Thanks to trends in design, construction, and consumer demographics (and mostly, the diminishing supply of land), the development of high-density housing is becoming increasingly popular. With growth come changes and challenges, and nowhere is that more evident than rapidly developing areas like Irvine, CA and Denver, CO. As these cities struggle to make the transition from suburban to urban environments, there are powerful planning, design and development tools that will ease the difficulties.

Urbanization also has its difficulties — costs, site limitations, entitlement challenges. The difficulties of urban development can be endless. So what is being done to overcome these difficulties?

“A whole new way of thinking about land use,” was the response from one developer. While the major builders such as Lennar are dominating the urban scene, new development companies such as American Pacific Holdings are entering the race, bringing with them creativity, vision and new energy to turn marginal urban structures and sites into striking new multifamily and mixed-use communities.

“We believe there is an opportunity for smaller development firms to compete in the urban arena if they are flexible, fast on their feet, and know what they’re doing,” says Tom Doyle, principal of American Pacific Holdings. “It’s a whole new ballgame.”

Intensification is vital, said Thomas Cox, CEO/Managing Partner at TCA (Thomas P. Cox: Architects). “Developers will have to find ways to reclaim land that hasn’t been used or only partially used. We’ll have to develop sites that have never even been considered before, such as railroad yards, parking lots and industrial parks.”

Many believe that this shift from industrial and manufacturing uses to residential uses will eventually happen throughout the country and it’s not a matter of if, but when.

Gregory M. Vilkin, president of Forest City, Stapleton, Inc., believes there is a nationwide trend of cities returning to traditional densities. “In Chicago that can mean 100 homes to the acre, in New York up to 500, in Los Angeles perhaps 30 to 50. Each is an appropriate density for its community,” said Vilkin.  

Of course, finding land is one of the greatest challenges. Steve Kabel, president of John Laing Homes South Coast Division, said his company looks for “edge condition” sites. These parcels are, or will soon undergo a transition from industrial to residential and are still relatively close to other housing.

“Our ability to find these locations definitely depends on strong relationships with municipalities because we need to know the future plans for the area,” said Kabel. “These partnerships that come into play at the beginning of the process become even more crucial during construction.”

While many of the prime urban sites have already been acquired, there are still many opportunities for developers who are willing to take risks and develop sites that other companies can’t or won’t.

“Understanding a property’s potential within the context of its market environment, and then being able to act on that potential and create something of real value, that to us is the true essence of urban development,” said Doyle.

The opportunities and challenges associated with this suburban-to-urban transition are perhaps best illustrated by what’s going on in Anaheim, CA.

Led today by Mayor Curt Pringle, Anaheim decided as part of its most recent General Plan update to redevelop its core areas — populated with retail, industrial and entertainment... but no housing. To spur what it saw as an opportunity to revitalize this section of Anaheim with mixed-use development, the city council in mid-2004 approved a “mixed-use overlay zone” to establish what it dubbed the Platinum Triangle.

The Triangle is an 820-acre redevelopment area that, when fully developed, is planned to include up to 9,175 dwelling units, 5 million square feet of office space and over 2 million square feet of commercial space. According to Anaheim city officials, the Platinum Triangle will be a vibrant 24-hour, “urban hub.”

A key strategy needed to incorporate higher-density housing to the city was the mixed-use overlay zone.

“In general, zoning such as that adopted by the city of Anaheim are used to create standards that allow urbanizing cities to avoid case-by-case infill applications,” explains Ken Ryan, principal with EDAW’s Irvine office, the large international planning firm that worked with city planners to create the overlay zone. “The zone establishes guidelines and standards that ensure compatibility in the near-term and well planned connected urban districts in the long run. The idea is to strike a balance between planning criteria and flexibility while creating incentives for excellent urban design.”

But this endeavor did not evolve without challenges.

“The city envisioned the Platinum Triangle becoming an urban laboratory for new approaches and designs in higher density mixed-use and multi-family projects,” said Sheri Vander Dussen, Anaheim planning director. “However, they knew there was a need to address building heights and massing, introduce new streets to break existing industrial parks into more manageable blocks, and create open spaces to complement higher density development. This goal was complicated by the fact that there were numerous property owners and we could expect development to occur on a parcel-by-parcel basis versus in a coordinated fashion.”

To overcome these challenges, Vander Dussen said the city worked closely with the development community on strategies. A few solutions included dedication of small pocket parks, creation of new connector streets and provisions to request exemptions to certain development standards to achieve variety or density goals.

The Triangle is already alive with the sound of construction. The first major residential project – a 390-unit mixed-use development being built by Windstar Communities – is well underway with completion scheduled for mid-2006. Other major builders planning multifamily projects in the Triangle are D.R. Horton, BRE Properties, and Lennar Corporation, which has purchased more than 40 acres to develop up to 11 high-rise condos as well as a variety of townhouses, lofts, and walkup brownstones.

The activity has generated a huge buzz in the county’s development community as developers and investors scramble to get their piece of the action. One result has been an enormous run up in land prices; in some cases, land in the Triangle has increased by more than 8 times its value since the overlay zone was enacted about a year ago.

