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Please excuse the length of this one - lots to tell.
First at JRES we are pleased to announce that we have
created a new blog dedicated to providing accurate and
timely information on the apartment market in metro
Denver. The
Apartment
Perspective blog at
www.apartmentperspective.com
expands on our quarterly Apartment Perspective email
newsletter available to view and subscribe at
www.jres.com/resources/apartment-perspective-latest-issue
The blog is edited by Eric Karnes, who is a consultant
to James Real Estate Services. Eric has over 30 years
experience in real estate research. Prior to moving to
Denver in 2000 he owned a real estate research and
consulting company in North Carolina where he published
quarterly reports on the apartment, office, retail and
industrial markets in several North Carolina cities. He
currently consults for several national development and
investment companies.
Eric updates the Apartment Perspective blog frequently,
providing information and analysis on the apartment
market and the local economy. Eric encourages apartment
professionals in the Denver metro area to comment in
response to posts on the blog in an effort to promote
rational market based decisions among apartment
investors, lenders and managers.
The blog complements the quarterly Apartment Perspective
email newsletter in which JRES analyzes the Denver metro
apartment market based on data published in the Denver
Metro Apartment Vacancy & Rent Survey published by the
Apartment Association of Metro Denver, and Pierce Eislen,
a national source of apartment market information. Eric
joins Denise Moore and Steve Ross in the James Real
Estate Services apartment consulting and appraisal
practice. Denise and Steve have over 43 years of
combined experience in appraisal, consulting and
research.
We encourage you to read the Apartment Perspective blog,
share any comments or observations you may have and let
your friends and colleagues know about this new
resource.
The
Denver
Cherry Creek Rotary Club once again is
holding its major annual fund raiser golf tournament at
Bear Dance Golf Course on July 26th. Register to play or
sponsor at:
http://www.egolftourney.com/egolf/client/
Sage Hospitality is seeking to develop the corner of
16th and Market Streets in downtown
Denver with a combination office and apartment project.
To be known as 1350 16th Street, the 10-story
development will have 47 residential apartments topping
office space totaling 115,000 SF and ground-floor retail
totaling 13,000 SF. Having received conditional
approval for mass, form and scale from the Lower
Downtown Design Review Board, it will likely again be
reviewed by the Board in June.
The recently purchased
Qwest
Tower at 1801 California Street is to
receive a new renovation this summer by its new owner,
Brookfield Office Properties. To cost $50 million, the
upgrades planned for the 54-story building include
adding a tenants-only conference center and fitness
center; a restaurant with one of the largest
street-level patios in downtown Denver; reconstructing
the entry facades, modifying the existing plaza with new
paving and landscaping, reconfiguring and expanding the
lobby and renovating the garage and elevator vestibules.
The 1.2 million SF
Wells
Fargo Center office building in downtown
Denver was recently sold between buyer Beacon Capital
Partners Inc. and seller, MPG Office Trust Inc. and
Charter Hall Office REIT. Located at 1700 Lincoln
Street, the property was exchanged for $387.5 million or
$323/SF.
Construction of a 108,000 SF office building near the
Denver Union Station commenced recently with a ceremony
joined by Denver Mayor Michael Hancock, Colorado
Governor John Hickenlooper and several other officials
and business leaders. To serve as the headquarters
office for IMA Financial Group, the 5-story
North Wing
Building between 17th and 18th on
Wynkoop Street is to house 200 employees upon its
opening in the 4th quarter of 2013.
According to Denver Infill at
http://denverinfill.com/blog/
16
Chestnut is East-West Partners' proposed
office tower at 16th Street and Chestnut Place that will
anchor the fourth and final corner to Denver's
Millennium Bridge. Way back in 2000, when Denver's
Central Platte Valley was just beginning its transition
from industrial wasteland to hip urban neighborhood, the
Millennium Bridge's dramatic 200-foot tall mast stood
alone as a symbol of the area's potential as Downtown's
newest urban district. Shortly thereafter, the Park
Place and Promenade Lofts buildings joined the bridge as
neighbors on its western corners, and now the DaVita
building is wrapping up construction at the third
corner. Once 16 Chestnut is built, the Millennium
Bridge's destiny as an iconic public space embraced by
contemporary development will be complete. From an urban
morphological perspective, the bridge will go from being
the figure surrounded by open ground to being, in a way,
the ground surrounded by many figures (that's for my
(Ken Shroeppel's) planner/architect geek friends!).
