Cherry Creek getting a makeover; high-end shopping district broadens vision of upscale to include downsized living with an urban feel.

• Author: Lewis, David
• Position: COLORADO

Anybody who has lived around the Denver area has "Cherry Creek" coming out of their ears.

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Hereabouts we boast a Cherry Creek school district, state park, arts festival, marina, hotel, newspaper, florist and biking and hiking path, not to mention an actual creek.

This is only appropriate because Cherry Creek was where our forebears first struck gold and first went broke, thus establishing the pattern for Colorado business from then on.

Yet we must admit that amid all these historical associations the word that most readily springs to mind when one thinks "Cherry Creek" is "shopping," as in "shopping center" and "shopping district."

This association has been Denver history, too, ever since Temple Hoyne Buell after World War II designed and developed the earlier incarnation of the Cherry Creek

Shopping Center. Buell thereby is said to have invented the modern shopping center, that is, a connected series of shops featuring a walkway, surrounded by acres of parking.

This invention in the view of some puts Buell high among the ranks of great American inventors. America without the shopping mall: imaginable?

Last year, the Cherry Creek North Business Improvement District completed its sale of $18.5 million in district bonds for the neighborhood's first big makeover in two decades. This spring, workers for contractor Weitz & Co. have begun the first phase of the project's new and attractive signs, upgraded pedestrian lighting and improved intersections. Later the project will add high-tech, pay-by-phone parking meters. And the city plans to repave the streets.

Maybe it's just spring, but Cherry Creek people seem ... optimistic.

Based on the plans he's seen, "Oh, it should be spectacular," says Wayne New, Cherry Creek North Neighborhood Association president. "It's a very impressive project and well overdue. All our residents are excited about it."

"All the residents" means about 1,900 households, which jibes with the latest U.S. Census data, which unfortunately dates from 2000. Nevertheless, back then the Census counted 5,028 people living in 3,198 households in Cherry Creek, including the Cherry Creek East neighborhood; its households' mean household income came to $95,236.93, or about $121,000 in 2010 dollars, and the average home price was $692,764.00, or about $883,700 in 2010 dollars.

On both the residential and commercial sides, Cherry Creek benefits even in bad times from its relative wealth, but of course the...