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Originally Posted by mr1138
this was always a marketing gimmick at best.
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Yes.
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There's no way it was ever going to leapfrog out to the Aurora border build an entire authentic urban neighborhood from scratch. Can anybody give me a 21st century example of such a thing being done anywhere in the US?
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There are plenty of more functionally urban examples of greenfield New Urbanism than Stapleton, but nothing on Stapleton's acreage.
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This was never going to be a neighborhood of brownstones or apartments.
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Wellllll, it could have had a better mix. A lot of single family houses were always going to be there, but more apartments and rowhouses fanning out around each town center might have been realistic, and it would've been nice to have enough density for some corner stores outside the town centers. And there are certainly plenty of US examples of newly built town centers with much denser, taller buildings than anything in Stapleton. So while I don't think Stapleton is a disaster, I do think it could have been better. It's OK, but not perfect, even given the constraints.
Whether the Colorado market was ready to absorb that 10 years ago... perhaps not. It seems like it would be now, though.
I wonder if you could build a whole neighborhood of rowhouses there now. What a cool experiment that would be. Maybe we can convince Park Hill Golf Club to sell.
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the TOD/Quebec Square area of Stapleton is bigger than Riverfront Park and Union Station Neighborhood combined. At best, that would only have ever been a tiny snippet of the entire airport property, and there's no reason it can't still happen someday now that there is a baseline population out there.
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Incidentally, one thing about Stapleton that I'm totally fine with is Quebec Square. It was never going to be permanent. They'll be talking redevelopment there in another 15 years, if not sooner. And it'll be a good chance to build a better town center, more gradually (which I agree produces better results long term).
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