Central Park, Denver

Stapleton International Airport closed in 1995, and construction of a new-urbanist neighborhood on its runways began in 2001; the first residents arrived in May 2002. The community was renamed Central Park in 2020 after its 80-acre signature park. It now spans roughly 12,000 homes across a dozen named sub-neighborhoods, from Westerly Creek and Eastbridge in the south to Beeler Park and North End near I-70.

Megan’s family lived in Central Park before moving to Golden in 2014, and Haven & Co has represented a sale on East 49th Place here.

Parks and open space

Central Park itself covers 80 acres with a stage, café and sledding hills. Westerly Creek, buried in a pipe beneath the runways for forty years, was daylighted in 2002 as a greenway with wetlands and a regional trail. Bluff Lake Nature Center, a 123-acre refuge on Sand Creek at the old airport’s eastern edge, is free and open daily.

Town centers and transit

The 29th Avenue Town Center gathers shops, a grocery and offices around Founders’ Green, and Stanley Marketplace — a 1954 ejection-seat factory reopened in 2016 with more than fifty independent businesses — sits just across the Aurora line. Central Park station on RTD’s A Line opened in 2016 with the district’s largest park-and-ride.

Homes and housing character

• A new-urbanist plan: front porches, alley-loaded garages and a deliberate mix of single-family homes, row homes, condominiums and apartments built from 2001 to the present.
• The northern sub-neighborhoods — North End and Beeler Park — hold the newest construction.