Thornton 2020 Plan

In April 2006, the Thornton City Council met to create a plan, which included public improvements and services, for the City to achieve by 2020. This plan was developed based upon the following assumptions about 2020:

In 2020, Thornton will be a city of approximately 150,000 people on the way to an ultimate population of approximately 220,000. Much of the new residential construction in the City will be to the north of and adjacent to the existing development -- but not into Weld County. Two-thirds of the population will be 44 years or younger continuing a “family focus” in the City for many years to come. It is expected that the minority population of the City will continue to increase with a higher concentration of the minority population located in the southern part of the City.

The City will be 14 years older with some neighborhoods approaching 70 years of age by 2020. Some of the existing retail will be coming to the end of its projected retail lifecycle. It is estimated that as the City builds out, that the rate of development will slow due to the remaining land being more expensive and/or harder to develop. The competition of communities further from the core of the metro area will intensify as they offer cheaper land than Thornton to develop.

The Thornton 2020 Plan identifies the priority public improvements (streets, facilities, amenities) and operational needs required to serve the projected population of 150,000 people given a defined projected revenue structure.

Read the 2020 Plan

NOTE: Best with a broadband connection. The whole 2020 plan in PDF format is approximately 7 megabytes in size. The Capital Improvements section alone is 6.2 megabytes. Either of these could take over an hour to load on a dial-up connection to the Internet.

2020 - Entire Plan

• 2020 Plan - Entire (7Mb)

2020 Plan in sections

• Council Communication - (56kb)
• Thornton 2020 Resolution - (60kb)
• 2020 Revenue and Expenditures Base Assumptions - (1.7Mb)
• 2020 Capital Improvements - (6.2Mb)
• 2020 Plan Suggested Additions and Deletions - (106kb)

** Note that these items are in .pdf format and will require the user to have Adobe Acrobat Reader installed on their computer. Adobe Acrobat Reader is a free application that can be downloaded to your computer by clicking on the Adobe Logo below: