At one time, the Fitzsimons Army Medical Center (FAMC) was among the largest economic enterprises in Aurora, and indeed, Colorado. A 1994 study by the City of Aurora estimated that the FAMC accounted for more than 12,000 jobs in the metropolitan area and had a total earnings impact of almost $328 million. Closure of the facility and the loss of its associated economic stimulus rippled through the local economy, creating a series of economic adjustments. However, today the redevelopment opportunity afforded by that closure holds promise that the Fitzsimons site will not only regain, but far surpass, its earlier stature as an important cog in the regional and state-wide economies.

This section of the study summarizes the key economic parameters that are associated with the planned Fitzsimons redevelopment project. [Note: the term “Fitzsimons” will be used hereafter to refer to the physical site as well as to the overall redevelopment project.] These parameters include forecasts of the amount and type of building space to be built, the associated on-site transportation and utility infrastructure required to serve that development, and projections of the employment and operating budgets of the public entities and private sector firms that will be housed and conduct their business in those buildings. The analysis relies heavily on information provided by the four key institutional partners participating in the redevelopment project.

Those partners are:
  • The Fitzsimons Redevelopment Authority (FRA)
  • The University of Colorado Health Sciences Center (UCHSC)
  • The University of Colorado Hospital (UCH)
  • The Children’s Hospital (TCH)

The Fitzsimons site
The Fitzsimons site encompasses about 578 acres of developable land located within the municipal boundaries of the City of Aurora. The site, which is generally square in shape, is situated in the northwest quadrant of the I-225 and East Colfax Avenue interchange. The Sand Creek drainage flows through and along the northern portion of the site. The site is relatively flat as a result of its previous use for the Fitzsimons Army Medical Center. The Fitzsimons site was acquired from the federal government following the closure of the FAMC by a combination of public benefit and economic development conveyances. Development control of the site is shared by the FRA, the University of Colorado and the City of Aurora.

From a market and functional perspective, the Fitzsimons site is separated into three development zones: the University Campus area, the FRA Development area, and a collection of smaller parcels. The latter consists of parcels and existing buildings set aside for government and other quasi-public uses. These uses include a new State Veterans Nursing Home (SVNH) that is nearing completion, a U.S. Army Reserve Center, the Aurora Police Department District I station, Aurora Public Schools Child Development Center (APS) and a program to provide shelter for the homeless. The overwhelming bulk of future development will occur on the University Campus and FRA Development areas.


The University campus area
The University Campus area is the largest of the three development areas, generally covering the entire southern portion of the site between Colfax and Montview, other than a parcel in the southeast corner of the site near the I-225 and Colfax interchange. Future development in the University Campus area is under the control of the University of Colorado and will focus on health care delivery, medical research and education. The University Campus area will host the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center, University of Colorado Hospital and The Children’s Hospital. Relocating the U.S. Veteran’s Administration Medical Center from its current location to the Fitzsimons site is also under consideration, but a final decision and the necessary Congressional approvals are still pending.

All three institutions will relocate much of their existing operations to Fitzsimons as buildings are renovated or built. In addition, the moves to Fitzsimons make possible important new and expanded treatment, educational and medical research opportunities. Treatment options and programs associated with the recently opened UCH-Anschutz Centers for Advanced Medicine, including the Anschutz Outpatient and Cancer Pavilions, the Rocky Mountain Lions Eye Institute and the nearly completed Nighthorse Campbell Native Health Building are examples of the opportunities facilitated by the Fitzsimons redevelopment program.

At full development, the University Campus area will house about 8.2 million square feet of building space, plus associated surface and structured parking. Plans currently call for the renovation and completion of approximately 4.5 million square feet of buildings by 2010. Surface parking will be used to service most of that development. Development of the remaining 3.7 million square feet of space post-2010 will trigger the need for additional structured parking. For the purposes of this analysis, an affirmative decision to relocate the Veterans Affairs Medical Center to Fitzsimons would shift some of the physical development, and hence, the associated economic impacts from the post-2010 period to the “by 2010” time frame, but would not affect the 8.2 million square feet of space projected at full development.


The FRA development area
The parcels near I-225, along with much of the Fitzsimons site north of Montview, comprise the FRA Development area. The FRA Development area is itself divided into three sub-areas, the Bioscience Park, the Commons and the I-225 Commercial site. The Bioscience Park is a business and research park targeted to biotech startups, spin-offs, expansions and relocating firms. The planned development capacity for the Bioscience Park is 3.0 million square feet of building space, plus the associated structured parking. The initial project in the Bioscience Park is the 60,000 square foot Bioscience Park Center. Four additional buildings are envisioned by 2010.

The Commons is centrally located within the Fitzsimons property. Capitalizing on the market demands associated with the large work force employed at the site, plans for the Commons currently call for 600,000 square feet of residential development (approximately 600 dwelling units) and 98,000 square feet of commercial retail space. Development of the Commons is expected before 2010, coinciding with increasing demand associated with factors such as the transition of the UCHSC medical school to the campus, opening of the initial phases of the two hospitals and development within the Bioscience Park.

