Right now the new urbanist Stapleton development in Denver is having a bit of a crisis.  There are more kids in the development than there are seats for in the 2 neighborhood elementary schools.  There is no money to build a new school due to the way Stapleton set-up funding for school construction which is dependent on taxes raised by development within Stapleton.  You can see the flaw in this plan of course since we are currently in the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.  Not to mention the land that was originally set aside for a 3rd elementary school is contaminated and the funds to clean it up were to come from AIG (’nuff said).   Another significant element in the equation:  the number of kids projected to live in Stapleton was severely underestimated.  By their estimates, in the next two years there will be 500 kids needing to enter kindergarten with no room in Stapleton’s schools.  That is a huge number.   I can’t help but think this underestimate stems from a similar problem that happened in Bradburn–marketing studies somehow concluded families wouldn’t be as heavily drawn to new urbanist communities as they actually are.

In Bradburn, our developer told us a marketing study conducted before they built the neighborhood didn’t come anywhere close to predicting how many families would move into the neighborhood.  The original plan for our neighborhood pool reflected this–there was no kiddie pool.  Once our developer realized how wrong that prediction was and that Bradburn was in fact a HUGE draw for families–about 80% of the homes here are occupied by families with kids under age 10–they changed the plans for the pool to include a kiddie pool.   In Stapleton, a survey found 40% of over 1,000 homes sampled are occupied with families with children under age 2! 

I hope future new urbanist developers learn from this FUBAR situation in Stapleton, and I would like to extend an invite to any parents in Stapleton who decide to move as a result of this mess–you are welcome to come to Bradburn Village in Westminster. We would love to have nice new, social neighbors. Our schools are great, and there’s plenty of room in them.