GREENWOOD VILLAGE —As the city of Greenwood Village soon will celebrate the opening of a large office building just a stone’s throw from one of the two stops in its jurisdiction.
CoBank Center, the future national headquarters of the rural and agriculturally focused , has been under construction since last spring. It’s located just west of Interstate 25, between Arapahoe and Orchard roads — just a few hundred feet from the Arapahoe at Village Center Station light rail stop in the middle of what will eventually be the three-building Village Center Station development. The 276,000-square-foot Shea Properties project is expected to see its first wave of CoBank employees move in in November, officials say.
“This move is really about building a bank for the future. It will enable us to better accommodate future growth and provide a better overall work environment for our employees,” CoBank spokesman Daniel Sullivan said, noting the bank, already headquartered in Greenwood Village, will eventually move 615 employees into the new space. “Another big benefit from the new headquarters will be increased visibility for CoBank, with more than 200,000 cars driving by the building on I-25 every day. That’s a great advertisement for CoBank as a high-quality employer in the Denver market.”
completed construction of its new, 45,000-square-foot headquarters at the northwest corner of East Caley Avenue and Greenwood Plaza Boulevard in May. With a dome and architecture modeled on the Palace of the Rhine in Strasbourg, France, it also stands out in Greenwood Village’s recent round of development near the Arapahoe light rail stop.
The City Council also recently signed off on plans for two other projects around the covered parking structure for the Arapahoe light rail stop on the east side of I-25: A and an abutting 280,000-sqaure-foot office building that will further add to the area’s increasingly dense development.
Neither project has broken ground, but city officials say developers are close to pulling permits for the Westin property.
“We are very attuned to the needs of the business community, and we have what I would call a friendly government. We work through the issues that go with any construction as quickly and equitably as possible,” Greenwood Village Mayor Ron Rakowsky said when asked why his city has done so well attracting development to the area near Arapahoe at Village Center Station.
As for other contributing factors? It comes down to location, the mayor says.
“I think the light rail has had a great impact,” Rakowsky said. “And I think the fact that there have been no 5-star hotels built in the Tech Center in the last several decades, there has been an identified need that the Westin will satisfy.”
Lynn Meyers is vice president of economic development at the , a public-private entity that includes Greenwood Village and is aimed at improving the south metro area’s economy.
She said that quality Cherry Creek and Littleton district schools and Greenwood Village’s highly trained and capable workforce also serve to attract companies, citing California-based bio-tech company as a company that recently set down roots.
“The demand is there but you have to create a reputation. Attracting these companies is competitive,” Meyers said. “Young people aren’t just going to work anywhere because they’re told to.”
She said the city is also in great shape in terms of developable space near light rail. The CoBank building is the second of three buildings Shea is building in the Village Center Station area. The Westin and the neighboring office building, a Granite Properties project, on the east side are the beginning of what is being called Village Center DTC.
Meyers estimates the Village has the capacity for 2 million more square feet of development in the area.
She added: “To have the land available with quality builders steps from light rail, there’s nothing more valuable in the country.”
Joe Rubino: 303-954-2953, jrubino@denverpost.com or twitter.com/RubinoJC
