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Retail building finally flourishes in Broomfield

By Edmund Mander

The open-air Flatiron Marketplace is one of three projects coming to Broomfield, Colo.

For years Colorado's Broomfield wanted a regional mall, and tried everything to get one; it advertised its prime locations, lobbied developers and contacted department store owners.

Denver and Boulder both got malls, as did other surrounding communities; but for the longest time nothing came the way of Broomfield, which lies between the two.

"We had the usual that any community has: a grocery store, a hardware store,'' said Don Dunshee, president and CEO of the Broomfield Economic Development Corp. "But if people wanted to go to Dillard's, they had to drive 35 miles, one way.''

This year, though, Broomfield is turning the tables on its neighbors: The city of about 37,000 is about to get three substantial retail developments, including a 1.5 million-square-foot regional mall — FlatIron Crossing — which its developers claim will set a new benchmark in mall design not only for Colorado, but for the entire United States.

When FlatIron opens in August, the retail migration will reverse, with people from other communities driving to Broomfield to shop at Nordstrom, Dillard's, Lord & Taylor and Foley's as well as 170 specialty retailers. Scores more retailers will be added to the city's inventory when Coalton Acres LLC's Main Street at Flatiron is completed in August, and Koll Development Co.'s Flatiron Marketplace opens in the first quarter of next year.

"It's remarkable,'' Dunshee said, describing the community's change of fortune. "A lot of things are going on at the same time.''

So how did Broomfield, the overlooked wallflower, suddenly become the belle of the ball?

A big step was the establishment of several business parks, including the nearly 1,000-acre Interlocken Advanced Technology Park, which in recent years has drawn several high-tech companies, including Sun Microsystems.

"It's one of the premier office parks in the metro area,'' according to John Rebchook, real estate editor for The Rocky Mountain News, describing how Interlocken enabled Broomfield to participate in the region's economic boom and compete with other Denver area communities for some premier companies. A fifth corporate park is now under construction and, when complete, will bring the total number of people employed in all five to more than 20,000, according to Charles Ozaki, Broomfield's assistant city manager.

As such, the business parks have turned Broomfield from a bedroom community, whose residents used to work elsewhere, into an employment destination for citizens from other communities.

Equally crucial for the city's economic development was the September 1996 opening of an interchange giving Broomfield access to U.S. Route 36, which links Denver and Boulder. It was this that opened the door for the city's dramatic retail development, according to Dunshee.

FlatIron Crossing, Flatiron Marketplace and Main Street at Flatiron are three separate, but symbiotic, developments located right next to one another. Their names are a reference — despite FlatIron Crossing's preference for a capitalized "I'' — to the nearby Flatiron Range of the Rocky Mountains.

FlatIron Crossing is not just new to Broomfield, but is a fresh concept to the industry, according to Phoenix-based Westcor Partners, the project's developer. Much of the center is open-air, including a plaza offering alfresco dining, and even those parts of the it that are enclosed have large windows looking out onto the surrounding landscape. Its open-air village contains various service-type tenants as well as a multiplex cinema.

Flatiron Marketplace and Main Street at Flatiron also are open-air developments — one of the most widely held myths about Denver, according to those living there, is that it has a frigid, inhospitable climate. On the contrary, the weather is mostly warm and clear, and the state is inhabited by people who love being outside, noted Dean Insalaco, a retail broker with CB Richard Ellis, the real estate services company leasing and marketing Flatiron Marketplace for Newport Beach, Calif.-based Koll.

Flatiron Marketplace, which is going up on a 70-acre site, will be linked to FlatIron Crossing and the surrounding area by bike paths and pedestrian walkways. Besides 444,371 square feet of retail and restaurants, the $110 million project's first phase will include a 240,000-square-foot hotel.

Koll is targeting retailers that benefit from being near, but not inside, a mall, Insalaco said. Those signed up so far include Linens 'N Things, Best Buy, Nordstrom Rack and The Great Indoors.

Main Street at Flatiron is a 120-acre mixed-use development comprising retail, office, a hotel and some residential units, according to David Wass, senior development director for the project's retail component. Coalton Acres is a partnership between MidCities Co. and Alliance Commercial Partners, two local companies. The retail tenants will be a mixture of national and local stores.

"It's a blend of several buildings that will come together to form the Main Street,'' he said. "We're trying to give a sense of urbanism and the downtown feel.''

All three retail developments will benefit from a surrounding population that has grown considerably more prosperous, thanks to the influx of high-technology companies that have helped diversify the formerly oil-dependent economy. The Denver-Boulder corridor is one of the fastest-growing, high-tech/bio-tech areas in the United States. There are 710,000 people living within the mall's 10-mile trade area, earning an average household income of $50,902, according to Westcor.

Not surprisingly, the economic growth in the Denver area has brought with it traffic congestion. But to help ease traffic around the shopping area, the local transit authority is setting up a "park and ride'' area, from which shuttle buses will drive the 10-minute loop through each shopping center.

Broomfield, the city that for years watched helplessly as its residents spent their dollars elsewhere, is now about to recover some of that money, and the retail development will inflict some damage on neighboring retail centers, predicted Rebchook, the real estate editor.

"It's going to hurt Westminster Mall; it's going to hurt the mall [Crossroads Mall] in Boulder,'' he said. The highly acclaimed Park Meadows, while in a different geographical area, also will lose some shoppers, he added.

But Westminster Mall, about six miles down the road from Broomfield, is not about to roll over in the face of the challenge; the 1.5 million-square-foot super-regional mall is undergoing an $11.5 million remodeling of its exterior and interior, three-quarters of which has been paid for by the City of Westminster, according to its manager, Kenton Anderson.

The Macerich Co., Santa Monica, Calif., also has embarked on a multimillion dollar renovation of its Crossroads Mall that will include the addition of a multiplex cinema and construction of an outdoor promenade.

Broomfield's new retail development might make life tougher for surrounding communities, but it is going to have a spectacular impact on the city's coffers. The three projects will pay a collective $20 million a year in real estate taxes — currently the city receives about $9 million — Ozaki said, although for each of the first 15 years about $10 million will be turned back to the developers to reimburse them for infrastructure improvements.

The opening of the retail projects, combined with the expansion of the city's business inventory, will represent a rewarding culmination of many years of effort to develop Broomfield, Ozaki said.

"We've been cooking for quite some time, and now we're about to serve it up.''