A Littleton real estate development firm said Thursday that it plans to build as much as 1 million square feet of light-industrial, office and retail space on a prime downtown Denver parcel between West Colfax and 13th avenues near the Auraria campus.
One million square feet is roughly the equivalent of the city’s tallest building, Republic Plaza.
Quadrant Properties paid Unocal Corp., the nation’s eighth- largest oil-and-gas company, $4.9 million for the 12.5-acre parcel June 30.
Unocal, based in El Segundo, Calif., put the site up for sale at the end of last year after the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment gave it a clean bill of health.
Quadrant does not intend to build homes on the site but is exploring the possibility of constructing a hotel, office buildings and shops, said Rick Patten, one of the firm’s partners. The site contains 54,000 square feet of buildings and 9.5 acres of vacant land on which Quadrant is willing to “build to suit,” he added.
The company already has received proposals totaling more than 120,000 square feet of development from potential buyers or tenants, including representatives of a “combined outdoor-indoor active sports recreation facility,” he said.
Quadrant is studying the proposals and hopes to firm its plans this fall and break ground next spring, Patten said.
The development promises to be a change of pace for Quadrant, which has spent $15 million in the last 2½ years to build three Colorado shopping complexes: Grandview Marketplace in Colorado Springs, High Plains Marketplace in Firestone and Summit Marketplace in Lafayette.
Denver commercial real estate firm CB Richard Ellis brokered the Unocal campus deal and is marketing the property.
“It’s hard for businesses wanting to be in or near Denver’s central core to find this much space to build what they want,” said CB Richard Ellis vice president Mike Camp, who teamed with brokers Jim Bolt and Tyler Carner to complete the transaction.
Unocal is the target of a $17 billion takeover bid by Chevron Corp. China-based CNOOC Ltd. also is seeking to buy Unocal.
Unocal worked for more than two decades to clean the Denver property after contaminated soil and groundwater were found there in 1984.
The company had operated a chemical storage facility on the site since 1964, according to state records.
The property’s sale is a good example of how a 1994 state law works to help owners sell once-environmentally troubled properties more quickly, said Jeff Deckler, manager of the public health and environment department’s remedial programs.
The Voluntary Cleanup and Redevelopment Act encourages owners to work voluntarily within state guidelines to correct environmental problems.
In exchange, owners benefit from a streamlined government review and approval process and are exempt from the federal Environmental Protection Agency’s scrutiny as long as their cleanup meets state standards.
“We want to see older properties that have been contaminated cleaned up and reused rather than seeing new areas disturbed,” Deckler said, adding that more than 400 owners have applied to participate in the program since its inception.
Staff writer Christine Tatum can be reached at 303-820-1015 or ctatum@denverpost.com.
