In Boulder, where job growth has run at three times population growth, turnout was light last week for a pro-growth rally billed as "a taste of unemployment."

Stephen M. Pomerance, a City Council candidate who helped found a residents group called Slow Growth, said that unemployment was not a realistic fear for most residents. "In Boulder, we have 85,000 jobs for a city with 95,000 people," he said.

On Tuesday, Boulder residents are to vote on an initiative to cut annual commercial construction in half over the next five years. Sensing a ground swell of support for curbs, Boulder's City Council voted in September to adopt a compromise measure, to cut commercial construction by 30 percent.

Boulder has been so attractive to investors that during the first nine months of this year companies scrambled to win permits for one million square feet of commercial construction, double the annual average of previous years.

To some, Boulder's ballot proposal represents the second shoe dropping. In 1976, Boulder became the first city in Colorado to put caps on housing construction, though it left commercial development untouched.

"The result is that we now have 40,000 people commuting into Boulder every day," said Paul Danish, a Boulder county commissioner, who pushed for the residential curb 20 years ago. Predicting victory for the commercial curb on Tuesday, he said, "You spend your day looking up someone's tailpipe -- and then you say get it out of my life."

The slow-growth movement is strongest in Boulder and other affluent western suburbs of Denver.

In nearby Golden, home to Coors beer, residents are to vote Tuesday on an initiative to limit housing construction to 1 percent of current square footage. Offering views of Rocky Mountain foothills, this onetime territorial capital of 15,000 people saw housing construction growth of 3.2 percent in 1994.