<p>Joey Thurman: Now, this may look like a parking lot to some people, but David Dibo, this is not just a parking lot, right?<br /><br />David Dibo: Nope and it won't look like this for long.<br /><br />Joey Thurman: Now, what's your title with the city?<br /><br />David Dibo: I'm the Director of Economic Development in the mayor's Office of Economic Development.<br /><br />Joey Thurman: Okay, so you're responsible just for just building everything up, right?<br /><br />David Dibo: Just helping the mayor and the wonderful staff we have in Aurora to make things happen, to take this city with incredible potential and to help execute and help realize the potential. This parking lot, I think, being indicative of it.<br /><br />Joey Thurman: Okay. Yeah, it's a lot of space, a lot of potential. So what is going to be here?<br /><br />David Dibo: There's going to be an apartment building with 246 units, mix of studios, one bedroom, two bedroom, and three bedroom apartments, parking, and just something... It would be the largest project in Aurora that we've ever seen.<br /><br />Joey Thurman: Really?<br /><br />David Dibo: Yeah.<br /><br />Joey Thurman: And what's the overall budget?<br /><br />David Dibo: The overall budget's about 70 million. When I say largest, largest for a residential project.<br /><br />Joey Thurman: Wow.<br /><br />David Dibo: We did do another one that was a commercial project that was a bit larger.<br /><br />Joey Thurman: $70 million. And is there any incentives for the developer coming in?<br /><br />David Dibo: We did give the developer and are giving the developer some incentives which roughly equate to, as I'm thinking about it, eight or nine percent of the total budget of the total seven, maybe closer to 10% of the total $70 million budget. And we base that on the economics of the project, so what we do in our department is really get to understand what it is that the developer needs to make this project happen. So for instance, in a market that's functioning in a pure capitalistic way, you wouldn't need a city to come and provide any incentive.<br /><br />Joey Thurman: Yeah.<br /><br />David Dibo: But in this case, the rents, while they're growing, they're not at a number to justify the economics, so we provide an incentive to help kick it over the top.<br /><br />Joey Thurman: Okay. And besides the apartment, is there any amenities that are going to be with the building?<br /><br />David Dibo: There definitely is going to be a lot of common area. There's going to be a dog walking area and guest parking, swimming pool, just really a full service building.<br /><br />Joey Thurman: Okay. And putting a building of this size, and magnitude, and obviously budget here, what do you hope for the rest of Aurora coming in? Do you think that more businesses are going to be able to come downtown Aurora because there's more people living here?<br /><br />David Dibo: No question. I mean, as any economic ecosystem, a lot of different things happen. So if you look at this site, we're sitting on a river here and this is really one of the most beautiful sites that you could see. A lot of this is going to be trimmed down, you'll be able to look over at the beautiful bridge, which connects the east side of Aurora, which we're on now, to the west side. It certainly will induce more demand for grocery stores and different services and so on. It's part of a much larger picture within the city. So it sounds incredible here, but if you look across the river, the city owns nine acres of land right on the other side where the bridge is. There's all sorts of plans being talked out over there. So really this should be part of a bigger picture, so it's like anything where you get excited about. If you were building a company, you'd be excited about, let's say, you're building... You got two stores, but then you might want four stores. So this is really part of a much larger picture, not only of this part of in the downtown, but the surrounding areas over here on the east side, on the west side, and then the larger picture of what is Aurora.</p>