No surprise that Auburn’s mayor, Pete Lewis, chief among cheerleaders of the Auburn Promenade on South Division Street, should continue to sing its praises, perhaps even more now that it’s done.

Indeed, all that underground infrastructure, the water lines, the sewer lines, that developers won’t have to spend money putting in, and perhaps the most important part of the whole show, Lewis said, is generating lots of chatter and buzz out in developer world.

And that, after all, is what the whole shebang has been about from day 1 — attracting developers interested in, and capable of, doing big things with three, perhaps more downtown blocks south of Auburn City Hall.

“I’m dealing with developers every afternoon of every day now that the Promenade is done,” Lewis said Tuesday. “We really have them coming in and talking, whole bunches of them.”

Spencer Alpert, a real estate developer who has labored with the City of Auburn for the past three years over plans for a proposed development called Auburn Junction south of City Hall, said at last month’s Promenade groundbreaking that he expects things “to start rolling” perhaps by the end of this year, or by early 2013.

“I have the same feeling,” Lewis said. “What’s happening right now is that we are one of only three cities that have Innovation Partnership Zone designs and are moving forward with EB5, a federal program that allows for investment from abroad in the United States,” Lewis said.

Innovation Partnership Zones designate geographic areas within Washington’s cities that will promote and develop the state’s regional economies. Areas designated as IPZ’s receive special access to state funding and resources that otherwise might not have been available. The City was recently notified that is one of only 11 cities in the state to be so designated.