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BREAKING COMMON GROUND

Authorities, developers create city center for Aurora, Colo.

BY SUSAN THORNE

The city condemned 21 parcels to clear a site for Miller Weingarten’s Aurora City Place.

Aurora, Colo., an edge town east of Denver, never really had a city center, but that is changing fast. The public and private sectors there have come together to give it a civic and commercial hub to be proud of, complete with bustling retail.

In what some describe as a textbook case of public-private cooperation, municipal and private-sector officials have launched a massive development program that is set to generate revenue as much as excitement in this city of 300,000.

Over the past three years, this new city center area, which lies along Interstate 225 and Chambers Road, west of Denver International Airport, has become the site of some $300 million worth of public and private projects. Retail is among the prime movers. Simon Property Group is undertaking a $100 million renovation of the 28-year-old, 1 million-square-foot Aurora Mall, and in May Denver-based developer Miller Weingarten Realty built Aurora City Place, a $75 million, 530,000-square-foot open-air center combining large-format retail stores with a three-block, village-street configuration of smaller shops.

Joining these shopping destinations are a variety of government- and privately financed facilities, including a new, four-building municipal complex housing the city hall, law courts, a library and a museum. Then there are Arapahoe County’s $17 million building and a new office campus for 1,800 local employees of Boca Raton, Fla.-based private security firm ADT. Virtually all these projects have been completed in the past year. In addition, condominium, townhouse and apartment developments will bring a total of 500 residence units to the district by year-end.

The city’s assistance and its partnership with the private sector have been key factors in the realization of all this development, public and private officials say. One pivotal step was the construction of the Alameda highway interchange at I-225, financed through a $20 million bond issue by the city of Aurora and completed in 2000, which provides convenient access to the city center site. Previously, the area could be seen but not readily reached from the highway, a situation that was discouraging the kind of spillover development typical around major malls, explains John Loss, CFO of Miller Weingarten and project development director for Aurora City Place.

Simon Property Group is upgrading Aurora Mall, helped by a $15 million sales tax rebate from the city.

The city chose Miller Weingarten in 1999 to develop the new shopping center, north of Aurora Mall, and gave the developer crucial help with site assembly by using its condemnation power to gain control of the 21 parcels that comprised the site. Further, the city offered Miller Weingarten a tax-sharing package, through which the developer gets back a fixed percentage of the sales taxes the shopping center generates yearly over the next several years, starting this year, until $13 million is rebated.

Simon, for its part, acquired Aurora Mall (built by The DeBartolo Corp. in 1978) as part of a portfolio bought from Corporate Property Investors in 1998. Simon saw the center’s potential from the start, but also recognized the need to improve highway access to make it a viable regional draw, says Art Spelmeyer, executive vice president of development at Simon.

In April Dillard’s announced plans to build a 180,000-square-foot store, to be completed in 2005. Current anchors, too, are spearheading substantial improvements. Foley’s, for instance, will consolidate its two mall stores into a single 165,000-square-foot unit to open in September 2004. Sears and J.C. Penney, too, have renovated their stores within the past year. Meanwhile, Simon’s two-year Aurora Mall upgrade and expansion began this summer, assisted by a $15 million sales-tax-sharing agreement with the city, similar to Miller Weingarten’s. Changes will include exterior and interior renovations, a new 650-seat food court and expanded parking. The mall will be enlarged by about 200,000 square feet, to nearly 1.2 million square feet.

Aurora Mall’s 140 specialty brands include The Disney Store, Old Navy and Victoria’s Secret, plus many locally based retailers. Simon wants to introduce additional, national tenants appropriate to a regional mall; currently, Aurora Mall resembles a community center with a large base of local retailers, says Jeff Meyer, the center’s development director.

“We’re bringing in a 16-screen Century theater, and we’d like to bring in some sit-down restaurants to retain shoppers for a longer time,” he said.

Meyer and Loss say they regard their centers as complementary and that they anticipate a strong synergy between them. Aurora City Place is anchored by a SuperTarget, and also has Barnes & Noble, PetSmart and Pier 1 Imports, plus some 90,000 square feet of smaller shops. (Roughly half of the specialty stores were operating at press time). Furthermore, pedestrian traffic between the two centers is encouraged by walkways, crossings and landscaping.

Though the primary catchment area for the two shopping centers is a three-to-four-mile radius, Meyer says he expects the city center’s workers to visit Aurora Mall for lunch and then make it their primary shopping destination.

Spelmeyer says Simon’s expansion plans reflect its confidence in Aurora’s continued economic growth. Indicators of that growth include the new health sciences center of the University of Colorado and the burgeoning number of new homes. Then there are the plans for light-rail transit to connect Aurora with Denver sometime over the next decade. Aurora’s population has increased steadily at between 2 and 2.5 percent annually in recent years.

Aurora’s growth may look unstoppable today, but it was a long time coming, says Paul Tauer, who has been mayor since 1987. Municipal planners first created a plan for a concentration of uses next to Aurora Mall in the early 1980s, giving the area special zoning and taxation status, but the late-1980s economic slowdown dashed any hopes of rapid development. When progress proved to be slow for several years, the city had to resist the temptation to turn to smaller-scale or strip development, Tauer says. For cities with a well-conceived vision, “it’s worthwhile to stick to your guns,” he said. “We have as much potential as any city in the country.”

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