Stapleton flies again.

• Author: TITUS, STEPHEN

JETS ARE NO LONGER TAKING OFF FROM THE FORMER STAPLETON AIRPORT, BUT DEVELOPMENT CERTAINLY IS. STAPLETON, IN FACT, HAS BECOME

THE LARGEST REDEVELOPMENT PROJECT IN THE UNITED STATES.

At 4,700 acres or 7.5 square miles, Stapleton is three times larger than the Denver Tech Center. Forest City, the Cleveland-based developer that won the right to flesh out the defunct runways and concourses, said it plans to build 12,000 homes, 10 million square feet of office space, 13 million square feet of retail space and 3,000 hotel rooms. The finished product will bring 35,000 jobs and 30,000 residents to the area. The company says more than 100 builders have applied for the right to buy land and build homes over the next 25 years. Five will be chosen.

Forest City's deal with the city calls for the real estate and lumber conglomerate to purchase 2,934 acres from the city over the next 10 years. The $79.4 million generated from the sale will help offset the costs of Denver International Airport. Forest City and the City of Denver will invest $600 million in new roads and other infrastructure. While these are big numbers, they pale next to the $4 billion value of new real estate the completed project will have created.

City officials agonized for months over which of the few qualified developers would land the prize. According to Thomas Gleason, Forest City's vice president of public relations, the company's philosophical alignment with the Green Book, the city-approved guideline for Stapleton's redevelopment, was one of the reasons Forest City was chosen.

"One thing that Forest City was struck by is it's exactly what we believe in," Gleason said of the Green Book. "It's a recipe for a walkable urban neighborhood, it's a development where people can walk to work and to shopping and to recreation; it's exactly what Forest City believes in."

The grand plans took nearly seven years to be approved, and the first buildings aren't yet out of the ground. But officials say a cautious approach was necessary, to get it right before the real work began.

"I think if you step back and take the long view, the process is really just getting started," said Dick Anderson, president of the Stapleton Development Corp. "And while we've all been impatient and wanted to see them done sooner, had people done things out of expediency the result would have been bad."

Stapleton Development's main job -- until recently -- was to sell the airport land at the best possible price. It also worked with the Stapleton Redevelopment Foundation, the city, and...