Denver Real Estate News

Nearly 73% of Denver homeowners carry a mortgage. That’s the second-highest rate in the country, behind only Washington, D.C., according to Realtor.com research.

Nationally, homeowners own nearly 40% of U.S. homes outright, marking the highest percentage ever recorded.

But Denver’s mortgage-free rate rests at a mere 27%, far below the national average.

Several factors explain Denver’s high mortgage rates:

• Rising home values: Home prices have surged, making cash purchases challenging.
• In-migration of buyers: Many newcomers from pricier markets, like California, are relocating to Denver, often outbidding residents and driving prices higher.
• High competition: Over the past few years, demand for homes has exceeded supply, driven by both new buyers and existing homeowners looking to move. Although supply has increased this year, prices remain high.
• First-time buyers: Denver has a significant number of first-time homebuyers who typically enter the market with little equity and rely on mortgages to finance their purchases, which contributes to high mortgage rates.

Since 2010, the trend towards mortgage independence has increased by 8%, while the percentage of financed homes has decreased by roughly 7%.

In Denver, just as across much of the country, younger buyers are grappling with staggering home prices, mounting student debt, and elevated interest rates, making entry into the housing market increasingly daunting.

At the same time, 78% of older homeowners indicate they plan to “age in place,” disrupting traditional homebuying and selling pathways, reducing inventory, and intensifying competition for first-time buyers.

Many older homeowners who leveraged ultra-low mortgage rates during the pandemic now feel little incentive to sell their properties, fearing that moving to a new home would mean facing significantly higher borrowing costs.

Data from a recent Redfin survey underscores this trend, revealing that only 20% of older homeowners are considering a move to a 55+ community, with just 10% contemplating moving in with adult children or into assisted living.

The overwhelming majority—78%—plan to remain in their homes indefinitely, leading to a growing generational divide in housing.

Looking ahead

Eventually, baby boomers’ homes will hit the market. And there may not be enough options to meet demand.

The senior housing sector suffered huge losses during the pandemic.

Demand nosedived due to high infection rates, deaths, and social-distancing restrictions imposed on residents and their families.

Labor shortages sent costs soaring. Many projects defaulted on their mortgages after interest rates spiked.

Occupancy rates returned to prepandemic levels last year, and rent growth resumed.

Related Articles

• October 24, 2025 Sponsored: They got it right: Downsizers tell how they timed their perfect senior move with aid from The Steller Group
• October 24, 2025 Sponsored: Colorado homes shrink: Why some buyers embrace smaller spaces
• October 17, 2025 Sponsored: Colorado homebuyers experience best market in years
• October 10, 2025 Sponsored: Denver area home buyers want houses, not condos or townhomes
• October 3, 2025 Sponsored: Why Denver homeowners spend more on renovations than anyone else in America

Senior housing occupancy rates in the United States rose by 0.3 percentage points, increasing from 87.1% in the fourth quarter of 2024 to 87.4% in the first quarter of 2025, according to data from NIC MAP.

“Older adults are moving into senior housing at a rapid pace, and that trend will continue given the wave of Baby Boomers and many more ‘solo agers’ who don’t have a caregiver to rely on as a safety net,” said Lisa McCracken, NIC’s head of research and analytics.

“The industry needs to ramp up development for supply to catch up with demand, but we don’t foresee any meaningful movement here in 2025 given current market conditions.”

The news and editorial staffs of The Denver Post had no role in this post’s preparation.

Colorado is trying to sell an office building in Denver’s Cap Hill neighborhood that was previously used by the state’s labor department.

The three-story building at 251 E. 12th Ave. is just shy of 130,000 square feet and was built in 1957. It sits on an acre between Grant and Sherman streets, two blocks south of the Capitol building.

A spokesperson for the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment said in an email that the department shifted “to more remote work models” in the wake of the pandemic and moved staff from the 12th Avenue building to its main office at 633 17th St. about a year ago.

JLL is marketing the 12th Avenue building for sale. The brokerage’s marketing materials do not list a price but call the property an “excellent Cap Hill location for an owner-user or fantastic redevelopment opportunity for multifamily.”

