A downtown Denver office tower eyed for a conversion to apartments is instead hitting the auction block.
The 16-story tower at 475 17th St. will be auctioned off over two days in early November. The starting bid is $750,000.
The building is owned by a German pension fund, with Civicap Partners serving as asset manager. It last sold for $26 million in 2015 but, like most office buildings, its value has fallen in the wake of the pandemic. Denver’s assessor values the building at $7.6 million.
For a time, it had appeared 475 17th might have a new life as an apartment building.
In 2024, local developer Revesco Properties proposed fashioning some 200 units out of the building, which is approximately 160,000 square feet. By October 2025, when Revesco asked for funding from the Denver Downtown Development Authority, the unit count had dropped to 140.
The DDDA has provided low-interest loans to a number of downtown conversion projects, providing a critical subsidy.
But earlier this year, the DDDA said it wouldn’t fund the project at 475 17th.
Bill Mosher, then the city’s chief projects officer, noted that the project was asking for a loan amount that corresponded to $207,000 a unit — much higher than other DDDA conversion projects, which got loans ranging from $78,000 to $150,000 a unit.
“Itap very expensive compared to our other deals, and I’m not sure why,” Mosher told BusinessDen in April.
Evan Kurtis, director of development and construction at Revesco, said in April that the company planned to explore low-income housing tax credits as a possible way to reduce the needed loan amount. But the company ultimately decided that wouldn’t be a good fit.
“We’re not LITC experts, and thatap a pretty specialized area,” Revesco CEO Rhys Duggan told BusinessDen last week. “We felt that we had exhausted our areas of expertise.”
Revesco is wrapping up an apartment development in Bonnie Brae and working on plans to build homes around The Fort restaurant near Morrison. Duggan, whose firm partnered to buy the restaurant last year, said it now has a whiskey bar and bar menu, which offers a less expensive way to experience the spot.
Four other downtown conversion projects have been awarded loans by the DDDA, although some of them later ran into complications. The Symes building was foreclosed on by its lender and the Petroleum building faces a tenant that doesn’t plan to leave.
A number of sizable downtown office properties have hit the auction block this year, including Columbine Place, Capitol Center and 1630 Welton St.
Read more from our partner, .
