Long-awaited Gates project gathers steam

Offices, retail, homes will fill 83 acres in 12-15 years

By John Rebchook, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published December 1, 2007 at 12:05 a.m.

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Photo by Chris Schneider / The Rocky

Piles of concrete and rebar await crushing Wednesday on the site of the former Gates Rubber plant, west of Broadway along South Santa Fe Drive.

Photo by George Kochaniec Jr. / The Rocky

McStain Neighborhoods has sold about 20 energy-efficient homes east of Broadway and south of Mississippi Avenue. Prices start in the upper $400,000s.

Belz, who heads Cherokee Denver, is a major developer.

Photo by George Kochaniec Jr. / The Rocky

A grader prepares a 1.8-acre parcel of land east of the former Gates Rubber Co. plant Friday morning. Lionstone developers are building a four-story parking garage on the site with about 700 spaces and 10,000 square feet of retail.

Plans for the former Gates plant will create an urban village, tentatively called Metropolitan Gardens.

Plans for the former Gates plant will create an urban village, tentatively called Metropolitan Gardens.

Photo by The Rocky /

UP The familiar Gates Rubber Co. sign overlooks the west side of the plant in this 1987 photo. Today, most of the plant has been demolished and recycled. The steel is melted down, and much of the concrete is intended for use in roads around the redevelopment.

Photo by The Rocky /

Gates Rubber Co. workers stopped the humming machinery in the Denver factory to pose for this picture in 1917.

From fan belts to greenbelts - at long last the urban revival of the former Gates Rubber plant is taking shape.

Buildings are coming down, homes are going up, tenants are moving into renovated offices, a handful of residents have moved into their homes, luxury apartments are on the drawing board, and even a movie theater chain started by Robert Redford soon will make its Colorado debut at Gates.

It's Denver's biggest and newest urban village, at 83 acres, including the plant and surrounding land. It's anchored by a light-rail station next to the storied plant founded 96 years ago by Charles Gates at South Broadway and Interstate 25.

"When you look at the key to any real estate - location, location and location - we are right on the river, we have a central location between downtown and the Tech Center, and we are on what currently is the biggest hub for light rail," said Ferd Belz III, president of Cherokee Denver, one of the primary developers of the land.

"And that is not even mentioning all of the amenities and infrastructure that are going to be created."

Just this week, buyers and developers inked deals for the last pieces of land to be redeveloped.

The numbers are staggering, for what's termed "urban infill" development. Try this for scope: 800,000 square feet of office space, 500,000 square feet of retail space, two hotels, more than 3,000 apartments, dozens of duplexes and homes, and a movie theater.

And that's just the beginning.

"What's really happening is that it is creating its own, new submarket," said Chris Cowan, a broker with Apartment Realty Advisors.

Cowan, with fellow ARA broker Steve O'Dell, has found a buyer for the 12.8-acre site known as Broadway Station at Mississippi Avenue and South Broadway, where a luxury 400-unit apartment community is planned in the first phase.

That land, the former east-side campus for Gates, is owned by Lionstone.

Across Broadway, Trammell Crow Residential this week bought a 5.1-acre site from Cherokee Denver, where it plans 460 apartment units - 400 of them market-rate and 60 of them affordable.

Cowan said the 33 acres owned by Lionstone, and the approximately 50 acres owned by Cherokee complement each other.

"Cherokee is going to have housing and office, but it is going to be very retail- and entertainment-oriented," Cowan said. "That's going to be a great asset for renters and residents on the Lionstone side."

McStain Neighborhoods is building 45 homes - 44 townhomes and one single-family home - on a portion of the site.

About 20 of the energy-efficient homes have been sold, said Eric Wittenberg, president of McStain.

He said sales would be even stronger, except for the sluggish resale market in the nearby neighborhoods.

McStain initially hoped to buy some more land in the neighborhood where it was going to build more dense condos and townhomes. But Wittenberg said that with the slow housing market and rising construction costs, the deal didn't financially pan out.

However, if the housing market picks up, Wittenberg said, he would love to resurrect that deal.

By the end of the year, all of the buildings on a 25-acre site bordered by Santa Fe Drive, I-25 and the rail lines will be torn down, Belz said.

That site represents by far the largest recycling operation in the Denver area because more than 95 percent of the materials - such as concrete, steel and copper - are being recycled, said Rick Wells, a senior vice president at Cherokee.

That site is under contract to Joseph Freed & Associates of Chicago.

However, Belz noted that Cherokee will remain as an owner of the land under a partnership with Freed. Freed will serve as the primary "vertical" developer in charge of constructing buildings.

Cherokee also owns another 18-acre site at Broadway and I-25, and Belz said he is talking to Freed about creating a partnership with Cherokee on that parcel as well.

Earlier this year, Freed announced it has inked a deal with Sundance Cinemas LLC, a brand created by actor Robert Redford, to open a six-screen theater on the site.

Freed has renamed the former Gates property as Metropolitan Gardens, but Belz said that name may be changed.

"Sundance is the only announced tenant at this point, but Freed is getting a lot of interest," Belz said. "Things will probably slow down now that we're in the holiday season and will pick up next year."

In some ways, this is a dream property for a developer.

Belz said it is going to be a "fairly dense, mixed-use development, although not like downtown density. There are going to be several buildings in the 10- to 12-story range. There will be very pedestrian-friendly streets, great access, and great shops and restaurants."

Although Lionstone's Broadway Station will have a different development flavor, "it is the classic transit-oriented development site," said broker O'Dell. "It has got these incredible transportation attributes, being right at Broadway and I-25, and is by the biggest light-rail hub in the system today."

Belz said the west side of their land will be developed before the east side, with the entire development taking 12 to 15 years to complete.