Related Articles

• Americans staying put: US home turnover rate at lowest level in decades as housing slump drags on
• Average long-term US mortgage rate dips to 6.17%, its lowest level in more than a year
• Is Telluride ready to ‘chuck Chuck?’ Why the opulent ski town turned on the resort’s longtime owner
• Complex property deal involving Lakewood, Jeffco Schools and a nonprofit group has landed in court
• Sale of 2 industrial centers marks largest deal in Denver market in past 3 years

The site is zoned C-MX-8, which generally allows a mix of uses up to 8 stories. Denver’s assessor values the property at $18.1 million, records show.

A portion of the existing building was once used for parking, according to JLL. It was converted into additional office space in 2003.

Labor department employees who moved from Cap Hill to 633 17th St., meanwhile, are on the move again.

The department is in the process of downsizing into 131,000 square feet at 707 17th St. That’s about a third less than the combined 197,000 square feet the department occupied at 621 and 633 17th St.

Read more from our partner, BusinessDen.

Get more business news by signing up for our Economy Now newsletter.

A cash-strapped school district that’s looking to unload a shuttered elementary school.

A nonprofit human services agency that’s in need of a bigger home as it serves more than 60,000 households a year.

And a judge who’s telling Colorado’s fifth-largest city not to make any moves on the whole situation — a complex deal that would allow the agency to move into the school — until she can determine whether everything is on the up and up.

That’s the strange nexus at which Lakewood, Jeffco Public Schools and The Action Center have found themselves after their proposed real estate deal was challenged in court by a former Lakewood city councilwoman who thinks the whole arrangement is “taking place in secret.”

“Government should have to do this in a way that’s transparent and above board — and includes the public in this kind of decision-making,” said Anita Springsteen, who’s also an attorney. “I think it’s unethical. I think it’s wrong.”

The deal on the table calls for Lakewood to purchase Emory Elementary — which closed three years ago because of declining enrollment — from Jeffco Public Schools for $4 million. At the same time, the city would buy The Action Center’s existing facility on West 14th Avenue for $4 million.

The Action Center, in turn, would buy Emory from the city for $1 million when the organization, which for more than a half-century has provided free clothing and food, family services and financial assistance to those in need, moves to its new home in the former school on South Teller Street.

The core problem, Springsteen says, is that Lakewood did not properly announce two September 2024 executive sessions during which officials discussed details of the deal in private. In a lawsuit, she accused the city of violating Colorado’s open meetings law, which requires governments to state, in advance and “in as much detail as possible,” what will be discussed behind closed doors “without compromising the purpose for the executive session.”

Jefferson County District Judge Meegan Miloud had enough questions last week about how Lakewood gave public notice of its executive sessions that she imposed a temporary restraining order on the City Council — forbidding it from voting on three ordinances that would authorize the deal to move forward.

The council had been scheduled to consider the measures Monday night.

Miloud said the city’s executive session notices on the council’s September 2024 agendas were “so vague that the public has no way of identifying or discerning what is being negotiated or what property is being assessed.”

On Tuesday morning, the judge conducted a hearing on the matter but did not make a ruling. She called another hearing for next Monday and said in a new order that her injunction remains in effect.

The fast-moving situation has Lakewood playing defense. A special council meeting that had been set for Wednesday night — to once again put the ordinances up for a council vote — will now have to be rescheduled, city spokeswoman Stacie Oulton said.

Lakewood, she contended, has been open throughout the process.

“The public process has included updates from the city manager during public City Council meetings, and the city has followed the public notification process for these agenda items,” she told The Denver Post in an email this week. “Additionally, the proposed end user of the property, the Action Center, has had several public community meetings about its proposal.”

Anita Springsteen, a lawyer and former Lakewood city councilwoman, is leading a challenge to a complex land deal between the City of Lakewood, Jeffco Public Schools and The Action Center that would bring the humans services nonprofit to the former Emory Elementary School in Lakewood on Oct. 28, 2025. She posed for a portrait outside the former school. (Photo by RJ Sangosti/The Denver Post) Questions about meetings, market value

Jeff Roberts, the executive director of the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition, said it was “unusual” for a judge, via a temporary restraining order, to preempt a city council from casting a vote.

But case law, he said, makes it clear that governing bodies in Colorado must provide as much detail as possible when they announce closed-door sessions — short of disclosing or jeopardizing strategies and positions that are crucial in real estate negotiations.

“In general, an announcement that doesn’t give any indication of the topic is not enough information for the public,” Roberts said. “In most cases — and that’s why it’s in the law — you must tell the public what the executive session is about.”

