Forrest City overall has done a tremendous job at developing Stapleton into a vibrant, active, semi-diverse community. They have done this through contracting a variety of builders, architects, planners, and other creative minds. The one area where they may receive a “needs improvement” mark would be on following through on promises they made to residents and buyers in regards to the future of the community. The Eastbridge Town Center and 26th Ave. Park are the biggest examples of this, especially now that Eastbridge residents will finally be getting the school they were originally promised.
“Sure, I love living in Stapleton,” says resident Chad McDonald. “But there are times that I have felt duped when I first moved here with the way things were supposed to be and the way things turned out. They really need to work on under-promising and over-delivering.” Forrest City understands that they have made that mistake, but are too far down that path now to turn back, according to spokesperson Janelle Ayers. “Overall, our model has been successful,” says Ayers. “We certainly balance on the line of truthiness, but it has brought people into Stapleton, and brought us revenue. So, from that standpoint, it has been extremely successful.”
Ayers says that eight months ago they decided to work less on damage control and that a new creative path was necessary. “We would have all these meetings with angry residents, and really not get anywhere,” says Ayers. “Mostly because residents were right. The meetings ended up being more of a PR nightmare than anything else. So, we decided the only way to get people off our backs on one issue, was to create another issue. It’s essentially like getting pulled over for speeding and telling the officer you have a body in the trunk. You just talked yourself out of a speeding ticket.”
Forrest City created a Broken Promises department for just this reason. The sole purpose of the department is to create believable projections and projects for Stapleton neighborhoods that will excite potential buyers as well as current residents. “This will continue to bring buyers into Stapleton, and at the same time, people will continually stop caring about broken promises in the past, says Ayers. “Our projections show that no one will care about the Eastbridge town center in about six months.”
Ayers says the key to the project being successful is mixing in the false promises with the actual ones. “Some of what we say has to be true to make this work. And it all has to be so good the community won’t be able to tell what promises are legit, and which ones came from our new department.”
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