Plans for Westminster Mall add to growing list of development projects
“The site of this city’s one-time mall has languished for more than three years as a dead zone, and it was in steady decline for some time before that.
Next month, Westminster’s elected leaders are set to decide whether to green light a mixed-use project at the southwest corner of U.S. 36 and Sheridan Boulevard that would establish the latest transit-oriented development in a corridor quickly filling up with them.
Plans from California developer Oliver McMillan call for a multiphase community on the 105-acre site, with the first two stages boasting more than 800 residences, 100,000 square feet of office space and 250,000 square feet of retail.
It would be a downtown core for Westminster and its 110,000 residents, adjacent to a bikeway connecting Boulder and Denver and providing ready access to the new bus rapid transit line set to open on U.S. 36 in 2016.
“We have a very clear mandate from our citizens: ‘Get this up and running,’ ” Westminster Mayor Herb Atchison said last week during an open house on the future of the mall site.
But the project’s success isn’t guaranteed. The U.S. 36 corridor has seen an increasing number of transit-oriented developments, or TODs — dense, mixed-use communities built in close proximity to transit stations — coming online of late.”
Aguilar, John. Denver Post 16 September 2014.