Mayor Michael B. Hancock appointed Laura Aldrete as executive director of Denver Community Planning and Development in October 2019. In this capacity, Laura oversees Denver’s citywide and neighborhood planning efforts and the implementation of regulations for land use and design that guide the city’s growth, enhancement and preservation in line with Denver’s adopted Comprehensive Plan 2040.

Laura previously served as the senior vice president for real estate at Denver International Airport, where she was responsible for implementing the airport’s strategic development plan across 16,000 acres of airport land. Throughout her career, she has focused on planning and development in both the public and private sectors. She understands the importance of deep public engagement to creating quality community-driven plans, as well as the challenging finance structures and often complex urban design and engineering solutions needed for many redevelopment projects.

Before joining the airport, Laura worked as an urban planner with Matrix Design Group, where she spearheaded the entitlement approval for the Broadway Station transit-oriented development (TOD) site; served as an assistant director at DURA (the Denver Urban Renewal Authority); and served as a project manager with the Mayor’s Office for the Stapleton redevelopment in the early 2000s. More recently, while at Parsons Brinckerhoff/WSP, she guided strategy and analysis for various redevelopment and TOD projects for transit authorities across the U.S. She is a member of the Downtown Denver Partnership and the Urban Land Institute, and was previously vice-chair of the Denver Planning Board.

As an urban planner with development expertise, she applies her comprehensive understanding of the marketplace to the development projects she touches. Laura’s career has focused on brownfield, P3, and redevelopment projects with a wide range of complexities, including challenging finance structures, deep-reaching public engagement, urban engineering solutions, and cutting-edge urban design concepts.

Laura was born and raised in Denver, and is bilingual in both Spanish and English. She holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Colorado, Boulder and master’s degrees in urban and regional planning and Latin American studies from the University of California, Los Angeles.