Stanley Marketplace project a journey to create a new community at the Aurora-Denver line

AURORA | For the thousands of Adams and Denver County residents who straddle the municipal line between Aurora and Stapleton, proximity has never equated to familiarity.

Physical boundaries such as fences and strategically placed greenways have long divided the two burgs, prohibiting access and chilling opportunities for cross-pollination. In Aurora’s most northwestern pocket, ZIP code 80010 is cordoned off from Stapleton by East 26th Avenue to the north and Westerly Creek to the west, making the waterway somewhat of a local Rio Grande.

It’s a tangible border that has long-separated wealth from poverty, opportunity from stagnation and development from blight.

Slightly less than 40,000 people reside in ZIP code 80010, about 36 percent of whom live below the poverty line, according to the American Community Survey, which uses data tabulated by the U.S. Census.

The area’s median household income is $32,527, which is almost $26,000 less than the state average. Just more than 39 percent of 80010’s residents were born somewhere other than the United States and only 63 percent of them hold at least a high school diploma.

In Stapleton, the grass, and wallets, are noticeably greener. The neighborhood’s 80238 ZIP code boasts a population of just more than 10,000 people, with only about 340 of that total living below the poverty line, according to the ACS. More than 99 percent of Stapleton residents hold a GED or higher degree, and the area’s median income is $126,527. About 7 percent of Stapletonians were born outside of the United States.

TENANT LIST

FOOD

Stanley Beer Hall by Kevin Taylor

Sweet Cow Ice Cream

GoodBird Kitchen (comfort food)

Sazza (pizza and salad)

Rosenberg’s Bagels

Comida (Mexican-style Street Food)

Denver Biscuit Co.

Logan House Coffee Co.

Mondo Market (artisan grocer)

Happy Bakeshop (gourmet bakery)

RETAIL

Tootsies Nail Shoppe

Kismet (jewelry and clothing)

Hope Tank (art)

Clementine’s (boutique & salon)

From the Hip Photo

Poppy & Pine Floral

L Style Bar

wax. (body waxing)

HEALTH

Endorphin (gym)

Kindness Yoga

Symmetry Massage

Natural Balance Integrative Health

Stapleton Dental

There’s no mistaking it — Aurora’s northern edge and Denver’s eastern arm share all of about nothing in common. And that’s despite the two zones being separated by little more than the toss of a tennis ball.

But local officials, developers and entrepreneurs have lofty plans to thaw those brisk ties in the coming year, and northwest Aurora’s newest economic hub is leading the charge. 

Stanley Marketplace is a gastronomic and retail bazaar set to open in Aurora’s 140,000-square-foot former Stanley Aviation building next spring. Already fully leased, the marketplace at 2501 N. Dallas St. is slated to house 48 businesses that offer everything from teeth cleanings to triple IPAs. All but five of the Stanley outfits already have a brick and mortar shop, though every tenant is new to Aurora, according to Mark Shaker, one of three partners at Flightline Ventures, the Denver-based development firm spearheading the $25-million project.

“I love the location of the property and it being a bridge between two communities that have physical barriers, psychological barriers and demographic barriers,” Shaker said. “We believe that’s how you get people together is through culture — through art, music, food and dance.”

The Stanley overhaul marks a significant shift in attitudes toward north Aurora investment and connecting the once-nefarious, neglected region to the rest of the metro area.

Following the announcement of the Stanley project last year, the city has doubled down on development along Aurora’s notorious northern rim and enduring visions of the city’s Westerly Creek Redevelopment Plan have finally begun to pop up within the beleaguered beltway.

WHAT THEY’RE SAYING: STANLEY OCCUPANTS  SOUND OFF ON MARKETPLACE

Poppy & Pine Floral:

“The marketplace can truly be a one-stop-shop for someone to plan any event, from a wedding to a fundraiser to a prom, because they can get catering, photography, and flowers all right there,” said Nicole Landeck co-founder of Stapleton-based Poppy & Pine Floral. “We’ve already started collaborating with From the Hip Photo and L Style Bar — it’s been really fun already to see how we can all work together.”

The Stanley location of Poppy & Pine will be Landeck and her business partner Karla Rehring’s first brick-and-mortar store and will sit in a roughly 700-square-foot space on the building’s first floor.

