The developer paid the tech giant $9.9 million last month for 21 acres off 144th Avenue and Grant and Washington streets, public records show. That amounts to $11 per square foot.

Amazon did not respond to a request for comment.

Confluent Vice President Nick Kitaeff said the property was “excess land” that Amazon had acquired for a neighboring distribution center. Confluent plans to install infrastructure on the site and build about 5 acres of retail along 144th Avenue while deciding what to do next.

Bradbury Cos., also based in Colorado, is the co-developer on the project, Kitaeff said.

“We’ve been under contract for 19 months. … It����ap been a journey to get it entitled, and there’s been a lot of work that����ap gone into it. This will be our third project in Thornton in the last couple years,” he said.

As part of that process, Thornton’s urban renewal authority agreed to reimburse nearly $4 million in Confluent����ap infrastructure work on-site. It will include widening 144th Avenue and consolidating two detention ponds into one. Groundbreaking on that work will begin later this month.

“We’ll take out of the ground probably five buildings that will consist of some convenience service users, some restaurants, some retail, and we’re working on a lot of leases right now, but nothing I can formally announce,” Kitaeff said.

Public records show the company is considering a hotel, apartment complex and more retail for the property’s remaining acreage, though those plans are conceptual.

“It����ap really a strategic investment at this intersection. … There’s successful employment districts to the north that the City of Thornton has done a fantastic job curating, there’s established residential neighborhoods to the east, and then there’s access to I-25 immediately to the west,” Kitaeff said.

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“You will see a significant reduction in the time fresh food is sitting on the trailer before it actually gets to a store, and it also gives us a lot more flexibility when you think about weather,” said Amy Probst, a senior vice president with Target.

Palisade peaches that might have been shipped from Grand Junction to a distribution facility in Denton, Texas, only to make the trip back to the Front Range, now can come straight down Interstate 70.

And the facility, beyond serving an 11-state region, will be a central transfer point where vendors can bring their products to one location rather than having to drop them off at multiple warehouses.

The facility contains more than half a million square feet of refrigerated space and will employ 380 warmly dressed workers, including 37 holding salaried positions.

Wages for the hourly positions will range from $15 to $24, Probst said. The facility will run around the clock, with most workers on four 10-hour shifts, with three days off.

Target employs 9,300 people across 45 stores in Colorado, as well as at a dry goods distribution facility in Pueblo and a sorting center in Denver. Employees at other locations are being offered the chance to work in Thornton.

The company has hired employees from careers outside distribution, said Juan Armendariz, who joined the company in February.

Target takes the time to bring its workers up to speed and has a focus on safety, he added. But the work isn’t for everyone.

“You have to like cold,” he said.

Most of the facility is kept at a constant 34 degrees , which is balmy compared to the minus 15 that those working in the freezer section must endure.

A focus on healthier options

Although both got their start as general merchandisers, Target has lagged Walmart in appreciating the power groceries have to drive store traffic and sales.

Walmart now accounts for just under a fifth of U.S. grocery sales, followed by Kroger, the parent company of King Soopers, and Costco, with about 10% each.

Albertsons, which operates in the state as Safeway, and Ahold Delhaize USA, owner of Food Lion and Giant, round out the top five grocery providers.

Target falls into the bracket of the next five largest grocery retailers, but it historically has been treated as a “fill-in” rather than a “stock up” source of food. “Fill-in,” as in grabbing a gallon of milk while shopping for school supplies after remembering the jug at home is running low.

Until recently, the company relied on third-party vendors to distribute its fresh food offerings, which increased supply costs by adding middlemen.

Walmart, by contrast, built a “hub and spoke” distribution model for refrigerated goods and mastered the art of moving items with a short shelf-life. Its efficiency allowed it to beat larger grocery-dedicated chains in price and, over time, surpass them in sales.

Playing catch-up, Target has built three new distribution hubs in the past four years to replace the capacity third-party partners previously provided.

Thornton represents its fourth and largest facility in square footage, and it has enough room to allow for an expansion in the products that can be carried, Probst said.

The new center will allow Target to offer its customers a greater variety of products, improve freshness and carry healthier options, she said.

Target has overhauled its food and beverage lineup to include more health and wellness items, like premium protein and meat products and products that promote improved gut health.

