Stanley Marketplace, a once long-idled industrial site in Aurora that morphed into a popular retail and community hub, is turning 10 years old. It’s also on the verge of a new era as the ownership is set to change.
Stanley JV, a joint business venture that grew from three friends in the neighborhood who wanted a place to hang out, has a buyer under contract.
The food and entertainment attraction, which is also a shopping market and office space, has proven to be a steady economic driver for the area in the past decade. It has also developed a loyal customer base along with a lineup of businesses that hasn’t wavered much, even through the pandemic.
Denver-based has talked to the owners over the past couple of years about Stanley Marketplace, said Chris Carroll, who runs Magnetic with fellow managing partner Daniel Huml.
“We really focus on assets that have a great story to them, with strong fundamentals, a strong place in the community,” Carroll said.
With Stanley’s 10th anniversary celebration coming up in August and plans to open a “mini Stanley Marketplace” at Denver International Airport in 2027, “we thought now is a great time to acquire the asset and really shepherd this into the next generation,” Carroll said.
The purchase price under discussion for the Stanley is roughly $41 million, according to Both Carroll and Jonathan Alpert, a partner with an owner of the marketplace, said the $41 million figure is “in the neighborhood.”
Other proposals mentioned in the memo, including a hotel and more apartment units, are conceptual, Alpert said. The contract isn’t closed yet.
Westfield formed Stanley JV with Flightline Ventures, started by the local residents working on the concept. Together, they started raising money to transform the 140,000-square-foot industrial building that housed Stanley Aviation for 53 years.
The manufacturing facility in far northwest Aurora was the city’s largest employer for a while. Bob Stanley started in 1948 after attending the California Institute of Technology and becoming a U.S. Navy aviator and test pilot. In 1954, Stanley moved the company to Aurora, just south of the former Stapleton International Airport, where he developed ejection seats and other equipment for the military.
He died in a plane crash in 1977. The aviation company was sold and later closed in 2007. Stanley Aviation’s original signs and logo remain.
After it reopened as Stanley Marketplace in 2016, the 20-acre site became a catalyst for an area that Aurora wanted to reinvigorate, said City Manager Jason Batchelor.
“Just south of the Stanley Marketplace, there used to be an old tow yard that was pretty dilapidated,” Batchelor said.
Apartments were built on the site. A nearby shopping center, Montview Plaza, was rebuilt into a mixed-use development that includes apartments.
“Folks want to be near the Stanley,” Batchelor said. “We’ve really seen it be catalytic for reinvestment and redevelopment of the surrounding areas.”
The Stanley Marketplace has been an asset not only for Aurora, but the metro area, Batchelor said. “I think Stanley was sort of at the forefront of the food hall movement in the metro region and I think they’ve set such a high bar. Folks are trying to bottle that lightning.”
The city of Aurora was a driver behind turning the marketplace into reality in the first place. Batchelor, who oversaw the budget and was the finance director, said city staffers pitched the old Stanley Aviation building as the home for a neighborhood gathering spot.
As mayor, the late Steve Hogan, along with other city officials, went to bat for the project when the property owners were set on selling to a manufacturer.
The city also used performance-based tax increment financing through its urban renewal authority, allowing the developers to use a portion of tax revenues to fill financing gaps. Through April, the city has repaid Stanley $7.45 million in eligible tax rebates out of the maximum $13 million in the agreement, which runs through 2040.
City officials said they’re reviewing a request to transfer the agreement to the buyer. “The city understands the sale is anticipated to close in August and is working with that deadline in mind,” spokesman Joe Rubino said in an email.
Stanley Marketplace wouldn’t have happened without the city’s support, said Mark Shaker, who with friends Lorin Ting and Megan Von Waldled the campaign for a neighborhood hangout. They lived in Central Park, formerly the Stapleton neighborhood, but couldn’t find a spot there.
After a tour with city officials of various sites, the abandoned Stanley Aviation building became their focus.
The three, none of whom had development experience, enlisted other friends, family and entrepreneurs. They worked with Denver restaurateur Kevin Taylor. After the Front Porch newspaper featured their efforts, the group, which formed Flightline Ventures, started hearing from people wanting to lease spaces. The group raised $2.6 million for the property in 2014.
“As we started talking to different banks, it became really clear to us that we needed a development partner,” Shaker said.
In 2015, Flightline teamed up with Westfield, a real estate and development company based in Denver. They became equal partners in Stanley JV, each contributing $5.2 million and taking on a $20 million loan.
