Transit-oriented design without the transit!

The economic downturn and rising construction costs have delayed a much-anticipated rail line to Longmont, Colorado. But can plans to revitalise the area around the proposed station succeed, even without transit investment?

Colorado’s 41-mile Northwest Rail corridor runs from downtown Denver, passing through Boulder, and comes to an end at the city of Longmont, which sits at the far northern edge of the Denver area’s Regional Transportation District (RTD). 

The rail line and site of the Longmont rail station would help provide a welcome transformation of the area south of downtowm Longmont, which currently houses a former food processing plant, warehouses, and an electrical substation. While a successful regional sales tax vote in 2004 aimed to complete construction of the line by 2017, the economic downtown, coupled with increased construction costs, has pushed back the implementation of the line to Longmont to 2024 at the earliest. To help the city receive some early return on its sales tax investment, RTD pledged to work with Longmont to build a regional bus center in downtown Longmont at the site of the future rail station. 

Longmont used that pledge as an impetus to begin redevelopment planning for the area around the future station, known as the 1st & Main Station area, and brought Steer Davies Gleave on board to develop the station area plan and to provide some idea about development potential in the short run before the rail station is built. Our challenge was to prepare a plan that helped extend Longmont’s thriving downtown south to the station area and provided a framework for changing the nature of the area and attracting residential, retail, and commercial development to the area, focused around the new RTD transit facility. 

We worked extensively with a local stakeholder group, local citizens, and the development community to prepare a realistic, pragmatic plan that responds to the economic realities of the area. Our research showed that Longmont could easily absorb more local jobs and residences without straining public resources, so the final plan is a balanced mix of residential development (both multi-family condos and apartments and single-family semi-detached homes), ground floor retail and office/commercial uses. 

The development plan was based on standard transit-oriented development principles, such as walkability, compact form, a mix of uses, parking management, and good urban design. It also reflected the community values expressed by local citizens and stakeholders, including the historical and agricultural heritage of the community, its diversity and inclusiveness, and its focus on high-quality neighborhoods. Perhaps the most important consideration – and one we heard from the private sector development community – is that this development plan was created with the idea that it must be able to succeed on its own even if a transit investment was not part of the mix. Good Transit-Oriented Development should be able to succeed on its own even without transit, and certainly the development community takes that attitude as it considers investing in a new project. But experience has shown that a transit investment – even an interim regional bus facility – can make a development better and more focused and can help it happen sooner. 

The final plan is a framework for the next 25 years and includes recommendations on phasing along with zoning and regulatory changes needed to help with implementation. It is a plan that can easily respond to changing market conditions while keeping ongoing redevelopment focused on meeting the Longmont’s TOD goals, helping improve its tax base while conforming to community goals and values for a walkable, connected, vibrant city.