The last major piece of the has been sold to an apartment developer with plans to add 400 residential units to the 30-acre redevelopment along South Broadway.
San Francisco-based Carmel Partners closed Thursday on a 4.37-acre parcel due east of the new at 201 E. Mississippi Ave. McKinnon and Associates, LLC was the seller.
For McKinnon and Associates, which has been working on Gates East, the former Gates Corp. holdings on the east side of South Broadway, since 2005, the sale marks the successful completion of a revitalization effort.\
“It really brings our entire investment into the Gates East campus full circle,” said Doug McKinnon, owner and manager of McKinnon and Associates.
The 30-acre site was once home to Gates’ former headquarters and an assortment of smaller industrial buildings. After Carmel completes its project, there will be 66 for-sale homes, 720 multifamily units, 27,000 square feet of retail and 328,289 square feet of office connected back into the surrounding neighborhoods, right on the threshold of the .
“Eleven years ago, this was purely a brownfield site that had a lot of issues, environmental challenges and whatnot. Through Doug’s efforts and Gates doing the remediation, itap been able to be a successful project with hundreds and hundreds of employees and hundreds of residents, ” said Steve O’Dell, executive managing director of ARA Newmark, which brokered the land deal with Carmel.
“We were able to envision a mixed-use project here. Now, itap reality,” he said. “The other side has lagged and lagged.”
Redevelopment of the west side of the former Gates campus has been much slower to occur, the .
The vacant plant site, located on the west side of Broadway, was first purchased from Gates in 2001 for a proposed $1 billion residential and commercial project. But , and title to the property reverted back to Gates in 2009.
from Gates in 2014. Since then, Broadway Station Partners, which includes Frontier, has been focused on completing environmental remediation on all three of the site’s parcels, as well as working with the city and neighbors on an updated vision for the site, said development project manager Lisa Duker-Ingle.
Broadway Station Partners is “actively in negotiations” with the Denver Urban Renewal Authority on a financing package and could begin marketing development pads this fall, Duker-Ingle said. Infrastructure work could begin next spring, with the first vertical construction to follow shortly thereafter.
At build-out, the could include 2,600 residential units, 1 million square feet of office and a few hundred thousand square feet of retail.
“Sometimes, you’re in the right place at the right time. I think the timing is right for this project to be developed,” Duker-Ingle said. “The community and the city have been incredibly supportive of the anticipated vision.”
On the east side of Broadway, however, things have moved much more quickly.
Houston-based Lionstone Group initially acquired the entire 30-acre site in 2005, completing a general development plan for the property in 2007. City streets were re-established through the site and a four-story parking garage built. (McKinnon and Associates directed the project’s master planning and development.)
“We felt the right way to redevelop this property was to embrace the city grid as it existed,” McKinnon said. “We didn’t try to create an island — we wanted to embrace the city around it and connect into the neighborhoods.”
The office building that was restored at 900 S. Broadway was built by Henry Ford, first serving as an assembly plant for the Ford Motor Company, McKinnon said.
“There were some hard times initially trying to convince office users that this location was every bit as valuable as downtown or DTC. But we were able to get through that,” he said. “When we started to get that momentum, we thought letap put some housing with it.”
Today, 900 S. Broadway is 100 percent leased, and the adjoining office building at 990 S. Broadway is at 83.5 percent occupancy. The is 94 percent full and the rental units, on the south side of East Mississippi Avenue, are 92 percent leased.
McKinnon acquired the contractual rights for the last major parcel from Lionstone in 2015, the same year as the Sprouts opened. (Over the years, Lionstone has sold off the site’s parcels to developers and investors.)
Carmel Partners could begin construction on the apartment complex later this year.
“Ten years sounds like a long time, but when you take into account three years lost because of the economic cycle, itap actually a lot shorter than it might seem,” O’Dell said.