One of the draws for Westfield was that Flightline did “an extraordinary job” of curating the tenancy, Alpert said. “The groups that had already signed up and wanted to be here was a cool, electric mix of local, really wonderful operators.”
More than half the current tenants are original lessees. Alpert said the marketplace is 98% occupied.
Westfield will keep the 168-unit Stanley House apartment complex it built on the site.
Magnetic Capital will meet soon with the people running the more than 50 local businesses at Stanley. Carroll said the firm will concentrate on maintaining Stanley’s role as a community hub and work with tenants on their individual goals.
The company plans to add gathering places after the realignment of , trails and landscaping are completed on the site. The project is part of ongoing work to increase the creek’s stormwater capacity and water quality.
“It’s the right time for another group to come in and reinvest, put that energy in and take this thing to the next level,” Alpert said.
‘Stanifesto,’ a manifesto
Karina Tittjung is one of the several tenants who learned in May of the pending sale of the Stanley Marketplace. She has been there almost from the time the doors opened in October 2016. She handled catering and special events for Rolling Smoke BBQ for seven years and then opened the pet boutique when a space became available.
“After working here for seven years, I knew there was nowhere else I wanted to open a business than Stanley,” Tittjung said.
While it was a scary leap from employee to business owner, Tittjung said she could count on help from a building of peers who’ve become family.
“This isn’t just a job,” Tittjung said. “This is our community This is our pack.”
Tittjung’s sentiments echo some of those on a poster on a wall inside a main entrance to the marketplace. A manifesto named “The Stanifesto” was written by Shaker to promote collaboration, putting “goodness into the world” and spending time with family and friends.
One of the line reads, “We believe there’s no point in making a profit if you’re not also making a difference.”
“We wanted a North Star that guides us and helps us make decisions when we have challenges in the future,” Shaker said.
The Stanifesto was attached to lease agreements. “Sometimes lawyers would be like, ‘What’s this Kumbaya nonsense?’ ” Shaker said.
The spirit of the message was important, Shaker added. He said the vision helped people cope with the time and expense of building a marketplace in a cavernous manufacturing facility, requiring extensive environmental cleanup.
Alpert said the spirit was evident during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic when employees and business owners showed up, making deliveries by electric skateboards and tuk-tuks.
Customers showed up, Shaker said. Counters at the doors in August 2020 recorded only 20% of the number of visitors that walked through the doors in August 2019.
“But we had about 60% of the sales,” Shaker said. “We only lost one business out of 55 during COVID.”
Stanley generally sees 1.3 million-1.4 million visitors per year, Alpert said.
Javier and Jennifer Perez, owners of , were the second tenants to move into the marketplace, but the first public-facing business. The first tenant was a preschool.
“We opened in December. It was winter. There was no heat in the building yet. Most of the walls weren’t up yet,” Javier Perez said.
Cheluna arranged to have food trucks in the parking lot. When it was too cold for the trucks to show up, the brewery worked with nearby restaurants to have food delivered. They used an industrial-size space heater to warm up the bar.
Perez and other business owners are waiting to talk to Magnetic Capital. He and his wife started their business after he retired as an emergency room doctor. He said Cheluna has many regulars.
“We’ve known people who tell us when they’re pregnant. We know the kid when they’re born. And then 10 years later, we’re talking to the kid about school. It’s been amazing,” Perez said.
Caroline Glover, a 2022 James Beard Award-winning chef, co-owns the restaurant Annette and Traveling Mercies, an oyster and cocktail bar in the Stanley Marketplace. She opened Annette, her first restaurant, nearly 10 years ago when Stanley was the only place that offered her a lease.
“I had been looking at other spots in Denver and nobody was really ready to take a risk on somebody that never had a restaurant before,” Glover said.
She didn’t want to be in a marketplace, but changed her mind after meeting the owners. The spot she looked at had access to the outside, so customers wouldn’t have to go through the rest of the building
And Glover said Shaker was excited to sign someone who didn’t have other places in Aurora or Denver. “I feel like when you get told ‘no’ a lot and then somebody gets excited for you, it gives you momentum.”
Working with other independent business owners striving hard to succeed has been motivating, Glover said. She hopes the new owners will continue the approach that has been effective through the past decade.
When the marketplace changes hands, Shaker will still be there. He owns the Stanley Beer Hall. Shaker said it’s natural to be a little uneasy with change pending, but he believes the new owners will continue “that same sort of community, local charm.”
“It’s the end of an era. A lot of blood sweat and tears went into doing a project that most people thought was impossible,” Shaker said. “I’m proud of where it’s at, where it came from, and so I’m hopeful for the next chapter.”
