By: Philip Langdon


New Urban Network

The Denver, Charlotte, and Minneapolis-St. Paul regions all opened new light-rail lines between 2004 and 2007, aiming to enhance their transportation systems and at the same time encourage efficiently-placed real estate development.

They got much of what they were looking for. “All three transit lines experienced a tremendous amount of new development” — 6.7 million square feet along the Twin Cities’ Hiawatha Line, 7.8 million square feet along Denver’s Southeast Corridor, and 9.8 million square feet served by Charlotte’s Blue Line, says a new report from the Center for Transit-Oriented Development.

The 80-page analysis, Rails to Real Estate: Development Patterns Along Three New Transit Lines, says residential construction came on particularly strong. In the Twin Cities, 86 percent of the development near the 12-mile Hiawatha Line was housing. In Denver, 68 percent was housing, and in Charlotte, 54 percent.

But if anyone expected development to crop up at every station, there was cause for disappointment. Transit-oriented development [[TOD) concentrated primarily in areas that already had plenty of jobs or amenities to offer.

Seventy-two percent of development along the Hiawatha Line clustered in downtown Minneapolis. Sixty-four percent of development served by the Blue Line arose in Charlotte’s downtown. Much residential construction along Denver’s Southeast Corridor appeared to be the result of being near the Denver Technology Center, a major employment center.

Rails to Real Estate suggests why some rail-served locations appealed to developers and residents, while others didn’t. The answers vary from one metro area to another.

In Denver’s southeast suburbs, the 19-mile Southeast Corridor line — the second of what will eventually be a regional network of light-rail lines — was built in the right-of-way of Interstate 25. That turns out to have been a bad decision, at least from a real estate and community-building perspective.


Continued at: http://newurbannetwork.com/article/l...erywhere-14344