The “mass wellness” strategy, as some analysts describe it, also emphasizes “clean” ingredients. In late February, the  from its cereal line by May.

“Certified” refers to FDA-inspected synthetic colors, typically derived from petroleum sources, such as Blue No. 1 and No. 2, Red No. 3 and No. 40 and Yellow No.5 and Yellow No. 6.

“We know consumers are increasingly prioritizing healthier lifestyles, and we’re moving quickly to evolve our offerings to meet their needs,” said Cara Sylvester, executive vice president and chief merchandising officer at Target, in a release in February.

The company has reformulated its in-house Good & Gather brand to reduce artificial colors and sugar content. And to keep in the retailer’s good graces, national suppliers have reformulated their cereals and other products.

WK Kellogg Co., for example, is providing Target with an exclusive Wild Berry version of Froot Loops made without certified synthetic colors.

And the retailer plans to carry more exclusive boutique brands, like Boulder-based Purely Elizabeth, which will provide a Protein Granola, and new offerings from Lovebird out of Minneapolis.

Target is known for its mass-market prestige or “masstige” lines in clothing and home decor, such as its partnership with Missoni, the Italian apparel design house, and its collaboration first with Michael Graves and then Studio McGee for household goods.

“We’re just seeing a lot more celebrity and design intention within our food and beverage. That’s a fun element, and we are seeing a lot of growth there,” said Ashley Lowes, a spokeswoman for the company.

Top Banana

But curated brands won’t ever dethrone the uncontested king atop the grocery store food pyramid — the common banana.

Highlighting its importance, the tropical fruit receives special accommodations at the new food distribution center with 12 dedicated rooms, said Sean Walker, quality manager at the new facility.

Bananas, as they are at most grocery stores, are the top-selling item at Target, surpassing other staples like milk, eggs and bottled water in popularity.

In contrast to more seasonal fruits, they remain available and popular year-round. But that requires providing special ripening rooms where they can bathe in ethylene after arriving in the U.S.

Bananas release the gas naturally during ripening as complex starches turn into simple sugars, and the green chlorophyll in the peel softens.

But soft bananas don’t travel well. It takes about six to eight days for a newly arrived and green banana to get the proper yellow tan required to head to market, under the watchful eye of a ripening system powered with artificial intelligence.

Ten of the rooms are “single” rooms that can accommodate 21 pallets at a time, and two of the rooms are double rooms. Each pallet carries a ton of bananas.

If all the rooms were at capacity, the Thornton facility could host about 1.5 million or more bananas at any given time.

A strong Colorado connection

Target’s first location opened in 1962 in a suburb of St. Paul, and when the retailer expanded outside of Minnesota in 1966, it didn’t head to neighboring Wisconsin or Iowa.

Instead, Colorado received two stores, and six decades later, the one launched in Glendale remains one of the company’s most active.

Colorado has one of the highest concentrations of Super Target stores, which have expanded food and beverage sections. And the company’s focus on wellness plays well in a state that was at the center of the health food movement in the 1960s and 1970s.

The food distribution center represents an investment of more than $300 million, a significant chunk of the $5 billion in capital spending Target plans to make this year.

It will serve 130 stores in a region stretching from Salt Lake City to Kansas City, Mo., and from the Dakotas down to Texas.

“This gives us the added capacity to really continue to accelerate growth in food and beverage,” Probst said.

Colorado should see additional Super Target stores opening in the years ahead, part of the ongoing investment the company is making.

And existing stores in the state should see fresher food compared to the previous system that brought food in from Denton, Texas, and Cedar Falls, Iowa.

Regional suppliers also should benefit. Several consolidation docks between the inbound and outbound sides of the building will handle vendor shipments.

After arriving, those items will be transferred immediately into other outbound trucks, along with other incoming deliveries, and sent out to other warehouses.

The setup is designed to reduce the number of stops and miles that vendors have to complete to reach the various distribution facilities. And the trucking firms that Target contracts with can operate with fuller loads.

But it will also mean a lot more trucks on the road in Thornton.

Thornton Mayor Jan Kulmann, who attended the center’s opening ceremony along with several Thornton City Council members on May 20, said the area is commercial with no residential nearby.

