SFS Projects and Best Practices

Highlands' Garden Village:
Old Elitch Gardens Amusement Park Redeveloped

By Perry / Affordable Housing Development Company

Denver-based Perry/Affordable Housing Development Company is developing Highlands' Garden Village, the former site of Elitch Gardens, a 100-year-old amusement park. Highlands' Garden Village will become a diverse, mixed-use urban village in Denver´s West Highlands neighborhood. Several years ago, the amusement park moved to Denver's Platte Valley adjacent to Lower Downtown, leaving behind a historic theater, gardens, mature trees, and lots of history along with lots of parking lot.

With planner Peter Calthorpe, AHDC has designed a village of single and multi-family homes, artist live-work housing, senior housing, cohousing, parks, gardens, a revitalized community theater, retail and offices. The redevelopment is based on the principles of diversity and environmental responsibility and geared towards providing fulfilling, locally-based livelihoods for the people who live and/or work there.

The Highlands' Garden Village master plan includes a variety of uses, from preservation of the existing theater and carousel, to cohousing and senior housing, to single-family homes and small offices.
Graphic courtesy of Perry/AHDC

What could be better than living in a major city while being a part of a people-scaled, walkable, tremendously green neighborhood? And what if that mixed-use neighborhood comes complete with cafes, restaurants, day care, plazas, gardens, wild natural places, a farmer's market, a meditation center, varied residences, offices, artist live/work studios, and stores to walk to?

The idea behind the development of the Highlands' Garden Village in historic northwest Denver comes from an old idea recycled--the idea of urban planning that incorporates people's livelihoods and everyday needs into a dense, community-oriented master plan. Appropriately, the site, too, is a creative reuse.

The site plan utilizes the historic features of the Old Elitch Gardens and the neighborhood to guide the design. The transit-oriented, street-grid layout will respect and pull together the existing cultural, residential and commercial centers of West Highlands and its surrounding north Denver neighborhoods.

Conceived in the spirit of historic preservation and vital reuse, the site will feature a renovated theater restored and donated to a non-profit organization to be used by a variety of performing arts groups, educators and community functions. The old gardens will be restored and maintained by the new project's community association, and the wetlands will be preserved around the lush irrigation ditch meandering through the site.

The homes at Highlands' Garden Village are modeled after historic Denver-area houses built before the 1940s.
Graphic courtesy of Perry/AHDC

The workplaces in this urban village are designed for those who are passionate about their work. Rather than traditional offices, developers are planning live/work studios, small studios, offices, and workshops. Perry/AHDC is targeting educational uses, crafts people, administrative offices and creative facilities for those whose work relates to the theater and arts.

The goal in redeveloping the Old Elitch Gardens site is to create a neighborhood that reflects AHDC's values of historic preservation, environmental responsibility, diversity and livelihood. Developers, neighbors, and other stakeholders are thrilled to see how all those pieces work together as the redevelopment moves along.

For more information, contact Sage Strever, Perry/AHDC, at (303) 446-0600.