City limits: developers are bullish on Montrose, but few good jobs keep lid on growth.

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

Nestled between Grand Junction's expanding business scene and Telluride's trendy resort, is Montrose, a town growing out of its agricultural roots and looking for a niche that embraces both the busy cell-phone user and the more laid back ski-and-golf crowd.

"Montrose is in the process of being discovered," said Steve R. Jenkins, president of Montrose Economic Development Corp. "This whole area is quickly moving from agriculture to commercial."

Though much of the area immediately surrounding town is still filled with cows and crops, Jenkins said big-name retailers like Home Depot and Wal-Mart have noted the city's proximity to more than 50,000 residents--a magic number for the big-box retailers--and have built stores in the town where just 13,000 live inside the city limits.

Other commercial developments geared toward smaller retailers are planned for the busy Highway 550 corridor, each hoping to become the town's southern gateway But some residential developers and architects say the rooftops-before-retail formula isn't followed here.

"The city's civic improvements are really out of scale with the rest of the town," said architect Patrik Davis of Patrik Davis Associates.

Over the past 13 years, Davis designed a new airport terminal, a 23,000-square-foot library built around a 1931 schoolhouse, which is now Mesa State College's expansion campus in Montrose, and a state-of-the-art civic center that has hosted thousands of events in the past decade, including the Colorado Symphony Orchestra. He also designed a $14 million outpatient hospital expansion.

Homebuilders and residential land developers say they are chasing the retail and civic projects with plans for several thousand new houses and home sites, but expensive land and a lack of high-paying jobs in the area has made for some sluggish sales. David McClelland, whose Colorado Dolphin Companies Inc. has three residential projects underway said he has been selling lots in his Fox Park subdivision for five years and still has 11 of the 71 parcels remaining. Complete homes on one-third to one-half acre lots sell for $275,000 to $325,000.

"What Montrose suffers from is an absence of good-paying jobs; there just aren't any," McClelland said. "We're all hoping that some significant employer will come to town and pay a good wage.

A survey of Montrose citizens conducted in June 2002 by the Bureau of Economic and Business Research at Mesa State College backed up McClelland's comments. It found that...