Whatever your perspective, this is an exciting milestone
for the Union Station area. It's a 320,000 square foot,
18-story, 240-foot-high office tower located on the
rectangular parcel bounded by 16th Street/Millennium
Bridge, Chestnut Place, and 17th Street. The site is
surrounded by the new Mall Shuttle loop at the Union
Station light rail station.
While a formal announcement of construction has not been
made, Hines and Perlmutter continue to market office and
retail space at
1601
Wewatta Street adjacent to Union
Station. Formerly (in 2007) proposed to total 450,000 SF
of office space, a boutique hotel totaling 110,000 SF
and shops and restaurants totaling 70,000 square feet
and perhaps apartments, the building is now reported to
be proposed for 280,000 SF of office and retail space in
a LEED Gold certified 10-story building.
At
Denver
Union Station the transit hub
construction continues on the underground bus facility
and the light rail transit or LRT Plaza. Trees are being
planted in tear-drop planters and along the Chestnut
Pavilion and the blue wrap that has been protecting the
vent tubes will be removed soon. In front of the
historic DUS building the former parking lots are now
construction zones. The Platte Valley & Western Model
Railroad Club (PVWRR) has secured its museum-quality
layout to prevent damage during the construction of the
historic Union Station building. Thanks to an agreement
with Dana Crawford and Union Station Alliance (the
renovation team for the station building), the club will
be reopening in late summer of 2014 after the
construction is complete. See the club's website (www.PVWRR.org)
and the club's Facebook Page (www.facebook.com/pvwrr)
as construction on the station complex progresses. The
Denver Union Station Project Authority (DUSPA) will be
conducting free guided tours of the Denver Union Station
redevelopment site this summer. The tours will be held
at 4:30 p.m., starting on Thursday, May 10, 2012 and
continuing on the second and fourth Thursdays of the
month through July and will include history of Union
Station from the late 1800s to the present.
Participation is limited to 35 people per tour. To
reserve your spot, visit
www.denverunionstation.org. Parking in and around
the station is limited so public transportation is
recommended.
A new apartment community is to come to the Union
Station and Riverfront area courtesy of a joint
partnership of East West Partners and Wood Partners. To
be known as the
Alta City
House, the $62 million project will
place 280 units on a slightly less than 3-acre site at
1801 Chestnut Street, and is to offer a 2-story fitness
center, cyber cafe, 2-story club room, game room,
outdoor courtyards, a large roof deck with an outdoor
kitchen facility, and a plaza providing access to the
18th-Street pedestrian bridge. Its location between
18th, 19th and Chestnut streets will also place it
within close proximity to the new rail station at Union
Station and within blocks of bike trails provided by the
Platte River Greenway.
The development of a 164-unit apartment project in
downtown Denver has recently been announced by Alliance
Residential Co. To be located at 2120 Blake Street,
construction of the
Broadstone
Blake Street complex has started and the
project will deliver the first units and clubhouse in
the 2nd quarter of 2013.
Mill Creek Residential Trust has announced that it will
begin construction on a new apartment project at
2300
Walnut Street. The 5-story, 230-unit
development is to open in late 2013 or early 2014, and
is to feature a 446-space parking garage, an interior
courtyard, swimming pool and fitness center.
Pierce-Eislen reports some 2,500 apartment units under
construction or proposed in their Denver Central market
sector. Apartment Realty Advisors reports over 4,100
units under construction or proposed in a bit larger
area in Downtown Denver. Both appear to be highly
confident that some 1,200 units will be under
construction within a couple of blocks of the
Union
Station transit hub by mid-2012. With
two major office buildings (DaVita and IMA Financial)
under construction and a third about to break ground at
the south wing of the station, the biggest problem looks
like construction congestion as the $488 million transit
hub approaches completion in 2014 and Union Station
Alliance begins to convert the historic station building
into a hotel to be operated with the nearby Oxford
Hotel. The office buildings will certainly provide
plenty of jobs for the apartment tenants. Some are
concerned that parking will be a problem, but when the
East and Gold Lines of FasTracks begin delivering people
from DIA and Arvada in 2016, the problem will likely be
serving them and the apartment dwellers with retail
uses, not filling the apartment units. The ground level
retail spaces in all of these buildings will certainly
be useful for this.
