Q: How do you pick your projects?
A: I really concentrate on one area, rather than picking up one building at a time. I started the Lower Downtown District and was president of that for a while. I got involved in the baseball stadium, the Platte Valley plan and I’m a member of the (16th Street) mall board. I throw myself into the whole community process.
In all the areas I’ve worked in, it’s a feeling of opportunity, certainly in terms of real estate development and economics, but also in the opportunity to change the character of a neighborhood and make it more of a community.
Q: How did you start out in LoDo?
A: I renovated a building my father bought in 1944 and moved our offices there. The character and the buildings in the area really had a spirit that was attractive.
At the center of what I do is really trying to build a community, and Lower Downtown had that possibility. It had the galleries, the character and energy.
With a partner, Larry Nelson, I built probably the second loft project in LoDo. It was a pioneering effort at the time. I went to 16 lenders, but it was only after I presold the whole project that I got the loan. It was a whole different era. When I started selling those, it was for $70 to $80 a square foot.
Then the area really began to change. LoDo’s anchor was really the entertainment area. I had a cafe – City Spirit. It was one of the first restaurants in Lower Downtown. It became kind of the meeting place. It was where John Hickenlooper hatched the Wynkoop.
Q: How did you start working in the Golden Triangle?
A: When prices got up to $100 a square foot, I decided LoDo was getting too expensive. At that time, I happened on the Golden Triangle. The pieces were in place. The (Denver) Art Museum was there, it was walkable to the city, and 35 percent of the ground was vacant. I helped put together a community organization and a neighborhood plan. I invested monetarily and emotionally to develop a community and the area’s first new living units in 50 years, the Cadillac Lofts.
I still have several properties in the area.
Q: What attracts you to these different areas and projects?
A: In LoDo, I saw this vast array of historic buildings. In the Triangle, I saw the cultural opportunities. It just seemed so ripe for change. It always kind of amazes me that it’s here, just five minutes from downtown. It’s like the countryside in the middle of the city. It has fast access to the highways. But it has a grittiness, which is one of the things I focus on.
In all the areas I’ve been involved in, I try to keep them authentic, try to keep them real. The Golden Triangle was developed as an urban village. Same thing in LoDo, but it got out of hand and became so yuppified.
Usually, there’s some catalytic thing. In LoDo, it was the cafe, where people got together, and it began to change the energy. City Spirit became the catalyst. In the Golden Triangle, it was the Cadillac Lofts.
At Taxi Lofts (in the Brighton Boulevard corridor northeast of Coors Field), the opportunity to create a whole new workplace, was a gift. In this building, we really looked at developing a special workplace for people who were creative but not necessarily in the visual or performing arts.
Q: Taxi is a different kind of project. How did the idea for it come about?
A: I really believe we need to find a different kind of workplace. Downtown office buildings are confining and limit creativity in thinking. Once you get in a space that is a little more gritty and has more synergy where people meet frequently or share ideas, it allows people to realize their creative potential.
This building was perfect because it all flowed around taxicabs moving through the building. It created a main street.
My great fear is that we will lose the working place. You pick up the paper and it’s all the home section. There’s very little about the workplace. As Americans we’ve always been able to excel because of imagination and creativity.
Q: After this area, where will you turn your focus?
A: The areas become bigger and bigger. LoDo was sort of confined. The Golden Triangle was larger. This is a lifetime of work. There are literally hundreds of acres here.
I think if you follow the river and this whole northern area – this whole section of the city is under development.
Edited for space and clarity from an interview by staff writer Margaret Jackson.