That standard, he said, was upheld by the Colorado Court of Appeals in 2020, when it ruled that the Basalt Town Council violated the state’s open meetings law several times in 2016 by not properly announcing the topic of private deliberations it would be having regarding a former town manager.

In the Lakewood school matter, the alleged open meetings violations are not the only thing that bothers Springsteen. She objects to the structure of the proposed real estate transaction, saying it would be a sweetheart deal for The Action Center and a waste of money for taxpayers.

“They are stealing money out of our pockets,” said Springsteen, who served on City Council from 2019 to 2023.

Lakewood, she said, would be underpaying for the 17-acre Emory Elementary School parcel, overpaying for The Action Center’s current facility and basically giving the school property away to the nonprofit.

“For the city to not intend to own the property, but to buy it on behalf of a nongovernmental organization — when did we become an agent for other agencies?” Springsteen said.

According to the Jefferson County assessor’s site, The Action Center’s buildings on West 14th Avenue have a total value of about $2 million, while the city has proposed purchasing them for double that. The assessor’s office lists Emory Elementary as having a total value of up to $12 million.

Springsteen said she is flummoxed by the Jeffco school district’s willingness to sell the elementary school to Lakewood for a third of that valuation.

“What bothers me most is the way Jeffco schools is handling this,” she said. “The district didn’t even have a school resource officer at Evergreen High School because of budgetary issues.”

She was referring to when a 16-year-old student critically wounded two fellow students at the foothills high school last month. There was no SRO at the school at the time of the shooting. Evergreen High School’s principal told reporters the district had “deprioritized” SROs for its mountain schools leading up to the shooting.

The school district is looking at a $39 million budget hole for the coming year.

A spokesperson for Jeffco schools said a decision on whether to sell Emory Elementary to Lakewood hadn’t been made yet. That vote, by the district’s school board, is expected Nov. 13.

Raven Price picks out food at The Action Center’s food bank in Lakewood on Oct. 28, 2025. (Photo by RJ Sangosti/The Denver Post) ‘We need to bring this into our community’

Pam Brier, the CEO of The Action Center, said property values don’t tell the full story.

“There are many instances locally and nationally of municipalities helping to support the affordable acquisition of properties for organizations like The Action Center — who are serving such a critical need in our community,” she said, “and ultimately saving taxpayer money by helping to meet people’s basic needs.”

On Wednesday, she provided The Denver Post a May 2024 appraisal done by Centennial-based Masters Valuation Services that valued the organization’s current facility — made up of a 14,960-square-foot building and a 15,540-square-foot building — at $4 million.

Her organization, Brier said, serves 300 households a day. It provides a free grocery and clothing market, financial assistance, free meals, family coaching, skills classes and workforce support to people who are down on their luck.

“As public dollars dwindle, our work is more important than ever,” she said. “Without organizations like The Action Center to provide food, clothing and other critical support, individuals and families fall into crisis, needing assistance that will cost taxpayers and cities so much more.”

Oulton, the Lakewood city spokeswoman, said it was not unusual for cities and counties across metro Denver to “provide financial support in a variety of ways to nonprofits that serve their communities.”

“Additionally, Jeffco Public Schools has clearly communicated to the city that the district views the value of this project in more than the dollars involved, because the district’s priority has been to see former schools used in a way that will continue providing services and support to Jeffco Public Schools students and their families,” Oulton said.

Diana Losacco, a 48-year resident of Lakewood who lives about a mile from the Emory site, was one of more than three dozen people who urged the city to pursue the purchase and sale of the school to The Action Center on the Lakewood Speaks website.

Raven Price and her 4-year-old son, Gabriel Luna, head home with a wagon full of food they selected from The Action Center’s food bank in Lakewood on Oct. 28, 2025. (Photo by RJ Sangosti/The Denver Post) Related Articles

• Lakewood’s controversial parkland measure grinds residential projects — even small ones — to a halt
• Schools targeted for closure in Denver, Jeffco have disproportionately high numbers of students of color, data shows
• Jeffco Public Schools will close 16 schools in Denver’s suburbs due to declining enrollment

“This will provide opportunities to people to become self-sufficient, which will provide significant financial savings for our community,” Losacco told The Post in an interview. “We need to bring this into our community. It needs to be in a neighborhood.”

But not her neighborhood, said Katherine Byrne. Byrne has owned Stockton Pet Hospital on South Wadsworth Boulevard for six years. The business, which was founded in 1964, sits just a few hundred feet west of Emory Elementary.

There are enough challenges with assaults, shots fired and drug dealing in the vicinity, especially along the nearby bike path, Byrne said. Because The Action Center won’t be providing overnight shelter space at its new location for people who are homeless, she worries about where people using the organization’s services might go once the doors close.

And she wonders why the city didn’t look at wealthier areas of Lakewood for potential sites to relocate The Action Center.

“It’s just a ridiculous, unsavory plan to put this center in the middle of a neighborhood that didn’t know it was coming,” Byrne said.

Get more Colorado news by signing up for our daily Your Morning Dozen email newsletter.

Denver regulators want to step up enforcement against landlords who refuse to comply with the city’s nascent license program for residential rental properties.

The program, passed by the Denver City Council in 2021, requires all residential rentals in the city to be licensed. The goal, officials said at the time, “is to proactively enforce minimum required housing standards to ensure public health, safety and welfare.”

Most landlords have complied with this requirement, city officials say. The Denver Department of Excise and Licenses has issued more than 27,000 licenses encompassing 203,000 rental units as of this month, city figures show.

But there are still a small number of landlords who have yet to comply with the program — and city officials feel the current fine structure is inadequate to incentivize good behavior.

Excise and Licenses officials on Tuesday presented a proposed ordinance to the City Council’s Finance and Business Committee that would increase the maximum penalty to $5,000 per violation, per day. That’s more than five times the current top fine of $999.

Regulators said changes are needed to align licensing penalties with fines issued by the Denver Department of Public Health and Environment for housing code violations. There’s a perception of inconsistency if these fines are disparate, while some landlords may choose to pay the fines rather than correct the issues, Erica Rodgers, Excise and License’s policy director, told councilmembers.

The $5,000 fine represents the top end of the city’s fine structure — one officials hope to use infrequently.

The city issued more than 2,700 warnings to noncompliant landlords during the initial enforcement phase of the licensing program. Regulators dinged 431 landlords with a first citation, a $150 fine. Sixty-six operators received a second citation, a $500 fine. And the city issued just 24 third citations, which came with the maximum $999 fine.

“The majority (of landlords) are good actors,” said Diana Romero Campbell, councilmember for District 4, “but a few have taken advantage of our system.”

Tenant advocates applauded the proposed changes, saying the current fine structure does little to ensure accountability for larger, corporate landlords.

Still, “this is not a silver bullet,” said Eida Altman, director of the Denver Metro Tenants’ Union. “We actually have to use these fines.”

Drew Hamrick, general counsel and senior vice president of government affairs for the Colorado Apartment Association, called the ordinance “problematic” because it “discourages investment in rental housing.”

“People have to be willing to risk the capital to invest in Denver housing,” he told councilmembers.

Related Articles

• Salvation Army to lay off 135 Denver employees as shelter operations change hands
• Coloradans scramble for help as SNAP suspension looms and food banks ‘just don’t have enough’
• Denver mayor agrees to restore some funding to city clerk’s office, but casts doubt on election concerns
• Denver approves $1.5 million more in settlements in case filed over 2020 protests
• Denver City Council drops special tax district proposal in Cherry Creek

The licensing program has been under scrutiny since its implementation.

A Denver Post investigation in May found the city has handed out licenses to building owners with years of documented violations, who continue to neglect their tenants immediately after receiving the all-clear.

The newspaper reviewed public health inspection records for the five most-fined apartment buildings in Denver, as well as several of the city’s most frequently cited properties. All but one received licenses, despite allegations from residents and serious habitability infractions.

Stay up-to-date with Colorado Politics by signing up for our weekly newsletter, The Spot.

Office vacancy in downtown Denver ticked up again in the third quarter, driven heavily by decisions at a tech firm and an oil and gas giant.

At the end of September, total office vacancy in the city center was 37.7%, according to CBRE. That was up 0.6 percentage point from the real estate brokerage’s adjusted second-quarter figure.

Total vacancy includes both direct vacancy, in which unused space is marketed by a landlord, and space marketed for sublease by a tenant. Downtown direct vacancy itself was 34.8% last quarter.

