It’s not too much of an exaggeration to say 2015 was the year River North, the once-sleepy industrial area north of downtown, cemented its place as
Just to name a few of the developments:
• Big-name craft brewers and this summer laid claim to real estate in RiNo, now . (Great Divide opened a new taproom and production facility in July, while New Belgium’s 10-barrel pilot brewery will be part of l that broke ground in June.)
• Some of the year’s most-hyped new restaurants — , among them— set up shop in the gritty district, adding heat to the district emerging as a hot spot for Denver foodies.
• , a luxury “athleisure” brand with ties to Lululemon, chose the 2600 block of Larimer Street, not tony Cherry Creek, for one of its first U.S. stores, making it one of the first national retailers to bet on RiNo.
• Denver-based yoga giant CorePower Yoga announced plans to move its corporate headquarters from LoHi to . Its new offices and first RiNo studio open in January.
All of the interest and activity sent the real estate market in 2015 into a as one Denver broker put it in June, with sales prices and lease rates soaring higher almost by the day.
RiNo property owners also took steps in 2015 to ensure that future development respects the area’s artistic, gritty tenor, voting in November to tax themselves to fund infrastructure improvements, design guidelines and efforts to keep artists in place.
With , RiNo’s pace shows no signs of slowing. “There are a lot of people, you’d be surprised, who still don’t know what RiNo is,” developer Ari Stutz said in December. “There’s a tremendous amount of fun and interesting things that will happen here in 2016.”
Emilie Rusch: 303-954-2457, erusch@denverpost.com
