BRAC - The Denver Experience

by Michael Leccese

As an urban infill project, Lowry has created a diverse community that's close to the culture and excitement of the city.

In the early 1990s, the Denver region remained gripped by recession. Despite its sunny setting and Rocky Mountain backyard, the region was losing jobs and population. Although the high tech sector drove a late-1990s recovery, few analysts read good news into the announced closures of two of the region’s largest military installations: Lowry Air Force Base in Denver and the Fitzsimons Army Medical Base (FAMC) just blocks way in Aurora. At its peak, the 1,866-acre Lowry (part of which overlaps into Aurora) provided 7,500 civilian jobs and economic benefits worth $295 million annually to Denver and Aurora, Denver’s largest neighbor with 276,000 residents. The 578-acre Fitzsimons campus employed nearly 5,000 in 283 buildings totaling three million square feet.

Ten years later, both sites decommissioned under provisions of the Defense Base Realignment and Closure Act of 1990 (BRAC) are well into model transformations. The two projects share elements of success that provide models for other communities planning for base closure. Both were publicprivate partnerships in which incentives attracted additional private and institutional investment. Citizen involvement shaped both proposals and plans, and appealing mixed-use areas, parks, greenways, and public transit connect both sites to adjacent communities.

As a result, Lowry and Fitzsimons have reached marketplace success much faster than anticipated, while driving an economic engine that is helping the region recover from its latest boom-bust cycle. “Lowry and Fitzsimons demonstrate there is life after closure,” says Tom Markham, executive director of the Lowry Redevelopment Authority (LRA) and president of NAID, An Association of Defense Communities (NAID/ADC).

Since closing in 1994 and then breaking ground in 1997, Lowry has become one of Denver ’s hottest neighborhoods. Nearly 3,000 new homes for 6,500 residents now command premium prices. More than 100 employers provide 6,500 jobs. Ten schools have moved in, and 800 acres of parkland are under development. To date, the LRA estimates a $4 billion economic benefit to the state.

Founded in 1918 as an Army Hospital and shuttered in 1999, Fitzsimons has been reborn as a job-producing powerhouse featuring a university hospital complex and associated bioscience research park. Projected at a 15-million-squarefoot buildout, the new Fitzsimons medical facilities now employ 5,300 and will expand to 13,000 jobs by 2007. Five years ago, experts thought Fitzsimons would take 50 to 100 years to refill, but almost all the land is already redeveloped or spoken for.

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