The future of River North neighborhood continues to take
root with the construction of two new apartment projects
in the area. Separately led by Cypress Real Estate
Advisors and Prospect Development, the respective
projects are to total 301 and 204 units, with the former
to be located at the old
Denargo
Market north of downtown and the latter
to be located at
3200
Brighton Boulevard. The former
development, which is scheduled for completion by summer
2013, is also to offer 65,000 SF of retail space on the
38-acre site, which could possibly include an urban
grocer and hotel in the future, while the Prospect
project is to focus on the middle-income bracket of the
younger population, offering a minimum rent of $1,050
for a 1-bedroom and $1,350 for a 2-bedroom and excluding
retail at the site. The River North Plan lies within the
boundaries of Park Avenue West to the southwest, the
Burlington Northern and Santa Fe tracks to the
northwest, I-70 to the north and York Street and the
Union Pacific tracks on the northeast.
Construction of a new
Greenbox
Self Storage facility was recently begun
by Focus Property Group. To total 690 units with 45,000
net rentable SF also at 3200 Brighton Boulevard, the
65,000 SF property is to meet LEED certification
standards and provide amenities such as computerized
keypad access, individual door alarms, web-based payment
options, temperature controlled units and closed-circuit
video surveillance.
After many years of consideration of alternatives the
Colorado Department of Transportation has decided to
replace the
I-70
viaduct across north edge of the City of
Denver with a highway in the same alignment some 30 feet
below grade with a small portion "capped" with perhaps a
park. Replacing the viaduct with another viaduct would
have required relocation of the Purina animal food
facility and Swansea Elementary school. Several reroute
alternatives were considered as well. The redesign
increases the cost of the replacement from $767 million
to $917 million and requires acquisition of some 30 more
homes, but Don Hunt, the recently hired Executive
Director of CDOT asked his engineers to consider it in
spite of the cost.
The
History
Colorado Center has opened. The 6-story
$110 million facility at 12th and Broadway was designed
by David Owen Tryba and totals some 195,000 SF on a 1.3
acre site. It consolidates the former Colorado History
Museum with state Office of Archaeology & Historic
Preservation and the State Historical Fund. The building
has applied for LEED Gold certification.
The National Trust for Historic Preservation has
completed renovation of the
Emerson
School building at 14th/Ogden. Capitol
Hill Senior Resources donated the property and a $2
million endowment, and the Trust spent $3.2 million to
renovate the building for occupancy by the Trust,
Historic Denver, Inc. and Colorado Preservation, Inc.
The 1885 building is designated as a Denver Landmark and
is on the National Register of Historic Places.
The Denver Post reports that the
Richtofen
Castle in the Montclair neighborhood at
7020 East 20th Avenue has finally been placed under
contract for sale after some 14 years on the market. The
1887 mansion will reportedly sell at near its $3.75
million asking price equivalent to $250/SF for the
15,000 SF 8-bedroom building. The Week Magazine listed
the property as one of the best "castle home" properties
on the market.
The location of I-25 and Hampden has been chosen by
Spectrum Retirement for a new retirement
residential complex. To be part of the Highpointe
development, the 90-unit community at 6383 East Girard
Place is to offer studio to 1,000 SF apartment homes up
to 2 bedrooms in size, with options to include Assisted
Living and Memory Care apartments when it is completed
in mid-2013. The complex is to also offer
state-of-the-art amenities, dining and signature
programs, plus access to retail, medical facilities and
local residential neighborhoods.
