Just south of Denver, along Interstate 25 across the Douglas County line, a city stands poised to establish its own downtown and more than double its employee base with a planned 440-acre development.

All Lone Tree needs is one interested developer to hit the ground running, city officials and real estate insiders said.

The Lone Tree City Center development, on the east side of Interstate 25 along with the developing RidgeGate communities in northern Douglas County, has long been envisioned to be the new downtown, located between Lincoln Avenue and RidgeGate Parkway.

Even after the Denver Broncos moved on from possibly building an NFL stadium there, Lone Tree officials remain optimistic that they would attract an “anchor” feature that draws people from around the metro area.

Lone Tree officials said they are open to all options.

The development is poised to be a “densely populated urban center” that could generate 30,000 to 40,000 jobs in the area, on top of the 20,000 people already working within city limits. That doesn’t include the new and ongoing RidgeGate development, according to Lone Tree Director of Economic Development and Public Affairs Jeff Holwell.

Essentially, the development is about intertwining commercial, residential, recreational and mixed-use developments.

Lone Tree has advertised the development as “metro Denver’s next large-scale, vibrant downtown.”

“It’s something different in Colorado,” Holwell said. “It’s sort of an edge-city type of development that will be densely populated and densely built, but also not from an original core like Denver or Colorado Springs.”

Holwell said the development could include 10 million square feet of commercial space and attract 5,000 to 6,000 new residents. It’s an area meant to offer its residents and visitors a comprehensive walking, biking or scootering system — without the need for much driving.

That vision depends on what mixed-use, anchor development would draw not only people from around town, but from the entire region.

City Center remains an empty canvas

In the late 1990s, Lone Tree officials and the property owner, Coventry Development Corp., began speculating what a massive city-scale development could look like in Lone Tree.

Coventry has owned the land that City Center sits on since 1972.

At the onset of City Center planning, Lone Tree officials thought a larger cityscape development might pull people in. In fact, the City Center area is a big enough area to encompass much of downtown Denver, including Coors Field, Union Station, Skyline Park and Ball Arena.

Over time, however, the City Center project has winnowed down into a more dense, mixed-use focused approach.

“We don’t have any development there yet, but we’re positioned for it and waiting for the right catalyst user, because just like on a micro scale, we need a catalyst to get the whole area going,” Coventry Development Corp. Executive Vice President and Director of Development Keith Simon told The Denver Gazette.

The selling point, Simon said, depends on “all the usual real estate fundamentals: location, access to transportation, access to workforce, residential educational facilities for kids and families.”

The Lone Tree City Center was first envisioned when voters in 2000 green lighted its annexation. In 2003, the Regional Transportation District expanded its light rail network south to RidgeGate Parkway, creating the City Center station to support “transit-oriented-development,” according to officials.

“On top of that,” Simon added, there are “things like walkability and open space parks and trails.”

Simon said the build out of Sky Ridge Medical Center and nearby office buildings decades ago helped sparked growth, leading up to City Center and the I-25 RidgeGate development.

Lone Tree, with a population of just over 14,000 people, experiences more people traveling to work there than there are of its own population, according to Holwell.

Already, the surrounding RidgeGate development includes more homes with apartments to be located near City Center. Plans call for the RidgeGate East Village to encompass more than 1,800 homes with more than 200 acres of open space and trails, an elementary school, and the site of Lone Tree’s first regional park, which will be named High Note Regional Park.

Along RidgeGate Parkway sits recently completed developments and several underway, including the planned 1,900 home Lyric community, The Reserve Senior Living center, the Avra at Lincoln Station and the Couplet at RidgeGate apartments.

A large King Soopers, with a gas station and space for more retail uses, is poised to anchor the area at the southeast corner of High Note Avenue and RidgeGate Parkway.

Lone Tree officials said the area has, in retrospect, prepared for the massive City Center development.

Big enough, in fact, that the Denver Broncos spoke with Douglas County commissioners and Lone Tree officials about a potential future stadium site at City Center. The Broncos ultimately chose Burnham Yard in Denver as the “preferred” site.

But the Broncos’ interest in Lone Tree has encouraged the city to think just as big — or bigger.

‘Shovel-ready’

Lone Tree is ready to go, but there appears to be no deadline.

Costs of development depend on who comes in.

“From a buyer’s perspective, we want to make sure this is a shovel-ready site,” Holwell, Lone Tree’s economic czar, said.

Already, developers have expressed interest, including one that looked at Lone Tree to build Colorado’s Amazon headquarters.

That means the sky is the limit when it comes to potential developers, officials and others said.

When the first suitor comes in, “all of the other stuff will come,” Holwell said.

Currently, Lone Tree’s commercial vacancy rate is 8.5%, while the retail vacancy rate is down to 2%, according to city officials and CoStar.

“We start with the vision first of having all the infrastructure in place,” Holwell said. “That’s been the city’s focus, bringing light rail, transportation, the land that’s available and then, of course, the economic vibrancy of the region.”

Douglas County-based Realtor Cooper Thayer, of The Thayer Group and the Colorado Association of Realtors, pointed to housing demands as a challenge for such a large development.

“For housing demand, things are a little bit slower now than they were a couple years ago, or a decade ago,” he said. “There will always be an underlying demand to live in the Denver metro area. That creates not an immunity, but a resistance to adverse market conditions.”

“Economic development wise,” Thayer said, “I don’t foresee RidgeGate or City Center, in particular, having trouble finding ‘anchor’ tenants.”

Thayer suggested Lone Tree might be facing a “feedback loop” that, with more housing, means more commercial development — or vice versa. Most real estate experts agree retail follows rooftops as evidenced by King Soopers’ investment in the area with the King Soopers Marketplace at RidgeGate.

He referenced other regional business parks already located on the west side of I-25 in Lone Tree, including the large Charles Schwab campus and Kiewit Regional Headquarters, which has drawn people to work or live in the south metro area.

“With a higher income, higher educated workforce, the South Denver metro area is where that workforce wants to live. They don’t want to commute to downtown Denver,” he said, adding Lone Tree developments appear to be “a more attractive location for national brands than somewhere like downtown Denver right now.”

‘Deep roots, new heights’

Lone Tree this year introduced its newest motto: “Deep Roots, New Heights.”

It’s a way to honor the city’s history, but embraces what’s to come, officials said.

The future of Lone Tree is in the air with City Center and continued RidgeGate developments on the horizon, along with other area plans. 

For Mayor Marissa Harmon, business is a cornerstone to development.

As a small business owner in town, she said attracting small businesses generates people walking by and keeping them in business.

“Really, we’re looking to just create a downtown city center that’s vibrant and walkable,” Harmon told The Denver Gazette.

Lone Tree’s mayor envisions a regional “destination,” where there’s entertainment, restaurants, traffic flow, park space and amenities.

“When we look at the commercial aspect of diversity in commercial growth, I think it’s really important,” she said.

Lone Tree officials continue work on the west side of I-25, with goals of enhancing an entertainment district near C-470.

Quoting the baseball movie “Field of Dreams,” Harmon said: “If you build it, they will come.”

“We need to continue to innovate,” she said, “Something that’s a destination, attractor, hotels, parks, things that are going to pull people in and keep them there.”