cores of those communities, and it’s fostering all this sprawl.”

Pressure for different approaches to development, as choked highways and diminished air quality become more apparent, will lead to the changes, Tavel said.

“There’s a long tradition of sound regional planning and smart growth in Colorado, but it’s been in fits and starts,” he said. “That pace is really picking up now.”