Beyond the bedrooms: after years of relying on home construction, Erie aims to woo...

LOOK at the growth of the town of Erie and the dilemma in which it might find itself, and you could say the town already has taken baby steps down the slippery slope to municipal ruin.

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Look at growth in Erie another way, and the town is on the glide path

Some say that, in view of Erie's losing hand in local annexation wars, efforts to woo commercial developers are too little too late. Erie will become a kind of downscale Aspen, with service and construction workers forced to commute into Erie while upscale residents commute to work in Boulder or Denver.

"It's certainly not sustainable to be so heavily reliant on construction to pay the bills. That obviously can't continue forever," says Brendan Ruiz, president of Sustainable Erie Inc., a nonprofit interest group.

Officials insist residential development fees will bridge the gap until the happy day arrives when Erie has enough sales tax revenue to offset declining residential construction.

Not yet visible, that happy day remains real, officials say.

"Erie is transitioning from a bedroom community to a full-service community with commercial amenities that our citizens want to have closer to home so they don't have to leave Erie," says Fred Diehl, assistant to the town administrator.

Some of the same numbers underlie both arguments. Erie grew 96 percent between 2000 and 2005, the Census Bureau says. The fastest-growing town in Boulder County, Erie's population growth outpaced all of Colorado but for Frederick (next door); Firestone, just north of Frederick; and Severance, north of Windsor.

Town officials estimate Erie's population now is about 16,000, up from 6,291 in 2000. Only two years before, the town finally got around to paving its original residential dirt side streets for the first time.

Erie's budget estimates 2007 tap/impact fees will have plunged by half in just two years, to $13.1 million in 2007, from $17.2 million in 2006 and $26 million in 2005. That $26 million represented almost 55 percent of all of Erie's revenues, while this year's projected $13.1 million in tap/impact fees would add up to just 26 percent of this year's $50.4 million in revenue.

Turn those numbers into a graph and the trend-line begins to make former Erie Mayor Vic Smith look prophetic. "Erie's been living on impact fees and building fees," Smith told High Country News in 2003. "We're going to wish to God we didn't have all the houses if we don't move on to commercial development fast."

Erie officials see the numbers the other way around. Diehl says Erie has calibrated the future stream of impact fees and other development-related revenues.

"You can look at projected numbers, but what you don't see there is a timeline," Diehl contends. He cites Vista Ridge, "our golf course community." Vista Ridge Development began building houses in Erie in 2001 and reckons residential construction will take another three years. Meanwhile, Vista Ridge commercial development, yet to begin, will go on until 2015.

Even Ruiz approves of the town's strategy of trying to move "to a steady stream of sales taxes. That's the long-range goal from the town's perspective and also sustainable," he says. "Erie would be looking at a town that could sustain itself, not to boom and bust."

So if what Erie needs is commercial development, where is it?

A couple of office complexes, Coal Creek Center and Erie Corporate Center, are in the approval pipeline. Supermarket/retail developer Regency Centers has purchased 19 acres at Erie's center, the corner of Leon A. Wurl Parkway and County Line Road, direct competition for the heretofore supreme Safeway at the corner of U.S. 287 and Arapahoe Road. Vista Ridge and the planned New Urbanist senior community Golden Run each plan about 900,000 square feet of commercial development.

And chatting up commercial developers "is getting easier because Erie has a higher median income per household than the area communities, a younger community, a higher number of children per household than other communities," Diehl says, adding that the town is on Interstate 25 and that an express bus line to Boulder tentatively called "Lynx" is in the works.

Even slow-growth advocates buy the official optimism. Barbara Connors was elected mayor of Erie in 2002, survived a recall attempt in 2003, then lost the mayoral election in 2004. Now she's a Boulder County planning commissioner.

"Erie definitely needs to strengthen its commercial position," Connors says. "I never doubted that Erie was going to do that. I knew that was going to happen. I don't know why people get so hysterical."

RELATED ARTICLE

1 CREEKSIDE

LOCATION: NEAR THE INTERSECTION OF TELLEEN AVENUE AND COUNTY ROAD 1; MODEL HOME, 135 MCGREGOR CIRCLE

DEVELOPER: ENGEL HOMES, ENGLEWOOD

PHONE: (303) 828-1512

SIZE: 87 HOME SITES

PROJECT TYPE: RESIDENTIAL

GROUNDBREAKING: DECEMBER 2004

BUILD-OUT: AUTUMN 2008

Creekside comprises 87 single-family homes and 97 town homes in 21 buildings. Single-family units range from 2,076 square feet to 2,760 square feet and $279,000 to $329,000 in three models, the Sterling II, Catamount IV, and Windsor. Town homes range from 1,392 square feet to 1,544 square feet and $164,000 to $189,000 in four floor plans.

