Byron Weiss, the owner of a warehousing supplier who spent the final years of his life shepherding his unique property in Denver’s RiNo neighborhood toward redevelopment, has died.
Weiss was 86 years old when he died March 17, according to his obituary.
He was born in Denver in late 1939 and attended East High School, per the obituary. He attended college in Boston for a year before returning to Denver, working in the family record store on 16th Street and in the salvage business with his father.
In the 1980s, Weiss started his own company, Porta Power. It initially sold golf carts and batteries, according to his son Brett, before evolving to focus on things like forklifts, pallet racks and shelving.
The business got its start on Valencia Street and bounced around a bit, each time leasing the property.
Then, in 1993, Weiss decided to buy the sprawling Rock Drill property along 39th Avenue. It was, and still is, a mishmash of industrial buildings, some made of brick and some metal, erected over decades. The oldest date to around 1910.
“Most people thought we were nuts,” he told BusinessDen in 2022. “I had bankers tell me they were going to do me a favor and not give me a loan.”
The property was originally home to pneumatic drills producer Denver Rock Drill Manufacturing Co., which later became known as Gardner Denver and is now part of publicly traded company Ingersoll Rand. It stopped using the property in the 1980s.
Weiss’ purchase ended up being a great decision.
“My dad is the best real estate person that was never in real estate,” Brett Weiss said.
Today, the block sits on the edge of RiNo, the former warehouse district that evolved into a hip neighborhood and redevelopment hot spot over the 2000s and 2010s. Weiss and his other son Andy — Brett was an elementary school teacher then, but later joined the family business — converted the former Rock Drill office building into lofts.
In 2016, the Regional Transportation Districtap A Line started running from downtown to the airport, with a stop just two blocks from Rock Drill.
Andrew Feinstein, whose father, Neil, and business partner Marty Chernoff also bought land in the area before the boom, said Rock Drill is now “the ideal redevelopment site.”
“That block, in my opinion, has the best bones of any block in RiNo, if not Denver,” Feinstein said.
He served for a time as chairman of the RiNo Arts District.
“Byron was always, always engaged,” Andrew Feinstein said. “Came to every single meeting. He took it seriously.”
As early as at least 2007, Byron Weiss talked publicly about moving Porta Power from Rock Drill so the property could be freed up for a new use. But that didn’t actually happen until the early 2020s.
In 2022, he said five different deals for the property had fallen apart over the previous seven years. And that figure didn’t include Meow Wolf, which took a close look at the site before opting to instead locate by the Elitch Gardens amusement park.
“Of all the deals, I think one of them could have done the deal,” he said at the time. “And the others couldn’t. Itap just too big.”
Lots of industrial buildings in RiNo have been razed to make way for hotels, apartments and the like. But that was never the plan at Rock Drill, where the whole appeal of the property is its history and character, like buildings with sawtooth roofs.
Rock Drill was always seen as something different.
“They weren’t just going to hand it off to a merchant builder,” Feinstein said of the Weiss family.
Brett Weiss said his father “poured his heart and soul into getting this developed.”
“It was never a money thing for my father,” he said.
The Weiss family has been under contract for years to sell the property to OliverBuchananGroup, a Denver-based development firm.
Last year, the Denver City Council approved a rezoning, development agreement and tax-increment financing for OBG’s planned project, set to include hundreds of residential units, a hotel and at least 100,000 square feet of retail space. New buildings could reach 22 stories.
“The innate fabric of this site and, for lack of a better term, cool factor is already there,” OBG CEO Eric Buchanan said last year.
But the project is still months, at best, from breaking ground. Brett Weiss said OBG is slated to buy the site in two phases, in September and December. Construction will take years.
“I’m very happy that he saw what he saw, but it will always disappoint me that he didn’t see it come to fruition,” Brett Weiss said of his father.
In a statement, City Councilman Darrell Watson, who represents the area, described Byron Weiss as “a force in Denver and the Eastside.”
“It was his commitment to the Denver Rock Drill that finally made this redevelopment happen,” Watson said. “It is his and his family’s lasting legacy. He will be missed.”
Bernard Hurley, a developer who owns land off Brighton Boulevard in RiNo, said Byron Weiss was a “trusted friend and adviser.”
“Byron was not a sellout. Byron always stuck true to his values,” Hurley said. “I don’t know that he’s ever broken his word to anyone.”
Hurley said Byron Weiss was also “famous for his walks.” He knew every “nook and cranny of the neighborhood,” according to Feinstein. Brett Weiss said his father walked 17 miles in a day at age 80, although his typical day was more like three to five miles.
“People who knew him would honk at him and he wouldn’t wave back because he’s so focused,” Brett Weiss said.
Byron Weiss bought into the neighborhood when it was gritty. Today, there’s office space, expensive restaurants and train service — plus lots of murals.
Hurley would love to see one more painted, portraying Byron Weiss walking.
“That would be the most amazing picture to have — Byron just shuffling through RiNo.”
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