More than 1.0 million square feet of multi-tenant office, commercial retail and overnight lodging development is envisioned at the I-225 commercial site. The markets for this site include uses associated with the Fitzsimons project itself, businesses seeking a high-visibility, high-quality location from which to serve the community at large, and business attracted from the interstate. Examples of the former include visitors to businesses in the Bioscience Park, patients coming for treatment, and professional and businesses services catering to establishments at Fitzsimons.

As in the University Campus area, surface parking will initially be used to meet most parking needs in the FRA Development area. As development intensity increases and sites are converted from parking to buildings, additional structured parking will be developed.


Project development and on-site activity summary
Meetings with each of the four major institutional partners engaged in the redevelopment of Fitzsimons provided information such as current and planned development, estimated construction and development costs, current and projected staffing levels and operating budgets, and major revenues sources. The City of Aurora also provided information for the study, but its development plans for new buildings are limited in scale compared to the overall site plan. All of the parties agreed that the inputs used here are reasonable for the purposes of this analysis, but do not necessarily reflect approved plans or budget commitments. Furthermore, it is recognized that the development process is dynamic and hence, development plans may change over time.

Construction and operating plans for the near-term, that is, through 2010, were relatively well defined. Long-term plans beyond that time are more tenuous, reflecting the influences of economic and market uncertainty. Consequently, data obtained for the near-term were used to develop a series of cost, staffing/ employment and productivity coefficients. Those coefficients were subsequently combined with the post-2010 development projections to derive the key economic inputs required for the analysis. Summaries of these inputs were provided to the partners for review and comment. This review process resulted in minor modifications in the key input assumptions. Those key assumptions are summarized below.

Approximately 13.6 million square feet of renovated and new buildings, plus parking garages for more than 27,000 vehicles, is presently envisioned at Fitzsimons. That total represents approximately 91 percent of the site’s maximum development capacity. Table 1 below profiles the overall development plan by time, that is, by 2010 or post-2010, major development area, and major institutional partner.


In its most simple form, the overall development plan can be summarized as follows:
  • About 7.0 million square feet of building space is planned to be completed and in use by 2010, with another 6.6 million square feet to be built post-2010.
  • At full development, the distribution of space among the development areas will be:
    • FRA Development Area: 5.0 million square feet 37 percent
    • University Campus Area: 8.2 million square feet 55 percent
    • Other development: 0.4 million square feet 8 percent



Construction of the infrastructure and buildings, along with the furnishing of the buildings will entail a cumulative direct capital investment of nearly $4.0 billion, net of any financing costs. (All costs are expressed in terms of 2002 dollars, abbreviated as $2002). That total places the project in the same league as the T-REX highway construction and initial DIA airport construction in terms of significant capital investments in the metropolitan area.

Of the total construction costs, projected expenditures by 2010 are estimated at $1.83 billion ($2002), with another $2.11 billion ($2002) in expenditures to bring the project to full development. Although less new building space is planned post-2010, construction expenditures will be higher due to the costs of adding parking garages for nearly 24,000 vehicles within the site. Table 2 below summarizes the future development costs, by time period, and the allocation of those costs among four categories used in the IMPLAN model to estimate the resultant economic impacts. The allocation of the development costs is based on actual and estimated construction cost data provided by the institutional partners.


The final inputs for the analysis consist of estimates of economic activities associated with the on-going public and private sector entities at Fitzsimons. The IMPLAN model uses measures of economic activity expressed in monetary terms, such as the annual operating expenditures for public sector institutions and total business volume for private sector establishments. In both cases, the relevant values are those which pertain to on-site activities, not the organization or firm as a whole.

Long-term future operating budgets have not been prepared by the institutional partners. For the public institutions, the focus is much more immediate, say over the next three or four years, not in 2010 or beyond. In the case of the FRA, such budgets are not even particularly relevant as they are associated with undefined and in many cases, as yet non-existent entities. To address this problem, UCHSC, UCH and TCH provided data for the most recent completed fiscal year. This data was analyzed in conjunction with information regarding staffing levels, the number of students, and the number of in-patients and out-patients treated to derive a set of analytical coefficients. Next, these coefficients were combined with the projected development plans to yield estimates of future operating budgets.

In order to prepare productivity estimates of the economic activity at the Bioscience Park, projected future development was first converted into estimated employment using accepted ratios of employees to square feet of building space. Employment was then converted into future output using data contained in IMPLAN, data from the national economic censuses and other national sources, and information developed by Hammer, Siler, George Associates as part of its on-going practice.

Estimates of future activity at Fitzsimons were derived for each of the following:

  • University of Colorado Health Science Center
  • University of Colorado Hospital
  • The Children’s Hospital
  • Retail, lodging and office development in the Commons and I-225
  • The Colorado State Veterans Nursing Home
  • The Fitzsimons Community Federal Credit Union
  • Annual consumer expenditures of the UCHSC students
  • Firms located in the bioscience park
  • Expenditures by non-resident patients and family members

Combining the estimates of economic activity associated with each of these component activities yielded the aggregate parameters of future economic activity shown in Table 3.


The key parameters are: more than 35,000 total employees and students, 1.5 million combined days of in-patient care and out-patients treated and annual operating budgets of $3.8 billion per year ($2002). Additional information regarding these and other parameters used in the IMPLAN analysis can be found in the Methodology Supplement at the end of this report.