LONE TREE, CO-A 175,000-sf Super Target is under construction in the3,500-acre RidgeGate master-planned community in this city along thesoutheast corridor. The first homes are under construction in RidgeGate, which eventually will have 10,000 to 12,000 homes and 20 million sf to 23 million sf of commercial space--rivaling the size of Downtown Denver, but on about six times as much land.
The Super Target will be like no other in the US, says Keith Simon, head of Coventry Development Corp., developer of RidgeGate. The exterior of the Super Target will be brick and stone, with a copper roof. Even the red Target logos will be made with copper, he says.
The Super Target will have two stories. Some of Target's urban stores have two stories, but it is unusual in a suburban location, Simon tells GlobeSt.com. But the actual store will only be on the second level, he notes. A parking garage will wrap around a portion of the Target. If shoppers park on the second level, they would be able to walk into the store. Shoppers parking on the ground level would enter a lobby that has an over-sized elevator and an escalator and to the store on the upper level. The down escalator has a device to hook shopping carts into it.
The improvements will cost Target an estimated $4 million extra, Simon estimates. Target was willing to pay the high price because of the high demographics of the area. Currently, there are 8,000 people in Lone Tree, where the median household income is $96,303. Wal-Mart wanted the site, but Simon decided that the future residents would probably appreciate a Super Target more.
RidgeGate has been quietly owned by the wealthy Lemos family foralmost three decades. The family bought the land in 1975 from George M. Wallace, the founder of the Denver Tech Center, the premier office park in the metro area. Wallace was having problems making loan payments to Citibank in the mid-1970s, and Citibank did a lot of business with the Lemos family, so it asked them if they wanted to buy it.
At that time, the Lemos family operated the third largest Greek shipping fleet, second only to the ones owned by John Spyridon Latsis and Aristotle Onassis. The family wanted to diversify, so around the same time it also bought about 3,000 acres in three different sites in Houston and four high-rise apartment buildings in Manhattan.
The first development in RidgeGate is the $150-million Sky Ridge Medical Center, which is surpassing expectations and eventually plans to double its size. RidgeGate is being developed as a New Urbanism-style, sustainable community in the suburbs.
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