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2 CANDLELIGHT RIDGE

LOCATION: INTERSECTION OF ISABELLE ROAD AND U.S. 287; MODEL HOME, 373 IRWIN DRIVE

DEVELOPER: ALLIANCE DEVELOPMENT SERVICES, ARVADA

PHONE: (303) 497-0560

SIZE: 76 ACRES

PROJECT TYPE: SINGLE-FAMILY RESIDENTIAL

GROUNDBREAKING: 2001

BUILD-OUT: 2011-2012

With close to 50 homes built, Candlelight Ridge is about halfway built, with 63 lots in its first phase and 31 planned for its second. Homes include ranches, 1.5-story and 2-story homes with about 4,000 square feet above ground. Also in the pipeline is Candlelight Estates, contiguous to Candlelight Ridge, where 31 lots will average 0.7 acres.

3 GOLDEN RUN

LOCATION: BORDERED BY THE CANYON CREEK SUBDIVISION TO THE NORTH; WELD COUNTY ROAD 1 TO THE EAST; NORTH 119TH STREET TO THE WEST.

DEVELOPER: GOLDEN RUN ESTATES LLC

PHONE: (303) 497-0610

SIZE: 330 ACRES

PROJECT TYPE: MIXED-USE NEW URBANISM

COMMERCIAL SQUARE FOOTAGE: 956,000

GROUNDBREAKING: N/A

Golden Run, a senior-oriented development to be built on land currently occupied by owner and TV host Aaron Harber, has proposed a density of 2.4 dwellings per acre, with 43.8 acres to be zoned commercial and about 130 acres of open space.

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4 VISTA RIDGE

LOCATION: TWO MILES WEST OF 1-25 ON HIGHWAY 7

DEVELOPER: VISTA RIDGE DEVELOPMENT CORP.

PHONE: (303) 920-9400

SIZE: 922 ACRES

PROJECT TYPE: MASTER-PLANNED COMMUNITY

COMMERCIAL SQUARE FOOTAGE: 100 ACRES TO BE BUILT OUT INTO 900,000 SQUARE FEET OF COMMERCIAL DEVELOPMENT

BROKE GROUND: 2001

BUILD-OUT: RESIDENTIAL BUILD-OUT ESTIMATED FOR 2010, COMMERCIAL BUILD-OUT ESTIMATED FOR 2015

Vista Ridge sells custom, single-family, condominium and low-maintenance attached and detached homes ranging from the $160,000s to more than $1 million. Single-family builders include Woodcrest, D.R. Horton and John Laing Homes; also, Blue Sky Condominiums by FrontierLiving, single-family cluster homes by Chartered Homes, and patio homes by Heritage Communities and John Laing Homes; and custom homes by Coenen Homes, Coggins-Stewart Construction, Cornerstone Inc., Elite Homes, Krueger Construction Management, Terch Brothers Custom Homes and T.L. Stauffer Construction. The development also offers a 232-acre, par-72 public golf course and a 6,600-square-foot community pool.

5 FLAT IRON MEADOW

LOCATION: NORTH 111TH STREET AND ISABELLE ROAD

DEVELOPER: SOUTHWESTERN INVESTMENT GROUP INC., ENGLEWOOD

PHONE: (303) 534-1040

SIZE: 367 ACRES

PROJECT TYPE: RESIDENTIAL

GROUNDBREAKING: SOUTHWESTERN INVEST-MENT HAS SAID IT PLANS TO START SELLING HOMES IN FLAT IRON MEADOW

BUILD-OUT: N/A

Flat Iron Meadow plans call for building single-family homes in the $450,000-to-$550,000 range on as many as 638 lots, plus two tracts permitting up to 132 town homes and 105 multifamily units, totaling 875 dwelling units; plus space for a school and a firehouse, and 132 acres of open space. The Erie Board of Trustees in late June was expected to approve the developer's preliminary plat.

PHOTO BY MURRAY ELLIOTT