Taking light to Park Meadows...or not

The WSJ today reported on page A4 that "New Century Buys Time With Bankruptcy Filing", namely in the form of Chapter 11 bankruptcy in order to allow NC time to sell its business.
"The subprime business is dwindling as fast as it grew during the housing boom of the first half of this decade. the dollar value of subprime loans granted this year is likely to drop 30% from last year's total of around $600 billion," said Bear Stearns. Now there are signs that "Alt-A loans", a category between prime and subprime loans, may be susceptible to a similar retraction. The article goes on to say that remaining subprime lenders have quickly tightened up their rules, eliminating no-money-down loans and stepping up income verification.

Back in Denver, or south of Denver, RTD has criticized operators of the Park Meadows mall for planning to build a circuitous walkway to the adjacent County Line light rail station rather than, say, a more-or-less straight line, reports the Denver Post. Apparently, Nordstrom doesn't want light riders (criminals? thrifty spenders?) from walking through its store. The plan had been for RTD to spend $4.5 on this more direct path pointing towards Nordstrom, it appears that the
city of Lone Tree, where Park Meadows is located is going to build the alternate ped route along the mall's ring road, which, if you haven't ever been to Park Meadows, is like the edge of any mall's vast parking lots - not somewhere where you're ready to take on -- with your own two hands and feet -- ravenous shoppers roaring away with their loot.

RTD director Bill McMullen: "I'm going to walk right across the parking lot" and into Nordstrom from the light-rail elevator tower.

There does happen to be an existing shuttle that connects light rail riders to the mall, but RTD states that "Park Meadows has determined that they will no longer fund their portion of the full-week service and it will recede to weekends only". Service had been daily until February 19.

In other news, downtown Denver office space remains red hot. John Rebchook reports that many would-be Class A tenants are being steered to slightly lower quality properties after rents rose 28% in Class A from $20.68 to $25.68, according to Studley, a commercial real estate firm. This bodes well, at least indirectly, for the residential side, in the sense that jobs are staying and growing in the CBD. Now if only the Rockies could have a winning season, downtown would really be on a roll.

[Image credit: SEMA Construction]