Worth the wait: long-held land fuels dreams on E-470 corridor.

• Author: Titus, Stephen
• Position: Who owns colorado?

If you have tested out the new, northern section of E-470 south and east from Interstate 25, keep driving past Denver International Airport and the scenery changes from open spaces and fields of dreams to dreams realized.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Big-time development is well underway in this firmly established stretch of toll road with many patient landowners finally pulling the trigger on their plans for capitalizing on their investment.

The 3,385-acre Eastern Hills project, for example, has been held by a group of investors since the mid 1980s. Developers expect to have approval from the city of Aurora by late this year and plan to build up to 13,000 homes over the next two or three decades.

"The entire E-470 corridor was pre-planned before any development occurred," said Paul Tauer. Mayor of Aurora. "We spent two years planning it, and now it's happening just as we anticipated."

Developers are uniformly optimistic about the future of E-470 and the amazing prospects it represents. Don Provost, principal of Alberta Development Partners, the organization behind several residential and retail projects, including the 300-acre South-lands development, said that compared with other projects his company has around town, this area could be the most promising--if mother nature and the economy cooperate.

"I think the opportunity has to be qualified with Aurora's water problems and the drought situation," he said. "Assuming that gets satisfactorily resolved and assuming we have some job growth, it could be a 10. Everything is in place, all of the infrastructure is there, but we have to have a few other market forces take over."

Those forces, both natural and market driven, seem to be building. Though weather experts say the drought isn't over, they admit that a snowy winter and wet spring are helping things. In addition, job centers are starting to spring up along the corridor with the promise of easy access to DIA, the Tech Center and Downtown.

ProLogis Park 70 has attracted the likes of GM from its former home along Interstate 70 to a shiny new 404,000-square-foot distribution facility at the ProLogis property. The 182-acre parcel is planned to someday hold 2.9 million square feet of warehouse, office and light-industrial space.

Travel a little farther past World Port and Eastgate, two other light-industrial projects with quick access to DIA, and there are some of the biggest residential projects Denver and Aurora have ever seen. Of the dozen or so...