A Unique Housing Partnership

The Boulder Transit Village is a unique partnership between our firm, the City of Boulder, and Boulder Housing Partners, the City’s affordable housing developer. Decades in the making and approaching full completion in the coming years, the project has already created one of the most interesting, appreciated, and dense urban zones in the City of Boulder. The result was a diverse neighborhood with over 30% of the units permanently affordable, and the project has become a model for redeveloping forgotten, low-density, and industrial areas, bringing sustainable density where it matters most.

When the original developer dropped out of the project after winning a competition for the site, Boulder Housing Partners (BHP) stepped in as the master developer. With an extremely tight regulatory timeframe, they were able to master plan the site and create a framework for infrastructure, open space, and a defined housing blend. We were selected though a competitive process as the private developer for the site, bringing our sustainable design experience to the BHP-led team. Working with Coburn Partners and Huntsman Architectural Group, frequent design partners of ours, we developed a plan that included eight different buildings of varying style, oriented toward different target tenants. The consistent theme, however, was “all-electric” and high levels of sustainability.

The result is one of the highest-density neighborhoods in the city, created with no neighborhood opposition under a new Urban Code that used traditional neighborhood development concepts. Much of the infrastructure and operational capital was funded through an “opt in” district which is anchored by a regional transportation district “transit hub”. The successful redevelopment of this ten-acre district has demonstrated that well-conceived public/private partnerships can achieve more than either party could ever do on their own.