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urthiaWI in the Denver effort (right, Broomfield in the 1980s). The study group Since then, the cabinet's district engineers have applied the same approach in corridor studies elsewhere in the state. In Bowling Green, they worked with stakeholders to widen and realign Cemetery Road, an important gateway into the city, and to create a zoning overlay district. Today, the corridor includes a four-lane divided and landscaped parkway and a bicycle and pedestrian path. Jeff Moore, District 3 engineer, notes that the Bowling Green project was first proposed in the early 1980s but was stalled by citizens' fears that the proposed five-lane design would lead to uncontrolled strip development. "The second time around," he says, "we brought people to the table instead of running from them when they began to throw rocks." The cabinet is now working with the city of Lexington to apply corridor planning prin- ciples in an urban context. The proposed Newtown Pike Extension is another long- loned project that would connect Inter- 75 around downtown Lexington to the niversity of Kentucky. Earlier plans, which would have routed a new roadway through low-income and largely minority neighborhoods, were stalled by com- munity opposition. In 1999, the cabinet ap- proached the Lexington- Fayette Urban County Government (a combined city-county gov- ernment) and offered to help finance a land- use plan for the corridor in conjunction with the analysis of roadway extension alternatives. The city agreed to manage the project and hired a neighborhood-community liaison to im- prove communication with area residents. The planning effott produced the Newtown Pike Extension Corridor Plan, adopted as part of the Urban County Comprehensive Plan in 2002. Environmental studies are now under way. "Ten years ago," says Lexington planner Henry Jackson, "our land-use plan would have been sent to the engineering depart- ment, where it would have sat on a shelf. Now land-use planning and roadway design are being done in conjunction with each other." The community influence on the corridor plan is apparent in land-use and redevelop- ment objectives as well as in the design of the proposed transportation improvements. Street cross sections vary depending upon their con- text, and include narrowed (II-foot) travel lanes, bicycle lanes, and textured pedestrian crossings at major intersections. American Planning Association 43 The land-use plan identifies locations and design criteria for new mixed-use, urban de- velopment opportunities and for preservation of existing neighborhoods and housing stock. The city already has begun to lay the ground- work for implementation by adopting mixed- use zoning provisions and residential design guidelines. Developers have expressed inter- est in at least six projects, one of which-the redevelopment of a factory building into 80 loft units-is under construction. ~ Denver's Northwest Parkway Three of Denver's northwest suburbs joined together in the 1990s to establish a nonprofit authority to construct a new toll road. The authority was charged with building a 10- mile-long toll parkway as part of the metro area's circumferential highway system, while ensuring that the parkway would not become a conduit for suburban sprawl. The history of the Northwest Parkway project dates to the 1970s, when the state began planning a beltway to serve the region's booming suburbs-and to reduce travel time to Denver International Airport. But comple- tion of the road was stalled by resident opposition. In 1991, Boulder County and the cities of Broomfield, Lafayette, and Louisville signed an intergovernmental agreement designating 2,400 acres near the parkway alignment as open space. The communities began updat- ing their master plans, annexing land, con- tributing general funds to acquire open space, and negotiating conservation easements with property owners. By the end of the decade, the four commu- nities had entered into new IGAs designating 2,000 additional acres of open space buffers and expanding arrangements for land acquisi- tion and protection. Those agreements opened the way to completing the toll parkway link- ing U.S. 36, which runs from Boulder to Denver, to the existing E-470 beltway at In- terstate 25. Financing was also innovative. In 1999, Broomfield and Lafayette joined with Weld County to create the Northwest Parkway Au- thority to design, finance, build, and operate the new road. A key aspect of the agreement allowed the authority to issue bonds for the acquisition of more open space, with the bonds to be repaid from parkway toll revenue. A total of $417 million in bonds was sold for parkway construction, with approximately $20 million supporting open space preser- vation efforts. With land protection agree- ments in place and the institutional frame- ~ c ~ ~ c '" ~ ~ ~ ~ -< c '" ~ p: