WHO OWNS THE DIA CORRIDOR?

• Author: TITUS, STEPHEN
• Position: Brief Article - Statistical Data Included

For some, it's a waiting game; for others, the waiting is over.

Since before Denver International Airport opened its runways, speculators have been snatching up land along Pena Boulevard and Tower Road, the two main arteries leading from busy I-70 to the airport. While a few lonely hotels stand out in the former farm fields, many of the landowners are looking for buyers or waiting for the right opportunity to build -- and waiting, and waiting, and waiting.

"I'm surprised at how relatively little activity is going on out there," said Ellen Ittelson, director of planning services for the City of Denver. "I think they're just trying to figure out who they are and what they're doing."

But owners of southern parcels along the road to DIA say they know what they are doing. Oakwood Homes, for example, has built about 3,100 homes between Tower Road and Piccadilly Road south of 48th Avenue, and has plans for 8,000 more.

"Obviously, before anyone is going to do any commercial [building] they want to see some rooftops," said Brian Baker, vice president of asset services for Fuller and Company, which owns 260 acres of commercial land north of the Oakwood Homes site. "But there's going to be some restrictions on rooftops; I don't think the city wants to see the same problems with noise that they did at Stapleton."

Denver planners, in an effort to avoid noise complaints associated with Stapleton Airport, have drawn a Mason-Dixon line of sorts along 56th St. According to Gateway zoning rules, residential construction is limited to areas south of 56th Avenue, while commercial is permitted on both sides of the street.

Coleman Burke, manager at...