Food processors operate in the area, and the hope is that the distribution center will drive more of them to locate there.

As to truck traffic, the center is on Washington Street, south of E-470 and east of Interstate 25.

Trucks will have easy highway access and will spend a minimal amount of time on local roads, like Washington Street, which has been expanded to handle higher freight volumes, she said.

“They have a good plan for managing it,” she said.

Target has also agreed to help the Food Bank of the Rockies and Food for Hope with its surplus product, she said.

“If you Google ‘lawn mower recycling,’ I’m the only one that comes up,” he said.

The 60-year-old owner of All-Pro Lawnmower Sales, Service & Recycling at 555 Santa Fe Drive in Denver spends his days toiling on small engines. He’s been working at the shop for a decade and has owned it for five.

The business brings in $250,000 annually with $160 carburetor fixes and $140 tune-ups. But the number of lawn mowers he services goes down each year.

“So many people have jumped on the electric [mower] that gas has slowly phased out,” he said.

The shop used to be a two-man show. When Mason started working there, one person would go out and buy unwanted mowers to resell; the other would repair ones that came into the shop.

The business would spend between $3,000 and $5,000 each winter to get enough stock in store for when the spring used mower season begins. Now, with recycling in the name, people bring in enough products for him to sell so that he can spend all his time making repairs. All customers have to do is roll them through his front door during business hours. He said he made the change after seeing how many people were taking their old, “perfectly good” mowers to the landfill.

About 20% of his revenue comes from selling used mowers. And for the used mowers that can’t be fixed, he’ll take the working parts and slap them on other ones to save money.

That����ap a boon for the small-business owner, who doesn’t have to pay another employee Denver’s nearly $20 hourly minimum wage.

“They’re lawn mowers. You’re not going to make a ton of money,” he said. “But I make a living.”

During the busy season, about 10 mowers come through the doors each day needing service. Most of the work is replacing a faulty carburetor, usually because the owner left gas inside the mower all winter.

It takes Mason just a half hour to do the repair.

The Arvada native has spent much of his life in Colorado. His dad was a diesel mechanic for Safeway, working on its truck fleet at its distribution center off of 40th and Colorado.

“I always loved little engines,” Mason said.

He served in the Army at Fort Hood and painted custom homes in Austin, then returned home to paint schools for Jefferson County.

But all the while, he battled alcoholism and wound up in trouble with the law, serving a 10-year sentence related to his addiction. When he was released, the first job he applied for was at All-Pro Lawnmower.

In the years since, he’s worked on everything from the traditional lawn mower engine to an antique John Deere. Last week, his shop had a moped and jet ski inside, with dozens of push mowers around them.

He’s seen seven competing shops go under during his time working there. He doesn’t repair electric mowers, which he said are “disposable.”

“There’s nothing to work on,” he said. “It����ap not like the old days where everything can be replaced.”

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The West Highland bakery at 3621 W. 32nd Ave. shuttered earlier this month, the business said on social media.

The bakery opened in 2006 and was sold to Fayth Hernandez and Miguel Chavez several months ago, according to  on Happy Bakeshop’s website. In , they cited “personal circumstances” for closing.

The pair bought Happy Bakeshop from Liane Heggy, an attorney who purchased it in 2018. Before that, the business was owned by co-founders Lisa Herman, Laura Reynolds and Sara Bencomo.

Heggy declined to comment to BusinessDen. Co-founder Herman said in a LinkedIn message that she doesn’t have any information outside of the social media posts.

“I’m just sad that it����ap closed after nearly 19 years in The Highlands,” she said.

During its long run, Happy Bakeshop, formerly known as Happy Cakes, became nationally recognized for its cupcakes and other sweet creations. The shop, which called itself Denver’s first gourmet cupcake bakery, was featured on “Today” and in many local magazines.

It����ap not the only recent closure in the building, which sits at 32nd Avenue and Lowell Boulevard. Frank Bonanno’s Dumplin’ closed two doors down from the bakery in mid-April. The restaurateur told BusinessDen last month that the 800-square-foot Asian comfort joint was a testing ground for Romyo, his upcoming Italian-Japanese fusion spot on Larimer Square.

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is adding 16,000 square feet of office space at 4880 Havana St. effective June 1. The company has a 74,000-square-foot headquarters and laser facility at 10325 E. 47th Ave.

