Malled!

At the intersection of I-25 and Colorado 7, where Broomfield and Thornton meet, two huge regional retail projects are in the works. On the Thornton side is Larkridge, slated to open October 20 and set to become the largest retail development in Colorado. Billing itself as a "regional power center," Larkridge boasts a commercial area that, when finally built out, will be 240 acres, the equivalent of 180 football fields, with two million square feet of shopping space (400,000 more square feet than at Park Meadows, the state's largest indoor mall). Already open are Sears Grand, Circuit City, Home Depot, PetsMart, Office Max, Dick's Sporting Goods, Pier 1 Imports and dozens of other chain stores and restaurants.

Right across I-25 in Broomfield, three major projects are planned, says planning director Terrance Ware: the 120-acre Northlands, with 1.1 million square feet of retail space; the 2,700-acre Anthem, with a mix of 11,000 housing units, retail and an office park; and the 75-acre Palisade Park development, which will include yet more retail. Five miles south on I-25, at 144th Avenue, Forest City has broken ground on a mixed-use "shopping village" in Westminster that will put 500 residential units on a pad with 900,000 square feet of shopping, including a Foley's, a JC Penney, a twelve-screen AMC megaplex and a Super Target. Certain characteristics make the northern Denver area appealing to developers, Ware says, including cheap land, flat topography and, most important, secure water rights.

The exploding development has Rieken worried. "It's going to have a huge impact on us," he says. "My ability to hop on a bike and escape to the north is going bye-bye. And that makes me feel a lot more claustrophobic." But all those trails and the open space that Rieken loves so much -- that convince him and other potential homebuyers to settle somewhere -- cost money to purchase and preserve. In order to keep their budgets healthy, municipalities need a wide sales-tax base. The town that has the next big regional mall project on its side of the fence reaps the revenue, while the town across the highway has to find another way to pay for all the increased infrastructure associated with new growth.

With another new mall, perhaps.

As retail projects continue gobbling prairie to the north, they leave behind aging malls that were once considered economic boons, and now become economic bombs.

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"Anyone call my phone?" a hulking guy in his mid-twenties asks into the tiny cell phone pressed into his ear. He's wearing an oversized basketball jersey, and his hair is pulled into cornrows. "Just check my fucking phone, a'ight?"

He hangs up; he's in a bad mood. But as he and his crew of bad boys with eyebrow piercings, neck tattoos and rat tails saunter past the Disney Store and the Orange Julius stand, he brightens up when one suggests hitting up Foot Locker. "I want to check out some new kicks," he mutters.

Westminster Mall has seen dramatic changes in recent years -- the most conspicuous its changing clientele. There are many more minority shoppers than you would have found here a decade ago, reflecting the demographic shift in the surrounding neighborhoods. Not everyone is decked out in thuggery, though, and there's a fairly even mix of teenagers, seniors and young families.

Westminster Mall opened in 1977 at Sheridan Boulevard and the Boulder Turnpike, at what was then the city's edge. It started with a Joslin's and thirty smaller stores; after a major expansion in 1986, it grew to include four more anchors: Foley's, Broadway Southwest, Mervyn's and JC Penney. Like many suburban communities, Westminster lacked a downtown or any other pedestrian-friendly gathering place, so the mall quickly assumed this role by default, if not by design. Its layout was similar to other enclosed malls of the era, with smaller businesses lining the long arteries that ran between the big department stores. Residents would stroll its long hallways on weekends, while teens lingered in the arcade and hung out in the food court. The mall's trademark hot-air balloons rose and fell in the central court area above a fountain series of wide stairsteps that generations of sugar-fueled kids darted across.

From the moment it opened, Westminster Mall began drawing customers away from Northglenn Mall, six miles to the east. Northglenn had gotten its start in the early '60s as a development of 3,000 single-family homes near the intersection of 104th Avenue and I-25, the first large-scale project by Jordon Perlmutter, then operating as Perl-Mack Co. In 1962, Life magazine proclaimed it "the most perfectly planned community in America"; one of its main features was the regional shopping complex planned at the center. The area incorporated as a city in 1969, and the recently opened "North Glenn Mall" provided as much as 45 percent of the city's sales-tax revenue, but that dropped after the Westminster Mall opened and shoppers headed off to greener pastures. In 1997, with only 20 percent of its space leased, the mall's sales-tax contribution to the city fell to a meager 7 percent.