Rendering By Carma
Colorado ©
The 282-acre Solterra community will be built in the Rooney
Valley near C-470.
Carma Colorado will break ground Monday on its $550 million Solterra residential community along Alameda Parkway near C-470, the first master-planned community built in the 2,000-acre Rooney Valley.
The 282-acre Solterra will feature 1,100 homes.
The first phase in the Lakewood development will be mostly expensive houses, priced from the $400,000s to more than $1 million. Subsequent phases will include patio homes and townhomes that likely will start from the mid-$200,000s.
Solterra is the first stage in 20 years of anticipated growth in the Rooney Valley, said Lakewood City Manager Mike Rock. "Carma will bring infrastructure into the Rooney Valley at their cost, not the city's cost," he said.
That will pave the way for development that will include millions of square feet of office and retail space in both Lakewood and Morrison when the market demand is there, he said.
Tom Morton, a senior vice president of Carma Colorado, said the opening culminates 2 1/2 years of work by the company. Carma's parent is Brookfield Properties, which owns the 56-story Republic Plaza in downtown Denver, the state's tallest office building.
Lakewood and Morrison have looked to develop the Rooney Valley for many years.
"The city has spent a lot of money and energy to get things in line to get to this point," Morton said. "This is one of the last large tracts left in the city for housing. It's an opportunity for them to capitalize on a market that has been underserved for a very long time."
He said he expects that the first people will move into Solterra in 2008. At that time, it also will host the annual Parade of Homes. The first phase also will include the Retreat at Solterra, a $4.8 million, 6,000- square-foot community center.
The entire development likely will take five to seven years to complete.
Morton said he has signed an agreement with one builder, Wall Custom Homes, but a number of others are interested in building at Solterra.
"There's a lot of builders who would like to be in this part of town," Morton said. "We will have very strict design guidelines. One of them will be that all of the homes built will have to be energy efficient and built in a sustainable way."
Solterra, to include 20 percent open space, is being developed under the Rooney Valley Joint Master Plan, an intergovernmental agreement adopted in 2002 by Lakewood, Morrison and Jefferson County.
Solterra will include protected wildlife corridors and a wildlife underpass below Alameda Parkway that will connect Lakewood's two largest parks - Bear Creek Lake Park to the south and Hayden Green Mountain Park to the north - which together comprise more than 5,000 acres of dedicated open space.