The company that started in Silicon Valley in 2022 moved to Colorado in 2024. Plans are to double the current workforce of approximately 150 over the next year.

Xcimer has developed what the company says is the largest privately owned laser system in the world with the goal of building a pilot fusion power plant in 2035.

“Fusion is the last and best energy source that humanity is ever going to develop. There’s nothing on the horizon after fusion,” Alexander Valys, Xcimer co-founder, president and chief technology officer said in an interview with The Denver Post.

Fusion is what powers the stars and produced all the elements around us, Valys said.

Fusion is the opposite of which uses heavy elements such as uranium and plutonium and splits atoms into two or more parts, unleashing energy. Fission is used in nuclear power plants to produce electricity.

uses light elements, such as hydrogen, and extreme heat to make nuclei collide and fuse, producing a single, heavier atom and massive energy.

Fusion generates low-level, short-lived radioactive waste, not the high-level, long-lasting waste that fission does, according to

Scientists around the world have been working for decades on fusion, which requires overcoming particles’ natural repulsion to combining.  made history in 2022 when scientists for the first time achieved fusion “ignition” in a lab setting, creating more energy from the reaction than the energy used to start the process.

Different approaches are used to try to achieve fusion, but the only time more energy has been produced than energy used was at Livermore using lasers, Valys said. However, a challenge to using lasers to ignite the reaction is the expense.

“If you tried to take the laser technology (at Livermore) that was used to demonstrate that result,” Valys said, “you would need to spend something like $10 billion to build an equivalent laser that’s capable of running a power plant.”

Xcimer is developing a different laser technology that is an order of magnitude cheaper than the conventional technology, Valys said. If successful, the company would be able to build a commercially viable power plant.

The laser systems Xcimer is developing use a mixture of gases rather than lenses and optics to generate and focus light onto a small fuel capsule that triggers a reaction. Valys said the technology has been used for decades in the semiconductor industry.

“We’re talking about building the laser at a much larger scale than they’re used industrially. You need probably tens, hundreds of thousands of times more energy for fusion than you use for making chips,” he said.

Xcimer has partnered with a number of federal laboratories, including Lawrence Livermore, Los Alamos National Laboratory and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The company has received funds from the Department of Energy and investors.

Valys said the company moved to Colorado because of the area’s engineering, aerospace and other industrial talent and proximity to national labs. “That’s not what you find in Silicon Valley. You find great people. There’s a lot of software and other stuff, but not deep tech.”

Colorado is known for its work in lasers because of programs at Colorado State and in the “Denver-Boulder-Fort Collins triangle,” Valys said.

“One reason we’re really excited about Colorado is Colorado has the potential to be the center of commercial laser fusion for the U.S. because of all those advantages, because of the existing programs, the existing workforce, and of course, we hope, companies like us.”

The owner of La Diabla and Malinche Audiobar purchased two retail buildings at 2223 and 2227 Larimer Street last week for $870,000, according to public records.

The buildings sit next to each other and total 5,200 square feet. That works out to $168 per square foot in the deal.

The chef declined to share his plans for the properties. He does not own the real estate for his other restaurants.

“For the moment I’m going to keep the project confidential,” he said to BusinessDen via text.

The 2227 Larimer building was last home to Charlie’s 2nd Hand Tools, which closed late last year after operating there for 80 years. Avila said he will keep the business’s sign displayed.

Just two doors down is La Diabla, Avila’s restaurant serving up pozole, the Mexican soup. The other building, 2223 Larimer, has apartments up top and vacant retail space below.

The estate of Dorothy J. Rosenblatt was the seller in the deal. The property had been in the Rosenblatt family for decades, property records show.

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“But one day, we decided we could actually make our own,” the now-Denver resident said.

That was over a year ago. Next month, Lorden will open her first storefront at 712½ S. Pearl St. in West Wash Park.

Since late last year, soon after she and her Littleton-native husband moved to Colorado, she’s been slinging bagels and cream cheese out of her home while attending the occasional farmers markets.

She’s grown her clientele through mostly catering and has delivered 2,500 bagels in the past several months.