Stanley Beer Hall
By Kevin Taylor

“Stanley is in a really underserved area,” said Denver chef Kevin Taylor. “It’s a food desert, there’s really no retail space per se, so really all of the neighborhoods are going to be incredibly important to us: Lowry, Stapleton and Aurora, obviously. We want it to be something that is a very local experience.”

The Stanley Beer Hall will sit in a 5,700-sqaure-foot pad and will boast about 150 patio seats and 160-180 seats inside the building. Taylor said that the menu at Stanley will be completely new and offer more affordable prices than some of his other restaurants, like Kevin Taylor’s At The Opera House in Downtown Denver.

Comida

“The opportunity at Stanley is certainly different,” said Rayme Rossello, owner of Comida, a Mexican eatery with locations in Longmont and Denver. “There will be a nice diversity of menus throughout the building and having more restaurants and more options will, I think, potentially be a bigger draw. And if my experience this weekend at the CherryArts Festival is any showing of who is potentially going to come out once it’s open, it’s going to be tremendous.”

Comida will seat about 200 people at its new Stanley location and operate with a kitchen about 400 square feet bigger than that of its Denver location in The Source. Rossello said the menu will stay largely the same and that the kitchen will be headed by her current head chef in Denver, Martin Campos.

City Council approved two new tax-increment financing sites at its regular meeting Oct. 26 in order to buoy costs for a forthcoming 320-unit housing development, according to Tony Chacon, an urban renewal supervisor with the city. And although the Aurora Urban Renewal Authority has not yet specified a dollar amount attached to the tax incentives, Chacon said that Forrest City is planning on investing about $5.8 million into the construction of a new park and drainage improvements just east of the Stanley building.

There are also plans for a road extension at Dayton Street and East 25th Avenue in an effort to further enhance the connection between Aurora and Stapleton, which is something Shaker said he is excited to see play out.   

“When they punch that (extension) through, we’ll have really solid connectivity almost up to I-70 and down to Lowry,” he said. “And that will create a really interesting corridor between our property and the (Aurora) Cultural Arts District.”

Unifying the ACAD, which sits directly south of the Stanley building, to the Adams County section of the city and beyond has long been a vision of Sally Mounier, city councilwoman for Ward I, who said that she would like to see the city purchase property along Dayton and Dallas Street in order to marry the two zones.

“The long-term project is to increase the ACAD up Dayton to the Stanley Marketplace and connect the two,” she said. “It would just be wonderful to bring people who would not consider coming to the art district, have them enjoy themselves, talk about it and come back. That’s my ultimate goal.”

And although Mounier’s dream of having the city scoop up more property in north Aurora has yet to catch much traction, Aurora has not held back in providing business incentives to the surrounding area.

The city granted initial approval for a separate TIF site on the Stanley property this spring, which is projected to generate about $7.6 million in public improvements over the course of several years, according to Andrea Amonick, manager of AURA. Earlier this spring, she said that the city struck a deal with Aurora Public Schools and Flightline to give a percentage of Stanley’s generated TIF money to APS as critics of TIF financing for years have argued that the subsidies withhold necessary funding from other entities such as counties and schools. 

Controversial or not, the city’s utter willingness to revamp the Stanley corridor is part of what has sold businessmen like Kevin Taylor on taking the plunge into Aurora.

“The city of Aurora has been remarkable,” said Taylor, a Denver-based chef and head of two of Stanley’s biggest footprints, including a 10,000-sqaure-foot event center. “They’ve been very, very supportive and I’ve been very, very happy about it.”

Taylor, Shaker and about 10,000 other Coloradans were able to get a sense of how Stanley could operate during last weekend’s Cherry Arts Festival at Stanley, a fall version of the esteemed event held each summer in Denver’s Cherry Creek neighborhood.

“It was wonderful and really interesting seeing where people were coming from because you had a combination of well-to-do art buyers from across the region, and then you had a lot of people walking over form the Aurora side and walking from the Stapleton side,” Shaker said. “It was a neat mix, and exactly what we are looking to do when we open.”

Mounier said she believes that cohesion between the adjacent, yet historically divergent, neighborhoods will only flourish going forward.

“I honestly don’t think there’s going to be any hesitation on the part of the folks from Stapleton to commingle with folks south of (East) 25th (Avenue),” she said. “I think they’re thrilled to death with what Stanley is doing — really everybody is. I can’t see that this is going to do anything but make the area better for everybody.”