Denver-based landscape architecture and urban design firm Civitas has been selected to lead the landscape architecture and campus visioning for the North Boulder Creative Campus, a transformative mixed-use cultural district planned in Boulder, in partnership with the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art (BMoCA), Emerald Development, internationally recognized architecture studio SO–IL, and regional partner Coburn.
Planned as a new civic and cultural hub for North Boulder, the 3-acre campus will integrate arts and cultural programming, residential development, public open space, and community gathering areas into a flexible, landscape-driven environment designed to evolve.
Civitas will lead the campus site plan and landscape architecture strategy, helping shape the long-term vision for how the campus functions as both a cultural destination and a community asset.
“This project represents an opportunity to rethink how cultural campuses can function within rapidly evolving urban environments,” said Jason Newsome, lead designer at Civitas. “The North Boulder Creative Campus is envisioned as an open, porous, and highly flexible landscape framework, one that invites community interaction while responding directly to the ecological realities shaping the future of development across the American West.”
Located within the expanding North Boulder district, the campus sits adjacent to emerging cultural and civic amenities, including arts organizations, trail connections, and community-serving public infrastructure. The project aims to reinforce the area’s evolution into a vibrant mixed-use neighborhood centered around creativity, accessibility, and public life.
A defining aspect of the project is its response to increasingly complex environmental conditions. The site is located within Boulder’s Wildland Urban Interface (WUI) zone and the 100-year floodplain, requiring the project team to navigate new wildfire-resiliency regulations, flood-mitigation strategies, and evolving landscape codes simultaneously.
Rather than treating these constraints as limitations, Civitas is approaching them as design opportunities, exploring how landscape architecture can create resilient public environments that balance density, ecological performance, flexibility, and community experience.
The project also reflects Civitas’s broader expertise in designing complex urban environments that integrate public space, infrastructure, ecology, and cultural programming. Working closely with SO–IL, Coburn, Emerald Development, BMoCA, and local civil engineering partner Sanitas, the team is developing a campus framework that supports long-term adaptability while reinforcing North Boulder’s growing identity as a center for arts and culture.
The North Boulder Creative Campus is currently in schematic design, with community outreach and city submittals anticipated to begin ahead of planned site approvals in 2026. Groundbreaking is currently targeted for late 2027.
