Centura Health to Open Family Medical Center at Wads & Alameda

 Centura Health is opening a family medical center above the Walgreens on the north east corner of Wadsworth and Alameda.

Healthcare has been a big driver of the economic recovery here in Colorado, and Lakewood is no exception. The biggest impact has been from the new St. Anthony's Hospital, located on land that was formerly part of the Denver Federal Center at Simms and Alameda, but downtown Lakewood has seen its share of growth too. Kaiser Permanente has plans to expand their Alameda and Carr St. location, while HealthOne will run the emergency medical center currently under construction at 260 S. Wadsworth (directly north of the downtown Lakewood Walgreens).

Why the boom? I've heard there are two factors. The first is the transition of the baby boom generation to retirement, medicare, and greater health care needs. The second is the huge expansion of medical care made possible by the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare). More people with health insurance means more business for heath care providers, and that has meant more economic development for Lakewood.

Qdoba submits plans to build Belmar restaurant

Qdoba had submitted plans with the city of Lakewood to build a 3000 sq. foot restaurant at 323 S. Vance St., which is located on Belmar's Block 1.

Block 1 is also home to Nordstroms Rack and Best Buy, and presumably this Qdoba outlet would be housed in a new building to be built on part of the current surface parking lot.

I don't have any other details yet, but I'll look into it.

UPDATE:

Here's an email I received from Mark Doering, the principal planner for Lakewood. 

"The proposed Qdoba restaurant is located at the corner of Vance and Alameda. The main entrance will be on the west side facing Wadsworth with a pedestrian connection and patio on both the west and south sides of the building. The building is proposing art panels on the walls nearest the corner. The building only slightly reduces the parking in that surface parking lot."

Villa Italia, circa 1966

A sea of asphalt...

Update: One thing that amazes me about this photo is the distance from some of these parking spaces to the old mall entrances. Yes, everyone coming to Villa Italia had a surface parking space, but most of those people were going to have to walk to get to their destinations-- some of them quite a bit.

Surface parking is going to be harder to find in Belmar when the development is fully built out, but the distance from Belmar's free, multi-level parking garages to shoppers' final destinations is going to be much shorter than was the case with the old Villa Italia.

MetroWest Housing to Develop 155 Unit Residential Site at 5800 W. Alameda

You know the baseball park on Alameda that looks like a miniature version of Coors Field? It's just east of Belmar, and it's pretty cool, no?

Now, how about the big, abandoned-looking strip mall just across Alameda from the baseball field? If you're like me, you've avoided looking at it ever since the Viet Hoa grocery store moved out, hoping that maybe it would go away.

Well, it's going away.

MetroWest Housing, the same people who are developing the CityScape project in Belmar, have announced plans to build a 155 unit, mixed income apartment complex on that parking lot, and to redevelop the adjoining tower and retail strip.

The proposed building would front Alameda, hiding the balance of the surface parking lot from view, and forward the city's vision of Alameda as a denser, more urban landscape as it passes through the downtown area.

A closer look at the plans show that the development will also restore the stretch of green parkway along Alameda that is currently broken up by asphalt parking lots.

If funding comes through, MetroWest Housing says they're looking at a 2017 completion date.

Parking and Belmar

I've recently heard from a handful of people who are concerned about the loss of surface parking lots as more and more of Belmar is developed. It's an understandable concern, but one I don't share.

I'm not affiliated with the city of Lakewood or Belmar, but I feel good about the planning that's been done, and I strongly believe Belmar will still have enough parking after build out.

I also think it's important to consider how, in this day and age, the success or failure of a shopping district doesn't hinge on the available amount of surface parking.

In terms of parking, Belmar has three multistory parking garages (next to Staples, Whole Foods, and Elephant Bar) that I've heard from the city are under-utilized. As the temporary surface lots go away, car drivers will be able to use these parking garages. Drivers who don't want to walk a block or two to their destination can pay for street parking. The street parking in Belmar is over-utilized right now, but that's in part because no one seems to be getting ticketed. If the city decided to ticket, I think street parking would open up. The price of metered parking could be set high enough to insure parking is always available for anyone willing to pay for the convenience-- while anyone who doesn't can simply park in one of the nearby garages. In addition, all of the currently planned infill continues to allocate significant square footage to surface parking, so it's not like all of Belmar's surface parking is going away, by any means.

The second point I'd like to raise is that there a lot of people right now who can access Belmar without the need for parking. Walking and biking are extremely viable options for anyone living in downtown Lakewood, especially for the Millennials that Belmar's owners are targeting. And with all the new residential units currently being built in Belmar itself, there's going to be more and more people living within a quick walk who won't need parking. 

Car oriented developments, with their vast surface parking lots, are probably the defining characteristic of suburban living. But if readily accessible parking were all that mattered, we'd still have Villa Italia and Belmar would never have been built. But people stopped shopping at Villa Italia, even though it was never hard to find parking there.

Instead, it's pretty clear that a growing number of people want the feel of being in an urban center, and that feel-- dense, walkable, vibrant, happening-- is simply incompatible with lots of surface parking. Indeed, I would hazard that for a lot of people living in downtown Lakewood, more shops and more restaurants outweigh more parking. It certainly does for me.

So, again, I understand the concern. And yes, it's going to be a little harder to find close-in parking once Belmar is built out. But it's going to be an even better, more vibrant place to visit, whether it's by car, foot, bike, or bus.

News on the Belmar Shops Site Plan

In some very exciting news, the city of Lakewood is reviewing a plan to put two retail buildings on the parking lot at 325 S. Saulsbury St.

One of the buildings will sit along Alameda and the other on S. Saulsbury, filling in the currently empty southwest corner of the intersection. An open courtyard will allow pedestrian access to the intersection, but the buildings themselves will open onto a plaza area and an  interior parking lot. Together, the buildings will add 15,000 sq. ft. of retail space to Belmar and downtown Lakewood.

When Belmar was first developed, I recall hearing that the parking lots along Saulsbury were being reserved for future development, but after the retail crash of the recession, I wasn't sure we were ever going to see it.

Well, we're going to see it. And I'm particularly excited that it will be in the form of a pedestrian friendly arcade that could house a dozen or so stores and restaurants, and not low density pad sites with just one or two retailers (as happened with our depressingly suburban Belmar Chick Fil A).

Phase Three Underway at Geico Tower Redevelopment

Construction is well underway on the emergency medical center at Wadsworth and Alameda, adjacent to Key Bank and Walgreens. This is the third and final phase of the redevelopment of the former Geico Tower, and I'm a little amazed (but in a good way) at how quickly it's happening. 

It does make me wonder if we might have gotten a taller, denser cluster of buildings if the parcel has remained undeveloped until after the recession ended-- there were plans floated back in 2007, if I recall the date correctly, to put a mid-rise tower with residential units there, which was abandoned when the economy tanked.