“The initial plan wasn’t necessarily to sell them out of our house, but it ended up being a blessing in disguise,” Lorden said, explaining that she’s had to tweak her recipe several times because of the higher altitude. She also makes “micro-adjustments” depending on whether it rains or not.

“I’ve iterated on the recipe over 100 times,” she said. “I live about 10 minutes south of the future location, so I’m hoping that a lot of our current customers come. I’d really love to cater to that local audience.”

The menu at Milly’s Bagels will feature sourdough-based bagels. Lorden will have toppings and flavors including sesame, salt, plain, cheddar jalapeño and blueberry cinnamon. Patrons can slather those with plain, veggie, scallion or a special brown sugar raspberry cream cheese.

She’ll also have a lox sandwich, a bacon egg and cheese and a rotating special that will initially be an open-faced bagel with cream cheese and a yet-to-be-chosen local jam. She’ll top that with an herb, like mint or basil, from her home garden.

“If any of those knock it out of the park, they might make the full menu,” she said of the monthly offerings.

Lorden’s bagels are hand rolled, something she says gives them an artisanal touch compared with the machine-rolled products that cause the dough to lose some of its tension.

“Being a sourdough bagel shop, we’re maybe not the first, but I’m one of few,” she said. “They’re healthier for you, better for the gut and the bagels come out fluffier and taller and prettier.”

Milly’s will also be one of the only shops in town where customers can order bagels “St. Louis style,” which involves cutting the bread into strips for dipping. Lorden, who grew up in that city before relocating to Chicago, said that slicing gives people the chance to mix and match flavors rather than commit to just one per meal.

“It����ap kind of controversial,” she said. “But it����ap been really popular with catering orders because that����ap a phenomenal way to share orders.”

Lorden worked for Boston Consulting Group in management consulting before starting Milly’s Bagels. She said she enjoyed the people she met, chiefly her husband, and how much she learned on the job.

But spending 48 out of the 52 weeks last year traveling took a toll on her.

“I felt disconnected from any sort of community,” she said.

She signed a two-year lease for the 200 square feet in Wash Park, which formerly housed the now-defunct ice cream chain Colfax and Cream. The build-out is minimal, she added, outside of a few DIY projects and Facebook Marketplace purchases. She plans to hire five or so people to staff the spot.

Patrons won’t be able to sit inside due to the limited space but can enjoy Milly’s sandwiches on a back patio. The space constraint, though, is forcing Lorden to boil and bake the bagels in a commissary kitchen.

“I always had this dream of running a restaurant and it mostly felt like a pipe dream,” she said. “But the more I started talking and thinking about it, I thought I could do a bagel shop now and take on a little risk.”

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Now, nearly nine years later, that home is coming to market for the first time.

A LoHi duplex on the 3600 block of Lipan Street is Argent����ap final residential project, a home he designed with architect Steve Lubowicki for himself.

One of the properties, the original home, is 1,450 square feet with two bedrooms and three baths after adding a second floor. It����ap listed for $950,000.

The home Argent helped design is 3,700 square feet with five bedrooms and five baths. It����ap listed for $1.75 million.

The project began with a friendship. Lubowicki had known Argent for years. They first worked together to create Argent����ap Denver studio in the Santa Fe Art District.

So, when Argent decided to build a new home on Lipan Street, he turned to Lubowicki.

“Lawrence really gave us the program, as all clients do,” Lubowicki said. “Bedrooms, size, amenities. Then he stepped back.”

Together, they developed a concept anchored in the site’s existing fabric: a single-family home built in 1905, thick-walled and solid, onto which a new wood-and-concrete structure with exposed beams would connect and rise.

Argent wanted privacy and light. He wanted space to display art. He wanted a basement that didn’t feel like a basement.

And he envisioned a third-floor terrace as his own private domain, a rooftop sanctuary above the streetscape with a view of the Denver skyline.

He also wanted to create space for his two sons, talking at length with them about what they wanted in the home. One wanted a tub. The other wanted a shower.

“He saw this as one of his art projects,” Lubowicki said.

Work on the project started, adding a second floor to the initial home. The new home began to take shape. Argent ordered doors, windows, and a custom floating staircase from China.

Then, in the fall of 2017, he died of cardiac arrest at age 60.

The materials he ordered had already arrived.

