e-470: METRO DENVER'S FINAL FRONTIER.

• Author: TITUS, STEPHEN
• Position: Brief Article

Editor's note:

ColoradoBiz this month brings you the first in a series we're calling Who Owns Colorado? The idea is simple: We take a slice of our home state's real estate and examine it up close. Who owns it? Who's developing it? What will it look like in five years? Ten years?

A couple of points: One, "a slice" is a relative measure. It could mean a city block, or it could mean a vast area like E-470, this month's subject.

E-470 is 34 miles long now, on its way to an eventual length of almost 47 miles -- big enough to fill a couple of issues of ColoradoBiz. So this month, we're focusing on a microcosm, a roughly 12-mile stretch of E-470 around Smoky Hill Road. Upcoming installments of Who Owns Colorado? will look at the I-36 corridor, Denver International Airport, Grand Junction, the Vail Valley, Fort Collins and Middle Park. The possibilities are endless.

Whether you're a businessperson, a real estate professional, or simply a Colorado citizen, we think you'll learn something unexpected about our state. We hope you enjoy it.

If Capt. James Kirk were a developer instead of a starship captain, he could still explore strange, new worlds and boldly go where no builder has gone before; he would probably choose E-470 to build homes.

With the housing boom raging, developers say they're scouring the greater Denver area in search of new frontiers. Since the completion of E-470, many are looking east.

According to the Home Builders Association of Metropolitan Denver, nearly half of the 2,728 residential building permits pulled in metro Denver in January are from Arapahoe and Douglas counties, and the City of Aurora. Of particular interest are more than 11,500 homes planned for a section of E-470 roughly between County Line Road to the south and the Aurora Reservoir to the northeast. These aren't the typical bungalows and middle-class condos Aurora is known for. Most of these new homes qualify as prairie castles.

For example, Tallyn's Reach is a collection of 1,500 homes on 950 acres planned around a golf course, clubhouse and other cushy amenities. It also was chosen as this year's...