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Steamboat Springs — Jim Cook flashed a broad hint Tuesday that he isn't done proposing redevelopment projects in Steamboat Springs.

Cook, a principal in Colorado Group Realty, was the speaker at a brown bag luncheon at the Tread of Pioneers Museum. He plays varying roles in three development groups that are launching major redevelopment projects in the city's Old Town. Taken as a group, they represent more than 400,000 square feet of mixed-use buildings including residential condominiums and commercial space.

The mixed-use projects include Howelsen Place at Seventh Street and Lincoln Avenue; Alpen Glow at Sixth Street and Lincoln Avenue; and River Walk, along the Yampa River on the eastern edge of downtown.

Redevelopment projects either in the planning stages or already built downtown total 190 residential units, 127,000 square feet of retail and 20,000 square feet of new office space.

"I think we'll see more changes in the downtown during the next three to five years than took place in the previous 30 years," Cook told an audience of about 50 people at the museum.

Cook gave the audience a broad hint that he has more development projects in mind when he flashed an aerial photograph of the downtown commercial district and then promised its members they wouldn't see it again.

"I keep it over my desk where I can always see it," Cook said. The photograph was lightly covered with a smattering of round stickers in three colors. One color signified redevelopment projects that have already been completed, another color stood for projects under way, and the red dots signified properties Cook has identified for potential redevelopment. Even in a glance, it was possible to see that there were as many as 10 red dots on the photograph.

Cook projects that within three to five years, there will be an additional 250,000 to 350,000 square feet of new development, including 100 more residential units and a new boutique condo hotel.

Cook told the audience that he's been interested in traditional downtown districts since the days when, as a boy growing up in South Bend, Ind., he used to take 10 cents out of his paper route money to ride the bus downtown and catch a Flash Gordon movie.

One of his most vivid memories of downtown South Bend is of the window in the Kresge's five and dime store, where an automated machine cooked fresh donuts in hot oil.

"That was like going to heaven," he said.

Cook believes the key to revitalizing downtown Steamboat is to enhance and expand upon the opportunities it provides for entertainment.

"When you reinvent a downtown," Cook said, "a lot of people think creating new residential puts feet on the street and that would create a demand for better retail. The reality is, entertainment drives everything."

Entertainment can be as simple as Steamboat's existing network of walking paths, or a movie theater, he said. Cook recalled the days when the downtown Chief Plaza Cinema was a single auditorium with 600 seats and a single movie screen.

If the downtown theater (owned by Michael Barry) were returned to its former status, Cook said, it could become an ideal performing arts center that could host dance, theater and performing artists, as well as films.

"That's very, very important to downtown. We have an opportunity to enhance the arts and cultural areas of our downtown," Cook said. "We're at the embryonic stage. Each of us can make a difference if we choose to be involved."

Cook also takes great encouragement from the initiative behind plans to create a Steamboat Art Museum in the Rehder Building at Eighth Street and Lincoln Avenue. He believes it could rival the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody, Wyo., which draws more than 250,000 visitors annually.

In an effort to foster the downtown arts community, Cook told his audience he has imposed a 0.25 percent transfer fee on the sales of all residential units within the three projects he's involved in, in perpetuity. Organizations furthering the arts in downtown Steamboat, as well as at Perry-Mansfield Performing Arts School and Camp in Strawberry Park, would be eligible to apply for the funds raised by the fee, he said. The Sheila M. Cook Community Arts Foundation will honor his late wife.

Cook estimates the initial developer sales could generate $175,000.

Cook's youthful interest in Kresge's donuts morphed into an adult interest in the National Trust for Historic Preservation. He served five years on the regional board in Indiana and Northern Illinois and remains active. He said the scourge of Midwestern downtowns in the late 1950s and 1960s was a federal grant program that helped owners tear down and redevelop historic buildings in a misguided effort to invigorate the downtowns and counteract the growing number of suburban strip malls.

"You may find it strange I'm talking about that because we're tearing down buildings in Steamboat to build new ones," Cook observed. He said his goal is to replace buildings like the Nite's Rest Hotel and the Harbor Hotel, which are no longer sound from an engineering standpoint, and replace them with buildings whose architectural values will stand the test of time.

"We want to build buildings that, 30 years from now, will cause people to say, 'That's really a neat looking building.'"