Northield at Stapleton: Feels like buyer confidence is up!
Just to inject my little dose of optimism for the day. I was at Northfield at last night, taking a break from the negative political ads on TV that talk about how bad things are, and was happy to see how busy it was. If you never left your house and only watched those ads you would assume to walk out to the neighborhood mall and see tumbleweeds rolling through. What I saw instead was a hot Friday night. I saw couples out for a date night. I saw teens out in force for movies and mall crawling. I saw families out for dinner and ice cream.
I saw 3 brand new restaurants. Guy Harvey's was celebrating it's grand opening, Wyland's Ocean Blue was open for it's first big weekend and Toby Keith's Restaurant, that is just days from opening. I also saw 2 shops that I hadn't seen before that were open at Northfield.
I also drove past some detour signs that represent Central Park Boulevard's new I-70 exit and attachment of North and South Stapleton. It gives Stapleton residents and highway access to Northfield Mall by the end of next year. This money was part of the stimulus package.
Don't get me wrong, I know we are not in any kind of boom time. This also doesn't necessarily do anything for Real Estate immediately. How I look at it though, is that it's a start. Some consumer confidence creates some demand which helps new businesses start, jobs to be made and thnen with that confidence the next step maybe to purchase a home or up size the house that they are in.
Northfield at Stapleton has at times been used as a symbol of the down turn in our community and in Denver as a whole. It opened up just as things started to get bad and has struggled to get a good thing started. Over the last 4 years we have had as many stores close as open. But as a little microcosm to the big picture I was very reassured that maybe, just maybe there is a light at the end of the tunnel. It was also a fun night out.
Damon Knop
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