The
Monaco
South Apartments sold for $13.4 million
or $62,000/unit for the 216 units at 2280 South Monaco
Parkway. The Aspen Arms apartments sold for $4.05
million or $78,000/unit for 52 units at 4175 East Mexico
Avenue. The Sage Brook Apartments in Denver were
recently traded for $14.2 million, or $65,700/unit.
Located at 7201 Leetsdale Drive, the 216-unit property
was sold by Basrock Western Terrace to Capital Real
Estate LLC and Coughlin and Co.
The land at
901-947
South Monaco Parkway exchanged between
seller MAD Properties LLC and buyer Kevin Ashbury. The
42,477 SF site was sold for $510,000, or $12/SF of land.
Older buildings will likely be removed.
The
Colorado
Center Pedestrian/Bicycle Bridge will
start construction soon with completion scheduled in 18
months. The bridge will provide pedestrian and bicycle
access over Interstate 25 at Cherry Street to the north
and RTD's Colorado Station (light rail) to the south.
Total cost is $8 million - $4 million in City Capital
Improvement Funds, and $4 million in federal
Transportation Improvement Program (TIP) Funds. The
bridge will be a steel structure similar to other
pedestrian bridges along the I-25 corridor that were
constructed as part of the T-REX project. One percent of
the overall project budget must be used on public art,
which could be incorporated into the wall design.
The historic Baker District of Denver is to be the home
of a new apartment complex by Wood Partners LLC. To be
on 5 acres at 275 South Cherokee Street, construction of
the 338-unit
Alta
Alameda Station is to begin this month,
with its completion estimated for early 2014. The
complex will benefit from transit service to downtown
Denver and the Denver Tech Center via its location a
couple of blocks north of the Alameda Light Rail
Station.
Nearby, D4Urban intends to develop the
Alameda
Station Village apartments adjacent to
the light rail station itself. D4Urban represents owners
of the 60+ acre site of the Denver Design District and
Alameda Marketplace shopping center at the SWC
Broadway/Alameda. The apartment development will mark
the beginning of a transformation of the area into
viable transit oriented development and make possible a
major storm drainage project beneath Bayaud Avenue
serving West Washington Park funded through the Denver
Urban Renewal Authority. More at:
http://d4urban.com/our-projects/
The pending conveyance of the 70-acre
Buckley Annex
from the US Air Force to the Lowry Redevelopment
Authority is expected to advance its redevelopment.
Located at 1st Avenue and Monaco Parkway, the site is
being considered for 800 residential units, up to
200,000 SF of commercial office and retail space and
4.5-acre community park, although work is not
anticipated to begin on the site for close to a year.
The residences are being considered for a net-zero
design, which means they would use less power than they
generate.
A hold has been placed on a development proposed for the
Cherry Creek North retail area by Western Development.
To be located on the
NEC of
Columbine and East 2nd Avenue, the $100
million development would total 70,000 SF of office,
38,000 SF of retail, and roughly 80 condos, but possible
changes proposed for the density in the area via the
adoption of the Cherry Creek Area Plan led the company
to withdraw.
Dennis Huspeni in the Denver Business Journal reports
that
Trader
Joe's has signed a letter of intent to
open its first Denver store on the southeast corner of
Colorado Boulevard and Eighth Avenue, four independent
commercial real estate brokers who specialize in retail
have told the Denver Business Journal. It would be the
grocery chain's second Colorado store, in addition to a
previously announced Boulder location, scheduled to open
in 2013. Trader Joe's wouldn't confirm or deny that it
has picked a Colorado Boulevard site. In 2007, a hotel
was to have been developed at the site. Annie's Cafe,
which used to be there, moved in 2008 to 3100 East
Colfax Avenue to make room for the hotel, but it was
never built.
Denver City Council Member Jeanne Robb in partnership
with the Cheesman Park Advocacy Group (CPAG) and Denver
Parks and Recreation, announces five
Cheesman
Park auto-free dates for summer 2011 on
the SECOND Sunday of each month on May 13, June 10, July
8, August 12, and September 9, from 5:00 am to 6:00 pm
to enhance the pedestrian and biking experience in the
park and decorative improvements to the entrances to the
park at 10th & 11th Avenues facilitated by CPAG.
