Bill and Lorraine Blue plopped down in comfortably cushioned chairs on the front porch of their tidy new two-bedroom townhouse and looked out across Lawrence Street.

"See the gray building?" Blue asks. "Three years ago, that was a drug house. Over there? The red one? What they called a smokehouse. And there," he said, nodding toward a third wreck near the corner of 32nd Street, "prostitution. We've seen them come and go."

The buildings near the Blues' home in The Villages at Curtis Park are now vacant and boarded up, stripped by community pressure and dogged police work of wee-hour parties and angry shouting, of drug deals and the midnight glint of knives and guns. Next comes the wrecking ball.

For many residents of The Villages, just a short northeasterly walk from downtown, life hasn't always been so redemptive. Most of them come from the ranks of the working poor, and some are trauma-scarred veterans of an earlier, more hazardous generation of Denver Housing Authority projects.

So the 323 brightly painted apartments and townhouses at The Villages, a mixed-income development with verdant lawns and playgrounds, have become a model for public planners and a source of hope for residents.

Witness the street-level testimony of 23-year-old Carlos Arriaga, whose favorite aunt moved in two years ago after spending years in a dangerous West Side housing project: "Aunt Josie can relax here," he said. "She doesn't have to look over her shoulder anymore."

Neither does Bill Blue.

"You get older, you enjoy tranquility," he said. A former north Denver homeowner and retired sales manager, he rents his Villages unit at an income-adjusted market rate.

"We've been here four-and-a-half years now, and the whole picture of Curtis Park and the Ballpark neighborhood has changed completely," he said. "This is our community now, and we're beginning to jell."

'Huge change for the better'

That's always been the idea: jelling.

A decade ago, a partnership of DHA, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and Atlanta, Ga.-based developer Egbert Perry began replacing the bleak old Curtis Park projects with The Villages.

"I remember the bad old days," said Deborah Dilly, a former patrol officer in the projects and now the commander of Denver Police Department's District 6. "All in all, Curtis Park has made a huge change for the better."

With pleasant wood exteriors and clean design lines, The Villages suggest a suburban fantasy plunked down in the middle of the city. And its mixed-income plan and its broad social and ethnic diversity get much of the credit for reinvigorating one of Denver's most blighted neighborhoods.

'New urbanism'

Eric Pinckney, vice president of operations for developer Egbert Perry and its Atlanta management arm, Integral Management Systems, gives The Villages an "A-minus" so far, with points deducted for snags that have slowed the development's next phase - a square block of home-ownership units.

But Pinckney remains upbeat: "It's working. You have people paying $100 a month living in harmony next to people who pay $1,800 a month. They say this is the 'new urbanism' - but it really isn't so new. We hope it's an old story by now."

Vintages aside, the story is good news, not just for the police and residents. It also pleases the gentrifiers and well-heeled real estate speculators flooding Curtis Park, the city's first "streetcar suburb" 130 years ago.

Today there's an elegant bed-and-breakfast, the Gregory Inn on Arapahoe Street. On once-seedy Champa Street, a private developer's billboard announces "Luxury townhomes priced from the $500s."

The Villages' other beneficiaries are the ever-vigilant historic preservationists who, for three decades, have worried about the integrity - and the value - of the neighborhood's astonishing array of Victorian-era homes.

Committed homeowners such as Wayne Thrash acknowledge DHA's role in bringing a new panache to Curtis Park. He's a clinical psychiatric nurse who has an office on Curtis Street and lives half a block away in an impeccable 1893 Queen Anne.

"Without The Villages, the changes wouldn't have come this quickly," he said. "We would have had to wait for market forces to take hold. I have a vision of a stable, family friendly neighborhood with great diversity, and that's happening."

Still, some warts

Problems, of course, remain. Absentee landlords cling to some scruffy properties. Tension sometimes erupts between longtime residents and new-wave investors. Even The Villages has a couple of warts.

Some residents complain that management, maintenance and security have been spotty. Neighborhood activists say that DHA and its partners altered the development's original architectural plans for the worse.

Bill and Lorraine Blue recall a scary shooting just three doors south of their townhouse less than three years ago.

Another resident, a part-time college teacher who lives alone, believes that DHA's criminal-screening process is faulty, complains about noise and charges that DHA is violating its own ideal of equality by "clustering" The Villages' poor residents together in what amounts to a new form of ghetto.

She asked that her name not be used, fearing her comments could bring a backlash from neighbors.

"I believe in this community," the woman said, "but it's hard to embrace 'new urbanism' when you are afraid, when the police are showing up twice a week, kicking in doors . . . some people who see the green grass and the fresh paint have no idea what goes on here at night and on weekends."

But for residents such as Loradale Smith, a 58-year-old retired widow who suffers from diabetes and rheumatoid arthritis, a ground-floor townhouse at The Villages has been a godsend.

When her husband, James, a Greyhound bus baggage handler, died suddenly 10 years ago, she first moved in with family. Then to the old Platte Valley projects, where she found herself wedged between a crack house and an emergency shelter.

At The Villages, Smith has regained the freedom she craves - complete with frequent visits from her grandchildren, friendships with 30 or so new people and the blessings of peace.

"Some days," she said, "my knees tell me, 'You aren't going anywhere.' But I still go out to my meetings and see people. And when I come home, I don't have to worry about who's on the adjoining porch.

"Living here is good."

Public housing in Denver

$128,830,155 Total Denver Housing Authority budget for fiscal year 2007

4,873 units are owned/managed by DHA

23,346 people reside in DHA-owned properties and participate in the Section 8 rental- assistance program

$10,193 Average annual income of families in public housing

5.1 years is the average length of stay for families in public housingSource: Denver Housing Authority

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