DENVER -- Reporter Sally Sears is in Denver along with about 100 metro Atlanta leaders looking at how the Colorado city is solving problems such as traffic, water and explosive growth.

You never know a place til you tear it down, or dig it up. That was a lesson from the leaders of two closed military bases and the old airport. Those sites are becoming new areas for people to live and work. The army hospital is now a University of Colorado medical center. Lowry Air Force Base is now a bustling suburb, and the old Stapleton airport is home to tens of thousands of people building a dense suburban growth close to downtown.

In fact the reclaiming of Stapleton Airport was so popular the Redevelopment Agency had to begin a lottery system for buyers. But when Georgia gets Forts McPherson and Gillem, watch out for what’s buried underneath! This advice came liberally from the new developers, who spoke of "curing" their sites once the military left.

"You find funny surprises under the ground when you start taking buildings down," said Jill Farnham, head of the hospital redevelopment at Fitzsimons. Instantly, I was curious about just what was underneath. Some long-lost pioneer family? Maybe even another Donner Party? After the talk, I asked her how bad it really was. "Wild," she told me. "Asbestos, odd stuff. Remember, the military doesn’t have to comply with local building codes. If the base commander wanted a water line straight into his office, he got it!" Tom Markham, who oversees the development at Lowry, said the first thing they did when they took charge of the base, was to line up all the streets inside with the surrounding streets outside the base. And the neighbors agreed overwhelmingly not to allow gated communities where the military had insisted upon them.

BIG BONUS IN A CLOSED MILITARY BASE

Thousands of new homes, jobs, stores all replacing military installations are changing the way people can look at the prospect of closing military bases. And don't forget, these folks said to the Georgians, now that the land is in private hands, the local governments can collect property taxes!