Editor’s note: Feb. 6, 2011 will mark the 10th anniversary of Centennial’s official incorporation. This is the first in a two-part series on the history and future of the city.
Centennial has come a long way since the turn of the last century and its unlikely founding from 18,000 disparate acres of unincorporated Arapahoe County.
The city — hatched in a pancake restaurant 13 years ago — was born of controversy. Five civic activists dreamed up the city idea after Greenwood Village began prospecting commercial centers near Arapahoe Road.
In the years since, Centennial has emerged as a leading center for economic growth in the south metro area. In a survey by Bizjournals, Centennial was named the second most affluent community in Colorado.
The city was second only to Highlands Ranch on the website’s list of the 250 top U.S. “wealth centers” — places with high incomes, expensive homes, strong educational levels and widespread ownership of stocks, rental properties and motor vehicles.
In a sign of its affluence, Centennial has reported a foreclosure rate of less than 1 percent. In 2008, the city government paid cash for its new city hall.
It is not just economics that have given Centennial reason to celebrate its 10th anniversary. For the sixth year in a row, Centennial has the lowest crime rate among larger cities in Colorado, according to a publisher’s analysis of FBI data.
In a sign of civic growth in 2008, Centennial residents voted overwhelmingly to become a home-rule city, a move that gave its government significantly more authority under the Colorado Constitution.
Centennial is arguably a success story — even according to its original critics — though it is not the city many had predicted a decade ago. Still others were certain that the incorporation, itself, would be doomed to failure.
That’s not to say the city doesn’t have its challenges in economic and image development. Without distinction or coherent boundaries, Centennial still struggles to find a sense of place in the suburbs.
Still, everything is relative. State Sen. Nancy Spence remembers the period in which present-day Centennial was an undefined mix of unincorporated neighborhoods and chaotic mailing addresses.
“I was never quite sure where I lived,” she said. “I had an Aurora mailing address. I lived in unincorporated Arapahoe County. I represented people from [what was called] Englewood even though they might live across the street from me. We didn’t have any defined boundaries.”
Although the Republican legislator has had an official “R-Centennial” designation by her name for a decade, the boundaries of the city she represents remain ambiguous, even among people who call Centennial home.
Pye’s folly?
When Centennial’s five founders emerged on the local political scene in the late 1990s, they were dismissed by some as dreamers with little clue of tax bases, city management or the political realities of running a city. One of those founders was later elected Centennial’s first mayor.
“The five of us were fairly naïve. I don’t think any of us understood the complexity of a city of 103,000 people,” founding Mayor Randy Pye said. “I think it’s progressed more positively than I would have expected. What I see today is a pretty well-oiled and sophisticated machine.”
The City of Centennial — named for Colorado’s Centennial State moniker — was created by a vote of the people in the late summer of 2000. More than three-fourths of voters favored the incorporation. Centennial officially became a city when its first council was elected on Feb. 6, 2001.
Centennial’s evolution — from an amalgam of neighborhoods to a city united in home rule — has surprised many players in local government, including Sam Mamet, executive director of the Colorado Municipal League, a coalition of all but six of the state’s 271 cities and towns.
Mamet remembers rolling his eyes when Pye and John Brackney, then a 33-year-old Arapahoe County commissioner, showed up in his office one day to pitch their idea about forging a new city in the south suburbs.
“These were two guys I had never heard of,” Mamet said. “I said, ‘You’re doing what? Where? Forget about it. You guys are nuts!’ They didn’t have a tax base. This is a city that’s going to be dominated by all kinds of homeowners groups. They’re just doing this because they’re angry at Greenwood Village.”
More than a decade later, Mamet considers himself a convert. He says he has been dumbstruck by Centennial’s civic progress, relative prosperity and survival.
“They wanted to control their own destiny and they’ve done that,” he said. “Centennial is a major player in the metropolitan area. What made it work are elected officials and city staff with a vision. I was dubious, but it worked.”
