Pueblo pitches the right price: affordable land and a cheap cost of living is driving new development.

• Author: Lewis, David
• Position: Who Owns Colorado

HARP's-a-poppin'.

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HARP is the Historic Arkansas Riverwalk of Pueblo, the 26-acre district that, through its first two phases, sparked an estimated $188 million in downtown reinvestment there.

Now, HARP Phase III construction is under way, and spinoff development is beginning to bubble. What's going on in the Riverwalk district stands to make that $188 million number look to be a modest beginning.

That's obvious, because $160 million plus $30 million is the estimated price of the Riverwalk's projected outdoor shopping and entertainment complex.

In mid-May, the Urban Renewal Authority of Pueblo picked Greenwood Village-based ServiceStar Development's Grand Gardens, principally owned by Pueblo's DeRose family, to build by the Riverwalk for $160 million about 330,000 square feet of retail-commercial space and 2,300 parking spaces. The estimated cost of public improvements: $30 million. The players are negotiating.

That's not all the Riverwalk-related downtown development under way: Some of it is HARP Phase III itself. And two hotels are contemplated, one of them billed as the hippest hostelry ever. And, adjacent to that, add a couple of humongous restaurant complexes. Adjacent to HARP itself, an old warehouse, the Ice House, could become a mixed-use development. Down the Riverwalk a bit, now under construction, is Professional Bull Riders Inc. headquarters, also due to include a spacious restaurant, entertainment and exhibits.

So why are all these investment dollars pursuing projects in little ol' Pueblo, Colo.?

Broadly, there are three answers.

Answer No. 1 is, "The HARP planning. It took a while for HARP to pop, but now it's popping," says Michael Tedesco, renewal authority executive director.

Answer No. 2, broadly speaking, is "business cycles." Pueblo land always has been cheap or, if you prefer, undervalued. You can argue, in fact, that Pueblo itself has been undervalued since long before its steel-based economy went south in the 1980s and it invented HARP.

So, "Developers are looking down here and they're saying to themselves, 'We can make a few bucks. The land is cheap. The cost of living is cheap. And we have urban renewal and PEDCO (the Pueblo Economic Development Co.) to help us over the top,'" Tedesco says.

"A lot of that is, Pueblo is significantly less expensive than downtown Colorado Springs, downtown Denver," he adds. "I don't know when prices are going to go up in response to that."

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