Quote:
Originally Posted by Agent Orange
What's crazy about the current anti-growth mania is that the Denver metro has grown faster in the past (late 90s, 70s). Can anyone who's lived here a long time explain what's different this time?
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CherryCreek... summarized it well. I'll just add a little clarification...
The growth in the 1970's was sprawl-dominated with lots of 'starter-home' neighborhoods which then drove the move-up market segment. Sprawl was/is generally cheaper since there's lots of land at low prices (historically). The 1st half of the 1980's was the oil & gas boom and O&G people are more city people. In Denver this was especially true since a lot of the O&G money was Canadian and Canada has alway reflected more its Euro roots with much more of a city focus than the auto-driven growth in the States. Early 80's is when all of Denver's tallest were built. It was less a 9-5 downtown so long as the O&G crowd was in town. They cleared out starting the end of 1986 and left downtown with the proverbial 'see-through' buildings ie no drapes or window coverings. The 1990's saw growth take advantage of low downtown rents.
Another way to understand Denver and answer your other questions is to contrast Denver with the Great SW, ie Texas and Phoenix. Sand-dirt has alway been dirt cheap so sprawl was a natural. Plus, both Texas and Arizona experienced lots of cross border immigration which helped to lower labor costs for construction (and lots of stuff).
Phoenix (and presumably Dallas/Houston) is not only sprawling but it's also multi-nodal. Downtown Phx has your gov't buildings and traditional banks, accounting etc. But Scottsdale became the Real Financial District. SE suburbs became the place for tech hardware (think chips) and peaked at over a 100,000 direct jobs; it's now about half of that but electronics has filled in the slack. SW Phoenix is for warehouse/distristribution facilities; it's where Amazon built their 1.2 million Sq Ft flagship facility. Sun City, in the NW metro, is the heart of retirees and the rest is general residential. The multi-nodal character is what allowed Phoenix to become the 12th largest MSA yet TomTom rates it 47th (worst) for congestion.
With Denver the 'sprawl' has mostly an I-25 focus. Sure it sprawled out but E-470, for example, grew its traffic at a snails pace. In Phoenix, all the 'loop' freeways are 8 lanes and busy.
The current boom has been mostly center-city focused where land is more expensive and gotten even more-so along with much higher construction costs than building normal sprawling stick-frame houses or condos/apartments. Add in the total lack of affordable 'starter home' construction and you end up with the mess you've got.