Even Centennial’s staunchest critics are willing to give the city founders credit. Although activist Bert Neely stands by his 2000 vote against the incorporation, he says he is amazed by what Centennial’s leaders have accomplished.
“I knew it would be another layer of government and more taxes. I didn’t want it. I still don’t want it. But it’s a damn near miracle that they pulled off what they have. I’ve got to tip my hat to them. They’ve made something out of nothing,” Neely said.
The city’s future did not always look so bright. The incorporation was followed by a period of some buyer’s remorse and lackluster tax revenue. For a time, some wondered if Centennial should lick its wounds and dissolve back into the relative safety of Arapahoe County.
Spirit of the past
Fledgling Centennial began life as a modern pioneer city befitting a name steeped in Colorado history. The city’s founding fathers made their declaration of self-rule after Greenwood Village began scouting the unincorporated wilderness for untapped commercial sectors.
Although Centennial shares its name with an idyllic Colorado town of author James Michener’s imagination, the nonfiction Centennial was born of volatile history more analogous to the Civil War.
In the late 1990s, five community activists began hushed discussions amid reports that Greenwood Village to the north had its eyes on Park Meadows and any tangible retail that stood between the lucrative mall and the Denver Tech Center.
Greenwood Village wanted to fund public works, not increase its population, and was prepared to take as few residential areas as possible. Neighborhoods would increase demand on services.
“The goal was to do some annexations that would allow the city to do some pretty significant transportation projects,” said Arapahoe County Commissioner Nancy Sharpe, the former mayor of Greenwood Village. “It would have provided some significant funding for Arapahoe Road and I-25.”
Hanging in the balance were those residential neighborhoods. To create a contiguous annexation, some unincorporated homes would be absorbed into Greenwood Village, but others would be left without representation.
Many argued that the residents left unincorporated would still be effectively controlled by Greenwood Village, but they would have had little right to redress grievances or exercise self-government on a local level.
“I know what we would have lost if we had remained unincorporated,” said Sue Rosser, a pro-incorporation activist who later served on the Centennial Charter Commission. “We’ve gained representation and we’ve gained a seat at the table at the state level. For example, we could have been left with Greenwood Village deciding transportation issues for us.”
Greenwood Village’s plans were akin to war declaration, some said. The tactics were enough to prompt Pye, Brackney, Arapahoe County Assessor Ed Bosier, neighborhood activist Pete Ross and Brian Vogt, then president of the South Metro Denver Chamber of Commerce, to mull their community’s future over breakfast.
The five met — on “enemy territory” — at the Original Pancake House in Greenwood Village on July 8, 1998. Somewhere in the conversation, someone — no one is quite sure who — suggested the answer might be to incorporate a new city.
“There was just conversation and eating breakfast, but we weren’t overjoyed by it,” Pye said during a 2008 10-year founders’ reunion at the same restaurant. “We kept racking our brains to see if there was another alternative.”
There wasn’t, the four soon decided, and the incorporation’s wheels were turning before the busboy had cleared away the plates. A perception that Greenwood Village had orchestrated a crude land grab was something its city council was slow to realize.
“Hindsight is always great,” Sharpe said. “Could things have been done differently by Greenwood Village? Could incorporating more residential made a difference? Maybe the approach that was taken could have been more inclusive and had a different result. I don’t know.”
As fate had it, Centennial would be a far larger city than the areas originally eyed by Greenwood Village. The new city’s boundaries would run from Littleton on the west to Aurora on the east and weave erratically in a sort of barbell shape through central Arapahoe County.
“We didn’t create a city with clear defined boundaries because we took whoever wanted to come,” Pye said. “I think it makes the city a little bit more interesting. We have a diverse demographic.”
For months, pro-incorporation activists rallied for support in grocery stores. Court cases ensued. And citizens lobbied the state Legislature — all in a taut race against time and Greenwood Village’s takeover.
On Sept. 12, 2000, Centennial finally won the battle when 77 percent of residents voted to incorporate.
Next week: Charting the future