Hopes of revitalization for a derelict suburban Denver shopping center: ‘We need to have a gathering space.’

Thornton is staring 1955 in the face and saying, “No thanks.”

That was the year the Thornton Shopping Center first sprouted on a 15-acre parcel at the corner of East 88th Avenue and Washington Street. It was a marvel of post-war suburban America — complete with a Woolworth’s and Miller’s Market.

But time took its toll, rendering the strip mall a crumbling, blighted mess as the city exploded from fewer than 10,000 people then to nearly 150,000 today. The city acquired the property through eminent domain two years ago and tore it down to its asphalt origins.

Now Thornton wants to bring the site back to its former glory — but with a decidedly non-1950s twist.

“The overwhelming consensus in the community is that we need to have a gathering space,” said Thornton City Councilman Justin Martinez, who represents a southern chunk of the city where the former shopping center sits. “It’s an opportunity to create a core development that can live for 100 years, or longer.”

Thornton is not the first metro Denver city to face the challenge of injecting life into a commercial area long past its due date. Lakewood did it 25 years ago, when it replaced the dying Villa Italia mall with the Belmar Shopping District, and Centennial followed suit nearly a decade later when it redeveloped the enclosed Southglenn Mall into the open-air Streets at Southglenn.

Neighboring Westminster continues to build out its downtown project — with new shops, eateries and apartments on a 102-acre site that was once home to the Westminster Mall, which was demolished in 2011.

Thornton’s project has far less room in which to operate compared to those other cities, but neighbors have already weighed in on what they’d like to see — and not see: No car washes, gas stations, fast-food joints, sprawling parking lots or big box retailers.

Instead, residents and city officials envision smaller shops, sit-down restaurants or a food hall. A community garden, plazas and rooftop seating are also among the redevelopment options being pitched. New housing will likely be a major component of the revamped site.

“Retail has changed since the 1950s, so creating a sense of place is the main point,” said Adam Krueger, Thornton’s economic development director. “We want to work with residents hand-in-hand to see what their vision is for that site.”

To that end, the city organized a community meeting last month where residents were asked for overhaul ideas. The feedback included requests for a post office (to replace one that was there), a place to host outdoor movie nights and even an endpoint for a high school marching band parade.

The city solicited potential names for the project, which it will hand over to the council to make a final choice. It plans to issue a formal solicitation this year to test the appetite among developers to take on the challenge of breathing new life into the defunct shopping center.

“We want to get a developer to take this site and build the whole thing out according to their vision and our vision,” Krueger said. “It’s not about getting a big box retailer — there is a better fit with smaller-scale retail and that mixed-use product.”

Examples of successful metro Denver redevelopments Thornton is eyeing as inspiration include Belmar in Lakewood, Olde Town Arvada, Stanley Marketplace in Aurora and McGregor Square near Coors Field.

Krueger hopes to see construction at the site starting sometime in early 2028. But first, there is the small matter of clean-up at the site.

Workers last month began the process of digging up soils contaminated with spilled dry-cleaning chemicals — namely perchloroethylene — that have migrated over the decades into groundwater, posing potential health problems for adjacent neighborhoods. The state health department long ago ordered their cleanup.

“A lot of the soil in there is hazardous, and it’s gotta go,” Chad Howell, the redevelopment administrator for Thornton, told community members at last month’s meeting.

The city expects to complete the remediation work by the summer.

Kate Lucas, a planner with the EPA’s Technical Assistance to Brownfields initiative, has been helping the city with the Thornton Shopping Center redevelopment effort.

“A brownfield is any property with the presence, or perceived presence, of contamination that prevents it from being used for its maximum potential — or used at all,” she said. “I think that this site has been emotionally challenging to the community for the past 20 years.”

The TAB program uses federal grants to help communities tackle the challenge of assessing, cleaning up and preparing brownfield sites for redevelopment. And the former Thornton Shopping Center needed a lift following more than two decades of code violations, health orders, lawsuits and neighbor complaints.

The city finally forced the former owner’s hand by condemning the property and acquiring it under court order in 2024 for about $3.3 million.

Because the Thornton Shopping Center property is in the middle of a long-established neighborhood with plenty of potential customers, Lucas said it has a good chance to thrive in its new incarnation if done thoughtfully.

“There’s a lot of potential on this site,” she said.

There is enough potential that the site was chosen for the 2025 Rocky Mountain Real Estate Challenge, which featured graduate students from the University of Denver and the University of Colorado Boulder who were tasked with coming up with ideas for how to revive the troubled site.

DU’s students won the contest, with plans for 238 multifamily residential units in a “thoughtful site layout that prioritized walkability, activation and multimodal transportation.” The team identified an anchor grocer and a food incubator, brewpub and coffee roaster as potential elements of the new community.

It pegged the total cost of the overhaul at $96.8 million.

Krueger, the city’s economic development director, said the final cost will depend on the details of the project. But Thornton, he said, will look at tweaking the zoning at the site to “allow for more flexibility for a developer.”