The mood was upbeat among the more than 350 people who attended ULI Colorado’s TOD Marketplace, where some of the nation’s most experienced finance, development, and transit experts discussed creative solutions for transit-oriented development, including innovations in financing, public-private partnerships, and other components that could pave the way for more development around stations in the Denver metro region’s expanding public transit system. The event also included concurrent sessions on TOD housing, parking, and demographics, technical advisory panel presentations on Lakewood, Denver, and Aurora, and exhibits on sites at play in the region.
ULI Colorado Chair Chris Achenbach opened the program with Phil Washington, general manager of the Regional Transportation District (RTD), who discussed the roll-out of the FasTracks expansion of 57 new commuter and light-rail stations, a new transit development policy, and pilot programs to encourage development around transit stations.
Keynote Speaker
Emerick J. Corsi, Jr., president of Forest City Enterprises Real Estate Asset Services, the nation’s largest TOD developer, advised hiring a master developer and administrator to coordinate the project from start to finish. Station-area planning requires a physical site assessment, a market feasibility study, a public involvement process, branding and marketing, and master planning for the TOD site and adjacent area, including the station rail facilities, infrastructure, existing mixed uses, and open space. “Embrace the city and neighborhood next door,” he advised, by looking at development plans holistically and branding stations to create individual identify within the vision for the whole network.
Kathleen McCormick
Fountainhead Communications, LLC
