Dry creek railway: walk-to-work for the suburbs.

• Author: Titus, Stephen
• Position: Who owns Colorado?

Commuters on Denver's soon-to-be completed light-rail line adjacent to Interstate 25 may one day find themselves sitting next to Peter Kudla, CEO of Metropolitan Homes, as he makes his way to work. Kudla's newest--and largest--project is set to break ground this year east of 1-25 along Dry Creek Road and adjacent to the Inverness Golf Course in the heart of the Panorama Corporate Center.

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Boasting its own pedestrian bridge across the interstate and connecting to the Dry Creek Light Rail stop, Vallagio is the first mixed-use residential project along the light-rail line within the now-sprawling area generally regarded as the Denver Tech Center, metropolitan Denver's largest string of office parks.

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Kudla said he spotted the 30-acre parcel for Vallagio during a round of golf at the Inverness more than a decade ago. He drew up a rough plan for the project and floated it by Inverness Office Park's founders and general managers, but that initial meeting didn't go very well. "I walked into (Inverness founder) George Beardsley's office and he looked at me and said you're crazy, this is an office park," Kudla recalled of the meeting eight years ago.

"I said there's a blend between living and working," Kudla recounted. "They thought I was a foreigner, and, in not so many words, asked me to leave."

Having come from Boston in the late 1970s where high-density communities and commuter rail were a matter of course, the highly enthusiastic and charismatic Kudla may as well have been a foreigner. He certainly was a foreigner to development in the West.

Across metro Denver's expanse of sprawling neighborhoods, where residents pledge not to give up their SUV unless you pry it from their cold, dead accelerator foot, the idea of a tight-knit residential neighborhood in the heart of the Tech Center seemed outrageous. But Kudla kept after his idea, and, when a change in Inverness' ownership prompted a change in attitudes, he put his own foot back in the door. Light Rail arriving directly across 1-25 was a bonus.

"I'm just a major proponent of light rail and rapid-transit concepts," Kudla said with his East Coast, 'Goodfellas' accent. "I can definitely see myself riding light rail to work."

The reality of light rail's spread through metropolitan Denver is about to drastically change not only commuter habits but real-estate developers' bank accounts.

Take a drive along Dry Creek Road west of the interstate or north and...