HIGHLANDS RANCH, Colo. — This is the biggest, fastest-growing master-planned community in the nation. And, quite possibly, the most insulted.
"The ugliest and most embarrassing feature of the Front Range," a resident of nearby Denver declared in a letter to the Rocky Mountain News.
"One big smush of beige puke," a Denver councilwoman sneered to Westword, an alternative weekly.
And from a post on Cyburbia.org, a forum for urban planners: "Highlands Ranch represents the nexus of all that is soulless and evil in the world."
The brickbats have been coming for a quarter-century now, ever since the Mission Viejo Co., flush with success at master-planned communities in Southern California, bought 22,000 acres of scrubby prairie beyond the southernmost fringe of the Denver suburbs and began spreading asphalt.
Denver residents bemoaned the invading army of homes -- in matching earth tones on eighth-of-an-acre lots -- marching across the once wide-open valleys at the base of the Rocky Mountains.
They mocked Highlands Ranch as the epitome of sterile suburbia, with garages but no front porches, a multiplex but no museum, a Wal-Mart but precious few mom-and-pop shops. The stereotype was cemented when National Geographic magazine ran a picture of Highlands Ranch in 1996. It showed a dizzying panorama of rooftops, one after another after another, so close they practically touched.
You can still see views like that from certain streets in Highlands Ranch.
But as the community celebrates its 25th anniversary this year, praise for the Ranch is coming in from some unexpected quarters.
The homes are indeed boxy and beige. But many of them back up to greenbelts. And those that don't are rarely more than a few minutes' walk from an elaborate trail system that links 19 neighborhood parks, four community gardens and thousands of acres of open space that provide habitat for elk, coyotes, foxes and the occasional mountain lion and bobcat.
With major streets wide enough to serve as airport runways, the community is undeniably designed for cars. But Highlands Ranch soon will be connected by light rail to downtown Denver, 12 miles away. And many of the newer neighborhoods consist of densely packed town homes within strolling distance of markets, cafes and fitness centers. The new Town Center, a shopping district anchored by an independent bookstore and a pub, is surrounded by brownstones with a distinctly urban feel.
