Picture two homes priced identically. One sits in Park Hill. The other sits two miles east in Central Park. Same price, same square footage, same school district boundary on paper. The tax line on the second listing runs noticeably higher, and most buyers assume it's a fluke in the county's math or a one-year blip in the assessment cycle.
It isn't either. It's the tail end of a 25-year financing arrangement that just closed its books, and the mill levy left standing in its place is no longer a temporary cost of building a new neighborhood. It's the permanent operating cost of one.
Three Names on One Tax Bill
Central Park was built on the former Stapleton International Airport site, and like most large master-planned redevelopments in Colorado, it financed its own streets, parks, and utilities through special taxing districts rather than through the city's general fund. Buyers researching the neighborhood run into three names, and only one of them actually shows up on a tax bill.
- Westerly Creek Metropolitan District collects the tax. This is the line item that appears on every Central Park property tax statement.
- Park Creek Metropolitan District builds the infrastructure. It doesn't tax anyone directly. It receives the money Westerly Creek collects and spends it on roads, drainage, and neighborhood parks under an intergovernmental agreement between the two districts.
- The original Central Park Metropolitan District, formed earlier in the redevelopment's history, is the predecessor to Park Creek and no longer collects or spends anything.
If you're only reading the tax certificate, you'll see one district name and assume that's the whole story. It's the collection mechanism, not the full financing structure behind it.
The Number That Isn't Going Anywhere
Westerly Creek's own 2024 annual financial report puts the certified mill levy at 66.852 mills for that tax year, broken into 64.846 mills for debt service on Park Creek's general obligation bonds and 2.006 mills for general operations and maintenance of local parks and pools. The district's own site confirms the split runs roughly 97 percent debt service to 3 percent operations, which tells you exactly what that money is for. It isn't funding a police department or a library. It's paying down bonds that financed the neighborhood's own streets and pocket parks.
That debt service mill is the one worth paying attention to, because it doesn't run on a countdown clock tied to a build-out date. Park Creek's long-term finance plan, filed in December 2024, lays out repayment schedules across senior bonds, subordinate bonds, and developer advances made by the original master developer. Nowhere in that plan is there a stated early payoff year. The mill levy exists to service debt, and it will exist for as long as that debt does.
Across Denver generally, mill levies land anywhere from the 70s into the 140s depending on which combination of city, school, and special districts apply to a given block. Older, non-metro-district neighborhoods tend to sit toward the lower end of that range. Newer master-planned communities built through the metro district model, Central Park included, tend to land higher, because the roads and parks that a legacy neighborhood already had paid off decades ago are still being financed here through an active mill levy.
What Actually Ended in 2025
Here's the part that changed, and it's the part most explainers written before this year miss entirely.
Central Park's redevelopment used a second, separate financing tool alongside the Westerly Creek mill levy: tax increment financing, arranged through the Denver Urban Renewal Authority. Under that structure, for 25 years running from 2000 through 2025, the growth in property and sales tax revenue generated by new development in the neighborhood was diverted away from the city's general fund and into a pool used to build regional infrastructure across the site. Roads, schools, fire stations, and larger park systems were financed this way. DURA issued $462 million in bonds against that revenue stream over the life of the project.
That 25-year window closed in the summer of 2025. The tax increment financing arrangement that quietly built much of Central Park's public infrastructure no longer exists. Any tax growth generated in the neighborhood from this point forward flows to the city, the schools, and other standard taxing entities the way it does everywhere else in Denver.
The timing shows up in the organization's own leadership. In December 2025, DURA announced that Tracy Huggins, its executive director for 25 years, would step down as of January 2, 2026. The organization's own framing tied her departure directly to this milestone, noting that the Stapleton redevelopment was wrapping up its bond payments and that it was "a pretty unique opportunity from a timing standpoint" to bring in new leadership focused on the authority's next projects.
For a buyer, the practical takeaway is this: any remaining regional infrastructure still on Central Park's list, whether that's a park expansion or a facility that hasn't broken ground yet, no longer has the tax increment financing engine behind it that built everything up to this point. It will need a different funding path, on a different timeline, and that uncertainty sits outside anything shown on a current tax bill.
A Third Bucket That Never Touches the Tax Bill
Layered on top of the county tax bill and the Westerly Creek line sits a separate, private assessment that Central Park buyers need to budget for on its own schedule. The neighborhood's Master Community Association charges a monthly fee, set at $58 per month as of January 1, 2026 for most for-sale residential homes, that funds community programming and upkeep of shared amenities like pools and parks. This isn't a tax and it won't appear on any county document. It arrives as a separate invoice from the association itself.
That gives a Central Park buyer three distinct collectors to track: the county, which bills the combined property tax including the Westerly Creek mills twice a year or in a single spring payment, and the Master Community Association, which bills monthly. Comparing a Central Park listing's total cost of ownership against a home in a neighborhood without a metro district or master association means adding all three, not just checking the box that says "property tax."
Comparing Central Park to Anywhere Else
Since 2024, Colorado law has required sellers of residential property inside a metropolitan district organized on or after January 1, 2000 to give the buyer the district's official website as part of the transaction. Westerly Creek and Park Creek were both formed under a service plan the city approved in April 2000, which puts Central Park squarely inside that requirement.
Before writing an offer on a Central Park property, three things are worth pulling directly rather than relying on what a listing sheet estimates:
- The current certified mill levy from Westerly Creek Metropolitan District's most recent annual filing, since the number moves year to year.
- The Master Community Association's current monthly assessment schedule, confirmed directly with the association rather than a listing description.
- Park Creek's long-term finance plan or annual report, which shows what the debt service mill is actually funding and how much of it remains outstanding.
None of this makes Central Park a worse place to buy. It has a genuine flagship park, a light rail stop with a 13-minute ride to Union Station, and sub-neighborhoods like Eastbridge and Conservatory Green with real walkable retail. What it does mean is that the higher number on the tax line is no longer a development-era surcharge that fades as the neighborhood matures. The surcharge that was designed to fade already did, in 2025. What's left is the neighborhood's steady-state cost of ownership, and it belongs in the same comparison as the sticker price.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does the Westerly Creek Metro District tax ever go away? There's no published schedule for that. Its debt service mills repay bonds held by Park Creek Metropolitan District, and the district's own long-term finance plan doesn't show an early payoff date.
Is tax increment financing still funding anything new in Central Park? No. The 25-year arrangement between the city and the Denver Urban Renewal Authority closed in 2025. Any regional infrastructure still on the neighborhood's list will need a different funding source going forward.
Where do I find the current mill levy and MCA assessment for a specific address? Ask your title company to pull the certified levy from Westerly Creek Metropolitan District's most recent annual filing, and ask the seller directly for the Master Community Association's current assessment schedule. Both numbers move, and neither is guaranteed to match what's posted online by the time you're under contract.
If you're weighing Central Park against another Denver neighborhood and want the real math behind a specific address before you write an offer, Anne Dresser Kocur can walk through the full cost picture with you. Book an appointment to get started.
