Dream Growing For Transit Revolution

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Rocky Mountain News (CO) - Saturday, May 18, 2002

Author: Berny Morson News Staff Writer

Mile-long freight trains grind and squeal past small factories, defunct landfills and weedy vacant lots on their way through the oldest part of Westminster.

But some day the area will boast a station for commuters riding those same rails between Boulder and Denver, said Don Malagisi, the head of a local homeowners' association. And around the station will be shops and homes - including some homes located above the shops.

``The whole area would be renovated,'' said Malagisi, a computer hardware salesman who has lived in Westminster since 1951. The infusion of new residents would bring back the mom-and-pop stores and small restaurants that vanished years ago, he said.

Malagisi is not alone in that thought.

All along the 30-mile route from Denver to Boulder, city planners, elected officials and ordinary citizens envision a land-use revolution sparked by a proposed combination of passenger service on the Burlington Northern Santa Fe tracks and dedicated bus lanes on U.S. 36.

They see community centers developing at each bus or rail station, turning the U.S. 36 corridor into a string of villages with shops, residences and even offices.

``It really works at shaping growth,'' said Marilee Utter, a Regional Transportation District real estate expert who helps cities plan development around stations. Giving people the option of living near transit is a better way to control sprawl than drawing a growth boundary, as some environmental groups have proposed, Utter said.

``It's a carrot instead of a stick,'' she said.

For more than 30 years, discussion of mass transit in the Denver area has centered on getting people to and from work or shopping. But now cities are focusing on how transit will affect where people live, work and shop.

Driving the discussion is a proposal to relieve congestion on U.S. 36. It was developed by mayors and planners of cities along the route, as well as the state Transportation Department and RTD.

Passenger service, halted in 1926, would be restored to the rail line that snakes through Westminster, Broomfield, Louisville and Boulder.

Buses originating in Boulder would speed down the middle of U.S. 36 on their own lanes, serving Superior, Broomfield and Westminster. They would pick up passengers at platforms in the middle of the highway that would look more like rail stations than traditional bus stops.

The bus and rail lines would serve Denver's Union Station, where passengers could continue south on light rail or hop another train for Denver International Airport.

The plan also calls for additional highway lanes on U.S. 36, and for bikeways.

Tom Norton, Colorado transportation director, said the proposal won't see daylight for years to come. The environmental impact statement alone could take several years, and RTD must still ask voters to approve a sales tax increase.

But cities already are adopting extensive plans for stations and the areas around them.

``If it happens five years from now, we're ready to go; if it happens 20 years from now, we're ready to go,'' said Tracy Winfree, Boulder transportation director.

Boulder has the most extensive redevelopment plans of all the cities affected.

Although plans are still conceptual, Boulder is negotiating to buy 11 acres on the east side of town, near the tracks, that would be the site of a ``transit village'' including housing, shops and offices.

In addition to the railroad terminal, the transit village will be the end of the line for the U.S. 36 bus routes.

The city plans several ``superstops'' for the buses as they travel on 28th Street toward the transit village. Planners hope the superstops will spark development of housing, shops and offices on 28th street, an area dominated by strip malls.

``It wouldn't be just a bus stop with a post in the ground and a bench,'' Winfree said of the superstops.

In addition to artful design, the stations would have real-time information on arrivals and departures. They would be transfer points to short-haul local shuttles the city already runs.

The stops would be linked by walkways and bike paths to the new development along 28th Street.

The Boulder plans come after years of advocacy by citizens who favor mass transit as an alternative to the automobile.

But similar plans reflect a major shift in thinking for Westminster, Louisville and Broomfield, where growth has traditionally involved single-family homes and shopping centers. Superior, the newest and smallest of the cities, does not have a plan for its bus station.

John Parr of the Denver-based Center for Regional and Neighborhood Action , a nonprofit group that helps cities plan, said people are more aware than previously of alternatives to traditional subdivisions and shopping centers. For example, a mixed use development adjoining Englewood's light-rail station has drawn attention in other cities, Parr said.

``I don't think people are reading great tomes by think tanks and going, `We ought to do this because it's a good idea','' Parr said. ``I think the way people learn is to look down the road and say, `If Englewood can do this, can't we all?' ''

Broomfield Mayor Karen Stuart agrees.