CBRE’s definition of “downtown” includes the Central Business District and LoDo, as well as LoHi’s Platte Street and a portion of Uptown. It doesn’t include RiNo, Cherry Creek or other spots farther afield.

Downtown saw negative net absorption of 171,000 square feet in the second quarter, according to CBRE. That means 171,000 additional square feet — equivalent to seven floors at Republic Plaza — were available at the end of June compared with the end of March.

Absorption can be heavily influenced by just one or two large companies. In the second quarter, Xcel’s decision to move to RiNo accounted for the entirety of the negative 270,000 square feet of absorption.

In the third quarter, tech firm Checkr and Chevron were the key firms.

Checkr, a San Francisco-based background check company, vacated 73,000 square feet in the 18th Street Atrium building at 1621 18th St. in the third quarter, according to CBRE.

While the company still has a floor in the building for now — its initial lease was for 92,000 square feet — Checkr will eventually give that up when it moves into a much smaller space at 1125 17th St. The company leased 28,000 square feet there, according to CBRE.

Houston-based Chevron, meanwhile, vacated 108,000 square feet in Granite Tower at 1099 18th St. in the third quarter, according to CBRE. Chevron is attempting to sublet the space, which it acquired as part of its 2023 purchase of PDC Energy. In May, Chevron told the state that it intended to lay off 125 employees based out of the office.

The biggest downtown lease signing of the third quarter came from another oil and gas giant, EOG Resources, which took 100,000 square feet at 1550 17th St.

While great news for the owner of that building, EOG’s deal will ultimately result in more downtown vacancy. That’s because the company is downsizing — the space will eventually replace EOG’s existing 165,000-square-foot lease at 600 17th St.

Ken Gooden, a broker at JLL who represents tenants, said he’s hopeful that the numbers won’t get much worse.

“I feel like the worst is definitely behind us, but it’s going to be a long recovery,” he said.

Gooden said he still doesn’t see a clear catalyst that will transform the nature of downtown or turn the tide on leasing. He noted that the office sector in San Francisco is benefiting from the boom in artificial intelligence companies.

“I don’t think there’s any desire for them to come to Denver,” he said. A prepandemic trend of tech companies adding offices here has slowed.

But Gooden said his clients that are already located downtown generally aren’t talking about leaving it. One client is “looking very seriously” at 1900 Lawrence, the skyscraper completed in 2024 that needs to secure more tenants before its loan comes due in mid-2027.

For all the focus on downtown as a whole, however, one end of it has much deeper challenges. Total office vacancy is 46% — nearly one in two floors empty — in what CBRE considers Uptown, an area that includes the Wells Fargo Center and blocks to the east.

“I don’t have any clients looking there, which is scary,” Gooden said of the east end of downtown.

The numbers get better the closer you get to Union Station.

Related Articles

• IKEA to open new smaller-format store in Colorado Springs
• Sale of 2 industrial centers marks largest deal in Denver market in past 3 years
• Second Cherry Creek gateway corner sells for $3M
• In the Denver area, leasing for industrial spaces seeing a rebound
• ZS Capital Partners acquires Centennial Technology Center for $14.6 million

Downtown’s nicest office buildings, known as “Class A,” continue to fare better than average. But they too had negative absorption for the quarter, and the stats are still grim, with total vacancy at 31.2%, according to CBRE.

Across the broader metropolitan area, total vacancy was 28.2%, according to CBRE, with negative absorption of 264,000 square feet.

Read more from our partner, BusinessDen.

Get more business news by signing up for our Economy Now newsletter.

Doug McKinnon has sold another of his Cherry Creek gateway corners.

The owner of real estate firm McKinnon & Associates last week sold 55-65 S. Colorado Blvd., two parcels that form the northwest corner of Colorado and Bayaud Avenue, for $3.2 million, according to public records.

The undeveloped site is 0.38 acres, so the deal works out to $191 a square foot.

McKinnon said the local buyer “will be utilizing the G-RO-5 zoning we put in place to develop an office building for his firm’s use on the site.”

The property was purchased by DEG Realestate LLC, an entity formed by Alla Feldman with an office address corresponding to a home within Cherry Creek Country Club. Reached by phone, Feldman declined to comment on the purchase.

No development plans have been submitted to Denver for the site.

