Rocky Mountain News

Rebchook: Denver's HighPointe takes cue from Dallas

April 27, 2004

DALLAS - Las Colinas is kind of like the Denver Tech Center on growth hormones.

The 12,000-acre, master-planned community has grown around the Dallas/Fort Worth Airport. It has high-rise office buildings that would look at home in downtown Denver, four 18-hole golf courses, -million- dollar-plus homes, 11 residential villages, and corporate tenants such as -Exxon, General Motors, Nokia, Microsoft, Verizon and Zale Corp.

It even has granite curbs on some streets.

And it's all within a five-minute to 10-minute drive to one of the country's -busiest airports.

"It's hard to imagine, but 30 years ago Las Colinas looked a lot like HighPointe," said Ray Pittman, head of Denver-based Landmark Properties Group, which is developing the fledgling 1,800-acre HighPointe at DIA community on the empty Plains near Denver -International Airport.

HighPointe ultimately will include 500 acres of open space, an 18-hole golf course, a conference center hotel, thousands of housing units and millions of square feet of commercial and retail. The development at Peña Boulevard and E-470 spans Aurora and Denver.

"Of all the master-planned communities in the country, Las Colinas is the best model for HighPointe," Pittman told me last Thursday as we were standing in 85-degree weather outside a 26-story office tower in Williams Square in Las Colinas. On the -other side of the tower, nine bronze horses cross a man-made stream that cuts through a pink granite plaza.

Pittman was one of more than 30 local -developers, planners and politicians who last week attended a whirlwind trip to -Texas sponsored by the DIA Partnership.

The tour included an in-depth report from Dallas/Fort Worth officials, a tour of Las Colinas and a visit to Bass Pro, a giant outdoor retailer coming to Stapleton.

Three rail plans are on the drawing board for Dallas/Fort Worth. Each of the rail lines would be far more complicated than the proposed Air Train from downtown Denver to DIA, part of the $4.7 billion FasTracks transportation plan, which needs voter approval.

Julie Bender, president of the DIA Partnership, has made many business trips to Dallas/Fort Worth and Las Colinas in Irving, Texas. Each time she comes back more in awe and with more of a vision of what Denver can do in the future.

"I'm amazed how real estate and how business-oriented D/FW is," Bender said. "At most airports, people get on planes and they take off, and everyone is happy."

Rick Pilgrim, vice president of transportation in the Denver office at URS, which -often is listed as the nation's largest engineering firm, agrees.

"For me, it was a revelation," Pilgrim said. "The way Dallas treats their airport is that it is not an airport. It's a business. They just run it like a business. It's a business where they just happen to land some airplanes once in awhile."

But as any Denverite who has traveled to Dallas can tell you, the city has its share of problems.

At a recent Urban Land Institute meeting in Denver, local developer Will Fleisig of Continuum Partners warned that Denver is in danger of becoming another Dallas, with all of its sprawl and traffic congestion, if the area doesn't embrace transportation solutions such as FasTracks.

While people in the Denver area have shown a great affinity for the southwest light-rail line, Dallas residents may not show the same enthusiasm for public transportation.

Indeed, a $1 billion light-rail line being proposed to connect to the center of Dallas/Fort Worth in about 2013 is projected to enjoy only light ridership. Dallas also is looking at north and south commuter lines that would cost an estimated $800 million to $900 million each.

"We're really becoming strangled," with traffic congestion, noted Keith Wilschetz, assistant vice president of planning at Dallas/Forth Worth. "It's challenging to get people in this area to give up their trucks. Not their cars, their trucks. They love their trucks. They love their SUVs. They love their -Hummers. You've got to realize that it would be a cultural shift for people in North Texas to give up their trucks for rail or buses."

But, clearly, Texans do a lot of things right, or they wouldn't have Las Colinas.

One secret to success is that when they have a goal, such as bringing light-rail lines to Las Colinas, they always have a specific game plan, said Jim Cline, director of public works and transportation for Irving.

"Hope is not a method," he said.

And they don't launch into an endeavor with the idea that everyone is going to agree with them, whether it is a DART line or neighborhood groups faced with nearby commercial developments.

In fact, they assume they'll encounter many problems and obstacles, Cline said.

"When we start out, we go looking for trouble," Cline said. "We look for problems."

Developer Pittman said his goal at HighPointe is to imitate their best practices and improve on their mistakes.

"I'm not one to reinvent the wheel," Pittman said before lunch at the La Cima Club, on the 26th floor of the tallest building in Las Colinas. "If it works, I'll copy it. If it doesn't work, I'll learn from where they went wrong."

rebchookj@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-892-5207.

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