Stapleton International Airport retail and residential neighborhood. Stapleton opened on October 17, 1929 as Denver Municipal Airport. The development of the airport was spearheaded by Denver mayor Benjamin F. Stapleton and Improvements and Parks Department manager Charles Vail. Prior to the new airport's opening, Denver had been served by a number of smaller facilities, including an airstrip along Smith Road in Aurora (first used in 1911), an airfield at 26th Avenue and Oneida Street, Lowry Field near 38th Avenue and Dahlia Street, and Denver Union Airport at 46th Avenue east of Colorado Boulevard. In the late 1930s the airport facilities consisted of two
Stapleton International Airport began to consider how the Stapleton site would be redeveloped. A private group of Denver civic leaders, the Stapleton Development Foundation, convened in 1990 and produced a master plan for the site in 1995, emphasizing a pedestrian-oriented design rather than the automobile-oriented designs found in many other planned developments. Originally Denver sought tenants for Stapleton's terminal and concourses, but these buildings proved ill-suited for alternative uses. A July 1997 hailstorm punched roughly 4,000 holes in the roofs of the old terminal and concourses, causing severe water damage, which compelled the city to tear them down. However, the airport's 12-story control