The marches on, with St. Paul Street the latest target for redevelopment.
Denver-based BMC Investments has acquired three properties in the neighborhood with plans for redevelopment, the real estate firm confirmed Monday: a two-story retail and office building at 210 St. Paul St.; Cherry Creek Square, 3000 E. Third Ave., and the large parking lot behind it along St. Paul; and a 10,000-square-foot commercial building at 240 Josephine St.
Preliminary plans call for a combined 150-200 high-end apartments on the 210 St. Paul and parking lot sites, along with ground-floor retail.
Cherry Creek Square, a 34,400-square-foot retail center that houses a number of boutiques and health/beauty businesses, will be “maintained, improved, repositioned and re-leased,” BMC CEO Matt Joblon said.
The Josephine Street building will be demolished to make way for a 165-room limited-service hotel.
“We really want to activate St. Paul and make it a destination within Cherry Creek and bring in some world-class retailers and some world-class restaurants and really create a sense of place,” Joblon said.
All told, the company plans to invest $180 million across the three sites, Joblon said. Construction should begin next year, with a 14- to 15-month build-out. All three projects will comply with the
“It’s once in a lifetime to do projects like this in an area like this,” Joblon said. “We’re really excited to push the envelope in so many different ways.”
The hotel, BMC’s second under development in Cherry Creek North, will be targeted at more budget-minded travelers who still want to stay in the chic neighborhood, Joblon said.
Earlier this year, BMC began construction on a that will be operated by Denver-based Sage Hospitality. Sage currently runs the neighborhood’s only hotel, the high-end JW Marriott.
“We want to offer a great product at a great location that offers a value-oriented traveler a price so they can stay in Cherry Creek,” Joblon said.
The new apartments will skew larger than those in , BMC’s recently completed 218-unit project at East First Avenue and Steele Street.
The average unit size in the new buildings will be about 1,300 square feet, compared with 955 square feet at Steele Creek, Joblon said.
“There’s tremendous demand in this market for larger units,” he said. “We had to turn away a number of renters because we didn’t have units big enough for them.”
Street-level retail will stretch all along the west side of St. Paul Street from East Third Avenue to the at the corner of East Second Avenue.
, a well-known women’s boutique that relocated to Cherry Creek from Larimer Square in 2012, is staying put in the revitalized Cherry Creek Square, owner Denise Kenny-Snyder said.
“We are definitely staying,” Kenny-Snyder said. “We love it here.”
Other Cherry Creek Square tenants include Castles Home Decor, Right Start children’s boutique, Simply Moore makeup and AOB Med Spa. Some will stay while others leave, Joblon said.
“We’re excited to stay and be a part of the new development,” Kenny-Snyder said. “I think it will be great. There’s not a lot of retail at this end.”
Jenny Starkey, director of community relations for the Cherry Creek North Business Improvement District, said the new projects should go a long way toward making St. Paul Street more active.
“It’s going to be a huge transformation not only for the district but the easternmost part of Cherry Creek North,” Starkey said. “There are studies out there that show when you activate ground-level structures with retail, you bring more in terms of walkability to a neighborhood. That’s really what Cherry Creek North is all about.”
Emilie Rusch: 303-954-2457, erusch@denverpost.com or @emilierusch