Krista and Jeff Macco, who lived across the street, watched the project take shape. She is an entrepreneur and real estate investor.

“He was a lovely person,” Krista Macco said of Argent. “He was building the coolest house and he was the best neighbor.”

Construction began in 2016. Then, one day, the site fell silent, with no roof, windows boarded up, and the building left an unfinished shell.

Krista Macco was surprised, given how passionate Argent had been about the project.

Eventually, she learned of his death, attended Argent����ap funeral and met his family.

The Maccos decided to buy the property from the estate, determined to finish it as Argent had envisioned.

“We knew his vision and we love the neighborhood,” Krista Macco said.

They were confident they could make the project work by living in the new home and renting out the original.

When the Maccos moved in, they had two young sons; now, as their boys are getting older, they’re ready to pass the home on to new owners.

They’re listing the properties separately but envision one buyer for both.

The property is technically a duplex, but that word undersells it.

Each side has its own entrance, roofline, architectural massing and outdoor space. From the street, the homes look similar in size.

The two units share a wall but nothing else. There is no mirrored floor plan, no sense of the attached product that the term “duplex” usually conjures.

“It����ap so different,” Krista Macco said. “Sometimes you forget it����ap a duplex.”

The larger unit, 3645, is the one Argent designed for himself. The more expansive, the more vertical.

The two-story entry features floor-to-ceiling slate. Slate also runs as a continuous spine along the exterior facade to the rooftop entertaining area. An oversized chandelier hangs at the center of the space, where a glass overlook from the second floor looks down into the entry.

The staircase is a floating composition of wood treads, steel posts and glass banisters.

The lower level with 10-foot ceilings, which Argent called his “anti-basement,” includes a wall of floor-to-ceiling south-facing windows that runs from the main living area down through the stairwell and into the lower floor, flooding the space with natural light and providing a visual connection to the floors above.

At the top of the house, the primary suite occupies an entire floor. Massive sliding doors open to a private terrace.

Skyline views extend in multiple directions. The spa bathroom is wrapped in slate, anchored by an oversized steam shower and a deep-soaking tub set beneath a skylight.

Listing agent Delroy Gill with LIV Sotheby’s International describes the homes simply. “That property is a one-of-one duplex based on layout, finishes, and what it has to offer.”

The home was built under grandfathered zoning allowances, so new construction in the neighborhood cannot reach the same scale.

“They could have cut corners and it wouldn’t have been the same home,” Gill said.

“They took the time to finish it in Lawrence Argent����ap honor.”

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The 17-story Columbine Place office tower at 216 16th St. will be auctioned off in early July through LoopNet.

The starting bid is $700,000 for the 150,000-square-foot building, which is 31% leased, according to marketing materials.

The tower’s past few years have been tumultuous.

In 2023, then-owner Columbine West 2 LLC, an affiliate of Montreal’s Toulon Development Co., defaulted on the building’s loan with $17.7 million unpaid. A judge put the property under the control of a receiver at the request of the property’s lender, an affiliate of Florida-based Rialto Capital.

Typically, a lender in such circumstances would opt to foreclose on the property. But in late 2025, Rialto opted to walk away and write off the loan, letting Toulon keep it.

That was likely largely due to the fact that the building had a ground lease, which means Toulon owned the structure but not the land beneath it. And the landowner hadn’t been fully paid either, meaning it could terminate the ground lease and take the building.

By February, the landowner — the University of Hawaii Foundation — had done just that, giving it ownership of the tower.

Now, the foundation, which didn’t respond to a request for comment, wants to move on.

Both the land and the building are included in the sale, according to marketing materials. Denver’s assessor values the parcels at a combined $11.9 million.

The building needed significant repairs as of last fall. John Rothschild Jr., the Newmark receiver who ran the building for about two years, said in October that three of the five elevators were out of service.

“Other unresolved maintenance issues include ongoing HVAC issues, utility outage issues, garage ventilation fan replacement, building access (key fob) issues, fire dry system repairs, and other general Property maintenance issues,” he said in court records last fall.

While the University of Hawaii Foundation wants out of downtown Denver, another university foundation wants in.

The University of Colorado Foundation is under contract to buy Independence Plaza, a 25-story, 567,000-square-foot office tower at 1050 17th St.

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