Colorado Real Estate Journal - January 1, 2014
The master-planned Meadows at Historic Castle Rock recently hit a milestone, with the recent groundbreaking on a new retail center that was initially to have gotten out of the ground in 2008. The center was delayed because of the Great Recession, but both the master developer of the 4,000-acre master-planned community and the developer of the first-phase center were patient. Now, they both believe there are enough rooftops in the Meadows and nearby communities such as Castle Pines Village to support additional retail. “We bought the land in 2007 and had the drawings done and the ground pads ready to move forward on in 2008, and then the crunch happened,” said developer Tim White, whose company, White Construction, is developing the two-building, 48,000-square-foot first phase of the Town Center at the Meadows. He said with more than $200 million of investments on the east side of Interstate 25, more than 5,000 rooftops in the Meadows itself, a new intersection that improves access to the area and the Castle Rock Adventist Hospital that opened in August, the time is right for the new retail. The project also will include office and medical office space. “We’re pretty excited about this,” White said. “Thankfully, we didn’t start construction in 2008. Jim Riley, the president of the master development company, completely understood why it didn’t make sense to start construction right away.” The hospital’s impact will be huge on the Town Center, he predicted. “The hospital is literally across the street from us,” White said. “Generally, the retail will serve the neighborhood,” White said. “But it also will serve the many hundreds of people at the hospital,” including staff, as well as those visiting patients. This won’t be the first retail in the Meadows. It already has the AMC Castle Rock 12 movie theater, for example, as well as some restaurants on pads. “The movie theater would probably be another four blocks from us as the crow flies, so it probably isn’t really in walking distance,” he said. HB&A Architects is designing the buildings in the new center. The leasing agents are Michael J. Quinlan and John G. Gustafson of Newmark Grubb Knight Frank. “Our floor plates could accommodate up to a 10,000- or 12,000- square-foot tenant, although I expect most of the tenants will be in the 1,500- to 2,500-square foot range, although we probably will get some decent sized restaurants in the 4,000- to 5,000-square-foot range,” White said. The Meadows traces its roots to the late 1980s, when it was conceived by the infamous Charles Keating, convicted on various counts of fraud, racketeering and conspiracy for his role in the collapse of the savings and loan industry. In 1997, the 4,000-acre community was purchased by the Castle Rock Development Co. LLC, whose majority owner is Denver businessman Donald Sturm. Today, the Meadows is home to about 5,000 homes, while it is zoned for more than 10,000. In addition to the houses, about 250 acres has been set aside for commercial, retail and multifamily development. “We’re like a much smaller scale Highlands Ranch,” said Riley, president of Castle Rock Development. The Town Center could eventually have about 160,000 to 350,000 sf of retail and office, and it is zoned for up to 3,000 homes, both for sale and what would be the first apartments in the Meadows. “I think we would end up between 2,000 and 2,500 homes,” when it is built out, he said. He said interest is just now starting to catch on for apartments in the Meadows. “Multifamily is really hot right now in most of the Denver area,” Riley said. “I think multifamily needed to reach a saturation point from the center of the area and only now is it starting to move down to the Lone Tree and Meadows area,” he said. White is not only a suburban builder and developer, but also a big player in downtown Denver. “Our mainstay is construction,” White said. “We’ve worked on a lot of downtown projects, as well as having built a lot of the Denver Public Schools and at DIA.” It also is a low-key partner with Mickey and Kyle Zeppelin at their TAXI development and the Source. “We are a 45 percent owner of the Freight building at TAXI and a 47 percent owner of the Source,” White said.