Urbanization and how to properly plan for it, is also high on the agenda of the city of Irvine, CA, considered one of the nation’s finest master-planned communities. The city’s urban vision revolves around the 4,000-acre Irvine Business Complex (IBC), which was planned on the city’s west side in the early 1970s for commercial and industrial uses to further the new city’s economic growth.

In the past 30 years, the IBC evolved into a bustling commercial center with hundreds of companies and thousands of employees. However, the complex’s main thoroughfare is rapidly changing from commerce to residential. Today there are more than 9,000 residential units ranging from luxury apartments to high-rise condominiums scattered throughout the IBC that are built, being built or in planning. Bosa Development’s 18-story high-rise condo towers, which are now sold out and nearing completion, are perhaps the most visible sign of the city’s inexorable march towards urbanization.

To plan for and control the transformation from industrial uses to a mixture of business and residential uses, the city council directed the planning staff to develop a strategy that will “establish a new model for a successful urban mixed-use environment—an “urban village” with a balanced mix of businesses, housing, retail, parks and public transit.

New zoning is essential for cities such as Irvine that want residential development in areas zoned for commercial and industrial uses.  “Many cities still rely on antiquated zoning regulations that don’t accommodate this type of development,” said Steve Kellenberg, principal, EDAW, whose firm is also helping the city of Irvine make the transition from a suburban to an urban environment.

He added that new zoning should accomplish a few key goals. “From a city’s standpoint, it should provide flexibility to planners, the planning commission, and city council. From a developer’s standpoint, it should provide guides for entitlement.”

Kellenberg said that maps for new zoning are usually demarcated by logical boundaries such as streets or freeways, railroads or other easements, and existing development. “We look for core areas, places where we can make connections within the urban area that make planning sense. The idea is to take advantage of existing attributes such as streets, trails, open space and services,” said Kellenberg.

Denver, CO is another city that has adapted new zoning to accommodate higher-density housing. As it grows from 2.5 million today to 3.5 million in 2030, the Denver region is both filling in and spreading out, notes Vilkin, whose company is redeveloping the 7.5-square-mile former Stapleton International Airport as a new neighborhood.

With 12,000 homes planned ranging from multi-story condos to urban mansions, “Stapleton is restoring the region’s traditional, pedestrian-friendly level of density, which is 11 homes to the acre,” notes Vilkin. “Denver’s post-World War II suburbs are only three or four homes to the acre, which not only consumes land, but does not provide enough intensity to support local retail or even schools within walking distance of homes. Inevitably you wind up with car-centric environments.”

In recent years, Denver—largely a city of single-family bungalows—has overhauled its zoning to create new categories that encourage “nodes” of density. For example, the city’s Blueprint Denver comprehensive plan circumscribes “areas of change” that encourage multi-family and higher density redevelopment. This includes Stapleton, where most recent housing projects have risen to 25 units to the acre, and there are vacant rail yards in the Central Platte Valley next to downtown, and industrial sites like the former Gates Rubber complex in south Denver.

On the heels of Blueprint Denver, the city worked with private developers and consultants to model and draft transit-oriented development (TOD)-friendly zoning. The new Transit Mixed-Use zoning (TMU-30) allows floor-area ratios (FAR) of up to 5:1 and slashes parking requirements 25 percent when sites have proximity to a light rail station.

“The new zoning is designed to be flexible so developers can easily adjust uses to meet market conditions,” says Frank Cannon, an urban designer with Civitas, Inc., which helped draft the zoning.

To qualify for TMU-30 rezoning, sites must be at least 12 acres and a short walk from a station platform. Denver already has 24 light rail stations to expand to more than 90 under the $4.7 billion FasTracks program, which will build regional light rail to 119 miles in about 10 years. Enthusiasts for TOD believe that 18,000 acres around these stations can be zoned for high-density neighborhoods to accommodate 350,000 residents—more than one-third of the region’s projected population growth.

Denver’s suburbs will receive the lion’s share of the new stations. They too are preparing by encouraging density and mixed-use around proposed and existing stations, which is said to increase ridership by placing people and destinations close to transit.

Rick Petersen, principal with Colorado’s OZ Architecture, has designed Littleton Station, one of the first TODs to hit Denver’s suburbs. Covering a full city block, the $18 million redevelopment project will place 35 lofts and townhomes within a few blocks of a light rail station in the southwest corridor. Petersen notes that not all Littleton neighbors were ready for Littleton Station.

“The surrounding neighborhood is mainly suburban single-family homes,” notes Petersen. “Some saw this as a disturbing change that would generate traffic, raise their property taxes, or even remove a site that could become a park. We worked with them, incorporated their ideas into the design, and eventually made most of them see the value this will bring into their neighborhood.”

Littleton Station is one of the first projects of its kind in Littleton and a keystone project for future redevelopment, says Mary Roberts, Community Development Director for this suburb of 41,000 just south of Denver. Roberts notes that in 2000, the year two light rail stations opened in Littleton, the city drew half-mile circles around the stations where it encourages mixed-use with density up to 100 homes to the acre.

As cities throughout the country struggle to transition their core areas, planners and developers have developed new solutions to new problems. All things considered, strong market conditions, along with beneficial economic and demographic changes, and a growing desire to “live in the city,” should bode well for higher-density development. SLDT