``Ten years ago, we wouldn't be able to talk about it,'' she said of the land use plans. ``It wouldn't have been acceptable. This area was a bedroom community.''

But no one anticipated the current volume of commuters on U.S. 36, Stuart said. And more lanes aren't the solution.

``I think people don't want to see that much asphalt - and rightly so,'' she said. ``It could look like I-25 if the only option you had was to widen those lanes.''

To make transit more convenient, Broomfield is planning a community around the bus station to be built in the middle of U.S. 36. Still in the conceptual stage, it will include multifamily residences, shopping, parks and small restaurants.

``Our goal is to have an area in which people can get out of their homes, go right to the bus station,'' Stuart said. Shuttle buses will help.

``It's going to be a neighborhood,'' she said. ``You can go out of your apartment and have dinner at a little restaurant.''

Stuart said the concept of an urban neighborhood will still be foreign to many Broomfield residents, as it was to her at first. She said her thinking was influenced by development she saw at transit stops in Washington, D.C., and the San Francisco Bay area.

``It took several trips for me to see the good and the bad - and to develop the good for us,'' Stuart said. The new Broomfield neighborhood will be far less dense and contain far more open space than many of the Washington and San Francisco developments, she said.

Westminster Mayor Ed Moss said most people aren't part of the land-use and transportation discussion swirling through the 36 corridor. But elected officials are fast becoming land-use savvy, as are neighborhood activists such as Malagisi, Moss said.

Much of the redevelopment in Malagasi's southwest Westminster neighborhood would occur anyway, said planner Tony Chacon. The city is already planning mixed-use development along Lowell Avenue, north of the rail line.

``The station will be the focal point,'' Chacon said.

Most of the nondescript apartment houses in the area will be demolished, Chacon said. The new neighborhood will have more housing, including rentals for the low-income families who now live in the area.

``We're not looking to displace people,'' Chacon said. ``We're looking to give them better habitat.''

The new neighborhood will also contain housing for working families - teachers, firefighters and people with office jobs, Chacon said. Such affordable housing is in short supply in the Denver area.

Under the mayors' plan, Westminster will also get a station near the Promenade, a newly developed area with a hotel and shops. The city would also like a station near the Westminster Mall, said Moss.

In Louisville, community leaders say the rail station will restore life to the city's old downtown - which was built along the railroad in the first place. Century-old pictures of steam engines are among memorabilia at the Old Louisville Inn, a popular, Victorian-era eatery near the tracks.

``I think a station a block away - this becomes a hot place,'' said City Councilman Tom Mayer, who has pushed for passenger service.

Just across the tracks, the city is planning mixed-use redevelopment at a defunct lumber yard and a cement plant. If the rail plan blossoms, the new development will be tied into the station. Otherwise it will be served by the existing county road, city officials say.

Opposition is likely to come from Jon Caldara, a former RTD board member who has successfully opposed public transit plans in the past. Caldara said the idea of villages around transit stations comes from city planners intent on controlling growth.

``Instead of letting consumers decide how to live and where to live, you get all the guys who have all the right diplomas on the walls,'' Caldara said.

``The problem is, these are the same people who 50 years ago who had the right diplomas on their walls who authorized every lot, every bit of development in the 36 corridor that we now label as sprawl,'' said Caldara, a radio talk-show host who heads the Golden-based Independence Institute, a think tank.

Caldara said cities should let the market drive land use, and most public transit should be run by private firms.

But David Manley, Vectra Bank's North Metro market president, said the transit plans are market-based. Manley, who lives in Broomfield, said the community near the bus station would meet the market demand of young professionals who don't want to mow a lawn, as well as older residents whose children are grown.

No one will be forced to live in the new communities, he said.

Manley said he's a Republican who favors development. A transit village is a way to grow without creating more traffic - the public's primary objection to growth, he said.

``There are a lot of people looking at, `How do I get away from spending time in the car?' '' he added.

LIB2

LIB2

Caption: Map
Locator Map / Commuter transit from Boulder to Denver. By News Staff
Memo: Contact Berny Morson at (303) 892-5072 or morsonb@RockyMountainNews.com.

Edition: Final
Section: Local
Page: 29A
Index Terms: RAILROAD
Record Number: 0205220046
Copyright (c) 2002 Rocky Mountain News

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