By mid-October, Cherokee Denver LLC will select a developer for its portion of the former Gates Rubber Co. site at Interstate 25 and Broadway.
Cherokee has been cleaning up the 50-acre site, and will oversee as much as $1.5 billion of construction over the next 10 to 15 years. The parcel is an important piece of the city’s transit plans because three light-rail lines are planned to intersect there.
Cherokee received seven proposals from local and national developers for the 24-acre site between the railroad tracks and Santa Fe Drive, with Mississippi Avenue to the south and I-25 to the north, said Ferd Belz, president of Cherokee Denver.
All the groups proposed a mix of residential and retail and each included an office component, said Belz, who declined to name the groups.
“Whoever we select, the price is going to be important, but the synergies to work with us and the synergies to work with the city and the neighborhood are equally important,” Belz said.
Cherokee, which is still finalizing design guidelines, will request City Council approval for the public financing portion of the project by the end of the year.
Meanwhile, Houston-based Lion stone Group, which owns the former Gates property east of Broadway, has assembled a team that is starting work on a master plan that will be submitted to the city by the end of the year. David Tryba is the lead architect, Martin/Martin is the civil engineer, and URS Corp. is the traffic engineer.
“We would look to receive input from those organizations and work those ideas into the plans,” said Doug McKinnon, of McKinnon & Associates. The Denver company is partnering with Lionstone on the project.
The team plans to introduce its initial planning ideas to neighborhood organizations in October, he said.
Lionstone already has sold a piece of the site to Louisville-based McStain Neighborhoods for residential development. The homebuilder plans to construct 42 single-family homes and duplexes. It also plans to purchase another 5-acre portion zoned for higher-density housing.
It also is renovating two buildings totaling 300,000 square feet. Tom Lee of Frederick Ross is leading the leasing effort.
Staff writer Margaret Jackson can be reached at 303-820-1473 or mjackson@denverpost.com.
