Since Safeway left in the summer of 2009, the once venerable
Normandy Shopping Center has been a bit of a
ghost town while the owners embarked on a four year process to redevelop the
property. Next Tuesday night the developer will unveil their latest plans at
public meeting in one of the vacant storefronts in the center.
It’s a major makeover that includes about 200 new apartments
on a previously undeveloped parcel of land in the center.
Predictably, there are concerns from some neighbors,
particularly those whose homes currently back up to the loading area of the
former grocery store. It seems to me that they are actually getting an
improvement over current conditions. Instead of facing the unfinished
backside of an aging strip center, the new plan opens the space up with
separate buildings and includes a new pedestrian plaza.
In any event, this development will be a huge improvement and will help reshape this portion of the highway
that in recent years has more notably gained notoriety as the location of the only pornographic video store in HoCo.