Belmar's artistic rendering: cultural component a high priority in Lakewood's downtown vision.

• Author: Guettler, Amy
• Position: Attitude at Altitude

Gone are the days when the allure of a suburb's local mall drew its residents to shop and socialize under one enormous roof.

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Gone too are the days when city planning focused largely on reinvigorating urban downtown areas. Today, planners and community leaders are embracing a new suburban lifestyle; they are taking the roof off America's old-style commercial mecca, not only to let the sunshine, snow and rainfall in, but also to allow shoppers to walk in the open air from one cool suburban spot to another.

The Lab at Belmar, a mall-based cultural and arts center that has been operating from temporary space for two years at Belmar, its parent shopping "district," will open this month in its own permanent space: a $3 million, 11,500-square-foot, two-story building being renovated by Santa Monica, Calif.-based Belzberg Architects into a presentation space for contemporary art exhibitions, public forums, lecture series and other community programs.

Formally named The Laboratory of Art and Ideas at Belmar, the center has been a fixture from the start in plans of the Continuum Group, a Denver developer, for redeveloping the old Villa Italia shopping center in Lakewood.

"Our philosophy of creating sustainable neighborhoods means that we need other ingredients, and we've found that visual arts are the key driver," said Mark Falcone, managing partner of Continuum. "We like fine art in a project because people identify public art with permanence. If we want to establish Belmar as a permanent downtown, people have to see it not just as a project, but as something permanent, and art is a subtle way to accomplish that."

When old Villa Italia became obsolete in the late 1990s, the City of Lakewood wanted to replace it with a civic area that would function as "downtown" for the city. Falcone envisioned Belmar not only as a sophisticated hub for shopping, dining, entertainment and residential living, but also as a permanent site for the development of Lakewood's own brand of art and culture. To do that, Continuum began to explore...