No sleeping giant: diverse investments paying off in Colorado Springs.

• Position: REAL ESTATE ROUNDUP

SEEMS LIKE MOST OF COLORADO'S

Front Range is in the news for rapid population growth and development--with the exception of Colorado Springs. But the state's second-largest city is no sleeping giant, judging from the volume of development activity.

The city's new mayor--former Colorado Attorney General John Suthers--is promoting a collaborative methodology that is necessary for growth and development in Colorado Springs to occur.

"I sense there's a change going on here," says Tatiana Bailey, director of the Southern Colorado Economic Forum and a research associate at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. "First, there's the change in leadership. There's been a lot of collaboration between the mayor's office and the council."

Consider this:

* The UCCS School of Medicine has established a branch in Colorado Springs, enrolling 184 students annually.

* UCCS broke ground on the ENT Center for the Arts, which will house a 750-seat theater, 245seat recital hall, Gallery of Contemporary Art, rehearsal and instructional studio space.

* Penrose-St. Francis Health Services is building a $100 million, 134,000-square foot addition to the St. Francis Medical Center.

* The O'Neill Group Co. is redeveloping an old railroad depot into Catalyst Campus, a mixed-use work and education environment similar to Galvanize in downtown Colorado Springs.

"There's a significant amount of capital investment in the community, both in the public sector and in the private sector," says Dirk Draper, president and chief executive of the Colorado Springs Regional Business Alliance.

And those are just a handful of the projects that have been announced or that are under way in Colorado Springs.

"We are seeing a lot of development, particularly in the more mature parts of the city," says Peter Wysocki, planning director for the city of Colorado Springs. "There's lots of infill and redevelopment in older parts of town and we continue to grow to the north."

But the city has to be strategic about its economic development. Because about half Colorado Springs' economy relies on the military, diversification is critical. In 2013, the federal government cut $85.4 billion from the U.S. budget in an effort to lower the nation's deficit. The cuts, known as sequestration, were split evenly between defense and domestic spending.

"Sequestration really impacted the military contractors, which rippled through the economy," says Bob Cope, the city's economic vitality specialist. "We'd...