On the east side, Cherokee is trying to preserve the facades of some of the older buildings, although that is complicated because the land underneath the structures is contaminated, he said.

It would be far easier to simply raze the buildings, but he said they are trying to see if it is feasible to save some of the exteriors.

Sharon Withers, head of the Platt Park People's Association, said the neighborhood appreciates the efforts to preserve the exterior of some of the older buildings.

Withers also said the most recent presentation from the Joseph Freed group was well-accepted.

"We thought their presentation was very straightforward," she said. "It sounds like they are making good progress. I can't really remember anyone having any real objections."

The neighborhood also appreciates that Lionstone and Cherokee/Freed appear to want to mesh their developments in a way that complements each other.

Lionstone, on the east side of Broadway, has turned an old Ford plant on the site into an office building that is 85 percent leased, said Doug McKinnon, principal of the group.

All told, about 50 percent of Lionstone's 33 acres has been spoken for, McKinnon said.

"I think we offer a fantastic alternative to downtown, at far lower prices," McKinnon said.

He said he is "sensitive" to the fact that between his property and Trammel Crow's, about 860 apartment units will be coming to the area. But the market appears strong enough to handle both projects, he said.

Cowan and O'Dell agree.

"You obviously can't build an infinite number of units there," Cowan said. "But if you look at the market, to the south you really have to go to Hampden and I-25 to find any Class-A apartments. And the closest competitor in Denver is Hanover's development in the Golden Triangle. And being right at light rail, renters can easily make it downtown but paying far less in rent than they would downtown."

• December 1, 2007

  3:11 a.m.

  Suggest removal

  SteveM writes:

  Disappointing that, here again, developers have a prime opportunity to build upwards and conserve precious urban land, but are talking maximums of 10-12 story buildings. From a building materials perspective, environmentalists perspective, and land conservation point of view, Denver needs to build up not fill in. What on earth are we going to do when all of our available land is filled with these short and wasteful buildings? Continue to sprawl? Wake up people. Suburban sprawl is what got us in this traffic jam in the first place, let's not do the same thing with our urban centers. This location is, as the article correctly asserts, one of the largest hubs on the light rail lines at present. Why on earth would we allow the 85 acres to be completely filled with medium to light density housing and hotel projects? It's because we are not thinking beyond these developers' immediate need to make a buck. They don't seem to care about our region 25 years down the road. Governor Owens mortgaged our children's children's future to widen and build T-Rex, let's at least get something for it by more effectively utilizing the land along this conduit and densely utilize the land. Maybe it's time our city planners and council take a trip to down town Chicago and see how the city planners there have created one of the USA's most liveable city centers by meshing extreme density with a lakefront oasis (thanks to Daniel Burnham's vision). The solution for us is really quite simple. The city council should create a land bank with incentives to developers in the following fashion: Developer A has 2 acres and wants to build a hotel, Developer B has 3 acres and wants to build 200 apartment units--the city gives them incentives to combine their projects into a taller hotel/apartment building on the two acre parcel and banks the 3 acres for future developments. A 5 story hotel suddenly has 20 stories of apartments above it, and we have land for a similar structure 10 years from now, that can be a 3 acre park in the meantime rather than all 5 acres being consumed. Why do we fear building up? Do developers in Colorado not yet realize the environmental and infrastructure advantages to vertical building? We are really missing the boat here to spend billions on a light rail system to get us out of a traffic jam nightmare, only to then recreate the same problems on a larger scale by unenlightened, low to medium-density infills. Somebody needs to champion this cause as it it pivotal to the survival of our metro region. Please!

• December 1, 2007

  9:42 a.m.

  Suggest removal

  Denver2050 writes:

  SteveM, you make good points but your comments don't appropriately factor market considerations.

  Yes, metro Denver has terrible suburban sprawl (has to be one of the worst five cities in the entire US). However, I personally prefer 10 story buildings over huge skyscrapers. Buildings with more than 10 floors don't make economical sense in metro Denver (except in downtown). For architectural reasons, they are much more expensive to build and aren't economically feasible.

  Also, it's important to understand that traffic problems are primarily caused by poor zoning and planning -- not suburban sprawl. Aurora, Highlands Ranch, Thornton, etc. have far too much residential land and far too little office space. Residents within those cities commute because there isn't enough commercial office space available to support the population. If city planners were more intelligent and "peppered" commercial zoning into their plans more often, professionals and entrepreneurs within those communities would locate their businesses closer to their homes. This would, in turn, reduce commute time from 10+ miles per day to only a few miles per day.

  When considering all factors (market forces, quality of life, traffic, etc.), the best city design would be to have about 12 well-spaced, high-density hubs with 8 to 12 story mixed commercial buildings and a healthy number of similarly-sized apartment/condo/loft structures mixed in. The rest of the space between the hubs would primarily contain residential homes. This is the best design for preserving quality of life, minimizing commute time, and protecting the environment at minimal cost. This would essentially create a metro area with 12 smaller "downtowns" and would leave a robust business, retail, entertainment district (similar to DTC or downtown) within less than five miles of every home.

  Unfortunately, planning this type of development requires wisdom and vision -- two things that our county and city planning officials rarely possess.

• December 1, 2007

  8:06 p.m.

  Suggest removal

  gkb2008 writes:

  It is particularly gratifying to see that 95 % of the materials from the site will be recycled. Its just too bad buildings of a higher height (15 to 25 stories) are not part of the plan and housing for those with limited or smaller income (rents less than $400 per month) are not being included since its so close to a mass transit hub.

• December 4, 2007

  9:45 a.m.

  Suggest removal

  topher writes:

  SteveM, I'm fairly certain the reason the buildings are capped at that height is because of the Washington Park viewplane. The city wants to build up but certainly does not want to lose the panoramic view of the mountains from Washington Park.

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