Denver Parks and Recreation has allocated $100,000 in
capital improvement funds to rebuild
Manley
Park Playground adjacent to Bromwell
Elementary School. Public comments are being accepted
until May 30, 2012 via an online survey at:
http://survey.constantcontact.com/survey/a07e5vbgho4h1jo9m9t/start
The
East
Colfax Transit Study (Alternatives
Analysis/Environmental Assessment)
follows the Colfax Streetcar Feasibility Study completed
in 2010. Steer, Davies, Gleave and AECOM were selected
to complete the study with a $2 million grant from the
Federal Transit Administration and $1 million in local
matching funds. The Streetcar Feasibility Study found
that current transportation modes such as busses along
East Colfax Avenue are at capacity during peak demand
times. The Streetcar Study forecast a 20-30% increase in
"person trips" demand in the Colfax corridor by 2025 and
determined that a broad range of transportation
alternatives should be examined for the corridor from
downtown to Aurora. The Study found that conditions
along East Colfax Avenue demonstrated greater demand
than some studies in other cities where federal funds
have been granted for streetcar development. The results
of the Alternatives Study may be used to apply for
federal and other funding of expansion of transportation
alternatives along the corridor.
Also for Colfax Avenue RTD issued a Request for
Proposals for a
Transit
Priority Study in February. Five
proposals were received and are being evaluated. RTD is
working with the City and County of Denver, CDOT, DRCOG
and others using a $3.6 million Senate Bill 1 grant to
reduce travel time and increase security and ridership
in the Colfax corridor from Broadway to Yosemite Street.
The project is intended to be a pilot program for
innovative technologies to enhance performance of Routes
15 and 15L.
Alan Gass provides a link to a video of a speech given
by Gary Toth one of the US experts on the
Living
Streets movement. Local activists have
been advocating the development of the Living Streets
concept in Denver, and locally on East First Avenue.
Alan thought this would be a good opportunity to
understand that the purpose of the movement is to
maximize mobility for all users of surface
transportation routes and not just single occupancy
vehicles and trucks. This is a concept that uses
existing paved rights of way to serve all of the people.
http://www.pps.org/blog/complete-streets-one-size-does-not-fit-all/
For the past several months, the RTD Board has been
evaluating technical, financial and economic information
and public input, related to whether to pursue a
FasTracks
sales tax election this year. On April
24, at a Study Session, the Board had a discussion about
a potential election in November and indicated its
preference to not pursue a sales tax ballot initiative
this year. This was not a formal action, but all 12
Board Members in attendance concurred that it would be
very difficult to achieve a successful election this
year for many reasons. While economic conditions are
slowly but steadily improving in the Denver metro area,
the RTD Board does not believe that the timing is right
for a sales tax ballot initiative. The Board also
acknowledged that the region has more work to do to
further define how transit can best be provided in the
Northwest area.
At their May 22 Board meeting, the Board will take a
formal vote on withdrawing the recently submitted report
to the Denver Regional Council of Governments, which
assumes a successful 2012 tax vote. The Board gave staff
direction to submit a revised plan with alternate
assumptions. The RTD Board is committed to completing
the entire FasTracks program and will aggressively
pursue alternative funding like grants, public-private
partnerships and unsolicited proposals to remain
steadfast in this vision.
http://www.rtdfastracks.com/media/uploads/main/RTD_Board_Presentation_4-24-12_FINAL.pdf
RTD has released a Request for Proposals and is
processing submissions for the
I-225
Light Rail Line after finding that an
unsolicited proposal from Kiewit Infrastructure Company
has merit. The first segment from Nine Mile Station to
Iliff Station is already under contract through a
partnership with the Colorado Department of
Transportation, which is widening the highway in that
same area. A groundbreaking for the I-225 Rail Line took
place recently. Over the past year, RTD has publicized
the agency's desire to seek out innovations to complete
the FasTracks program as soon as possible, enhance the
RTD customer experience and reduce the cost of RTD
operations. This was the premise behind RTD's first
industry forum called, Transformation Through
Transportation, which was held in September 2011.
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