, operator of the Ikon Pass, has signed a 12-year lease for 65,000 square feet of space in the high-profile corner building at 101 W. Colfax Ave.
The agreement, made public Thursday, ends weeks of speculation about whether the ski giant would leave Colorado and where it might relocate within Denver if it stayed.
The company plans to spend the next year renovating the space with help of $11 million in state and city incentives, which include a mix of loans, grants and tax credits.
“Ultimately, after considering multiple options in and out of the state and the city, we decided that the Denver Post building specifically was where we wanted to be for the future of Alterra,” said Eric Resnick, chairman of Alterra and CEO of KSL Capital Partners, the private ski company’s owner.
Resnick said he didn’t fully appreciate the intensity of the efforts to revive Upper Downtown, and that KSL Capital wants to be part of those.
Seeing construction equipment at work in Civic Center Park, visible from the balconies of the Denver Post building, helped seal the deal.
A refreshed park is scheduled to reopen about the same time that Alterra moves into its new headquarters.
“This is not us hoping for that to happen in the future. It is seeing that reality coming to life and wanting to be part of it,” he said.
Alterra, which employs up to 25,000 workers at peak winter capacity, expects to eventually employ 400 at its new headquarters, up from 275 at its current space at Zeppelin Station in the RiNo neighborhood.
As the manager of the Denver-owned Winter Park Resort, Alterra, and before it Intrawest, has long had a close working relationship with the city.
That relationship will gain a new dimension as landlord-tenant, pending Denver City Council approval of the lease agreement at its next meeting on Sept. 14.
“We really wanted to have an anchor tenant that would help define the identity of Upper Downtown, and we really want to build that identity around this partner,” said Denver Mayor Mike Johnston.
What Alterra brings is an outdoor industry-focused magnet to Upper Downtown, he said. For a part of Denver that has seen more businesses flee than arrive since the pandemic, it represents a huge win.
The city’s larger vision, supported by the state, is to create a hub where other outdoor recreation businesses, from makers of snow gear to service providers, can set up a base camp and interact with each other.
“We approved $1 million in grants to recruit individual companies to the outdoor recreation hub that are part of this ecosystem,” said Gov. Jared Polis. “Alterra is very much the core anchor of that.”
Alterra won’t manage the hub, but city and state officials hope its presence will attract vendors and other outdoor recreation companies to the building and surrounding area.
Roughly half of the Denver Post building remains vacant, which represents about 150,000 square feet of available space.
After Alterra leases its share, another 85,000 square feet might be available for other outdoor recreation businesses, depending on the city’s own office space needs.
In 2020, the city thought it would need the building for new courtrooms and district attorney offices. In early 2024, it bought the building for $88.5 million, overcoming opposition from some members of City Council.
In June, Denver, in a $13.5 million settlement, took over the master lease from the owner of The Denver Post, which had defaulted on monthly lease payments of $650,000 in August.
Controlling the master lease opened a path for Denver to strike the current deal with Alterra.
Johnston said the demand for more judicial space didn’t pan out as projected. Plans to build new courts, which would have been an expensive undertaking in a city facing budget shortfalls, are off the table.
Plus, if more office space is ever needed, Upper Downtown has plenty of it available.
Of Denver’s 102 largest office towers, the median year of construction is 1980. Built in 2006, the Denver Post building is one of the newest available in that part of Downtown.
And it has something rare in Denver, something that might appeal to outdoor enthusiasts: Balconies that allow tenants to soak up the sunshine and fresh air.
Johnston described the Alterra headquarters and outdoor recreation hub as the eastern capstone on a string of projects that include the repurposing of the Independence Plaza as an education hub and the purchase and eventual revitalization of the Denver Pavilions, a large outdoor retail complex along 16th Street.
“As we’ve talked through each of those neighborhoods throughout 16th Street, this has really been the last one that was the most important for us to get right,” Johnston said.
And the benefits go beyond a single building. Alterra helped make skiing possible on Ruby Hill in southwest Denver; he sees the company and other outdoor recreation tenants turning Civic Center into a hub of wintertime activities.
A retention effort
During the summer, state and local economic development officials scrambled to put together an incentive package robust enough to keep Alterra from moving to Utah, the state’s chief rival in outdoor recreation.
Utah was the first state to create an Office of Outdoor Recreation in 2013, but Colorado was close behind in 2015 with its Outdoor Recreation Industry Office.
In 2017, Denver, with state help, lured the largest snow sports trade show away from Salt Lake City, only to lose it again in 2022.
But losing Alterra would have been a huge black eye for a state that prides itself on being a global hub for the ski industry.
Alterra is North America’s second-largest ski resort operator with 18 destination resorts available under the Ikon Pass, including Arapahoe Basin and the Steamboat Ski Resort.
Colorado is also home to Broomfield-based Vail Resorts, the world’s largest ski company with more than 40 resorts offered via the Epic Pass.
Yet, Alterra’s relocation incentives raise concerns about public interventions in the private market.
Apart from Cherry Creek and Douglas County, most of the region’s office market has a long way to go to recover pre-pandemic vacancy rates.
Upper Downtown may have gained a signature tenant, but Zeppelin Station and the RiNo neighborhood lost one.
“From a public-private sector standpoint, it is a very gray area,” said Bart Allen, a director at Benchmark Commercial Solutions in Denver.
Further complicating matters, Denver will benefit financially to the degree it can fill up a building it owns. It also has financial tools available that struggling private building owners lack in the current environment.
Resnick said the required improvements will take about a year to complete. The company will exercise its option to terminate its lease at Zeppelin Station, up for renewal in 2029, early.
Johnston emphasized that the DDA incentives were conditioned on Alterra moving into a building in Upper Downtown, not into a building the city owned.
The company researched four locations in the area, and it wasn’t a given that 101 W. Colfax would win out in the end.
The city also tried to structure a deal comparable to what a private landlord would have offered, but its financial limitations required going with a different structure.
Normally, landlords fund tenant improvements up front and recover the investment over time via a higher lease rate. But the city didn’t have the money to go that route.
“We didn’t have the capacity to write Alterra a check, so we agreed on a sort of loan forgiveness or a rent‑forgiveness structure to be able to cover some of those tenant improvements,” Johnston said.
A portion of the improvements will be funded through a $7 million loan at 2% interest that the Downtown Denver Development Authority agreed to provide Alterra in July.
That money will become available for other Downtown projects as it is paid back. But Alterra will spend out of pocket for some of the improvements. The city is making up for that by offering a lower lease rate.
Developer Asher Luzzatto, who picked up four distressed office towers at a steep discount and has been approved for a DDDA loan to help convert two of them, would have liked to have landed Alterra as a tenant.
But he is glad the company is coming to Upper Downtown and sees its decision as a rising tide that will lift all boats.
“We need the market to trust that Denver is open for business,” he said. “You can’t do this for every company, but you can do it for some companies that are really reflective of Denver‘s culture and community.”
Alterra fits the bill, he said.
