Developer Mickey Zeppelin’s $16 million urban-renewal project north of downtown got a funding boost Thursday.
Taxi, located on 15 acres adjacent to the South Platte River at 3455 Ringsby Court, received a $2 million federal grant and a $6 million federal loan.
The former Yellow Cab headquarters and dispatch center – which was once a landfill – is being transformed into a new work-live community. Zeppelin already has redeveloped the Yellow Cab building into office space. The grant and loan will be used for a new 100,000-square-foot building that will include housing, offices and retail space.
“We are creating jobs and taking an area that was, at best, an industrial use and remediating the environmental condition,” Zeppelin said.
Zeppelin’s project was one of 11 nationally to receive the funding through the Brownfields Economic Development Initiative of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. It beat out Cherokee Denver LLC’s redevelopment of the former Gates Rubber plant. Cherokee received grants for two other projects elsewhere.
“This is nice because it’s a small project. It’s bringing jobs to an area of the city that’s economically had some hard times,” said Stacey Eriksen, an Environmental Protection Agency employee who is on loan to the city of Denver. “I think it’s really going to have a domino effect. The area is poised to have a lot of really interesting things happen.”
Staff writer Margaret Jackson can be reached at 303-820-1473 or mjackson@denverpost.com.