The corner lot is one of four on the outskirts of Cherry Creek — all marketed as a redevelopment opportunity — that a McKinnon-led group bought in 2019 for $5.5 million. The other lots were the southwest corner of Colorado and Bayaud and the southwest and northwest corners of Colorado and First Avenue.

McKinnon got the sites rezoned in 2020 after striking an unusually detailed “good neighbor agreement” with surrounding residents. Then, he put “Cherry Creek Gateway” signage up at each of the properties indicating they were for sale.

Related Articles

• IKEA to open new smaller-format store in Colorado Springs
• Sale of 2 industrial centers marks largest deal in Denver market in past 3 years
• Checkr, Chevron decisions push downtown vacancy up again in third quarter
• In the Denver area, leasing for industrial spaces seeing a rebound
• ZS Capital Partners acquires Centennial Technology Center for $14.6 million

In 2023, McKinnon sold the southwest corner of Colorado and Bayaud for $1.4 million.

He still owns the corners at Colorado and First. He bought a neighboring parcel there for $1.8 million in 2023, giving him a larger footprint at the intersection.

Get more real estate and business news by signing up for our weekly newsletter, On the Block.

Read more from our partner, BusinessDen.

Get more business news by signing up for our Economy Now newsletter.

American homes are shrinking.

From 2017 to 2025, the size of the median home dropped an average 6% from 1,976 square feet to 1,852 square feet, according to research compiled by Level Frames, an online framing company.

Colorado’s homes are shrinking at the second-fastest rate in the U.S., behind only Hawaii.

Between 2017 and 2025, the median home size in Colorado decreased by 17%, from 2,528 to 2,088 square feet.

Despite this reduction, Colorado homes remain relatively large. With a typical size of 2,088 square feet in 2025, they are still nearly 12% bigger than the national average of 1,852 square feet.

Homes in the Denver-Aurora-Centennial metro area are nearly 26% smaller than in 2017. The average home size has decreased from 2,883 to 2,142 square feet, a loss of approximately 740 square feet —over a quarter of its original size.

Although the overall size of houses is decreasing, the number of homes with four or more bedrooms has increased by 17%. So, while houses are getting smaller, they are being divided into more rooms.

But Colorado homes remain spacious compared to those in Hawaii, where houses are about 20% smaller than they were in 2017
Between 2017 and 2025, the median home size in Hawaii dropped from 1,376 to 1,104 square feet.

Reconfiguring the space

Although the overall size of houses is decreasing, the number of homes with four or more bedrooms has increased by 17%. This trend shows that as houses shrink in size, homeowners are creating more rooms.

Here are some key factors influencing the shift in home design:

Rising costs: Smaller homes are becoming popular, with 38% of builders focusing on them to reduce sale prices as land and building material costs continue to climb.

New household needs: Extra rooms are used for home gyms or offices, as more Americans work from home and prioritize functional spaces.

Buyer preferences: Homes with multiple smaller bedrooms appeal to buyers for their versatility and potential resale value. Experts say converting living spaces into bedrooms can yield returns of 80% to 100%.

The vanishing dining room

During the pandemic, many homeowners repurposed their dining rooms into offices, playrooms, or classrooms for their kids. And they kept them that way.

Related Articles

• October 31, 2025 Sponsored: Discover how the generational divide shapes Denver mortgage trends
• October 24, 2025 Sponsored: They got it right: Downsizers tell how they timed their perfect senior move with aid from The Steller Group
• October 17, 2025 Sponsored: Colorado homebuyers experience best market in years
• October 10, 2025 Sponsored: Denver area home buyers want houses, not condos or townhomes
• October 3, 2025 Sponsored: Why Denver homeowners spend more on renovations than anyone else in America

According to Realtor.com research, only 25% of listed properties feature a dining room, but this may not reflect the actual number, since some realtors choose not to highlight those spaces.

The rise in single homebuyers—over a quarter of households in the U.S. now consist of a single person, a number that has tripled since 1940—also contributes to the decline in formal dining rooms.

Instead, buyers are now more interested in features such as show kitchens with large eat-in islands, mud rooms, and lavish laundry rooms.

The news and editorial staffs of The Denver Post had no role in this post’s preparation.

A small Cherry Creek office building fetched $4.7 million in its first sale since it was constructed two decades ago.

The 55 Adams St. building is 9,500 square feet, according to marketing materials, so the deal works out to about $491 a square foot.

The building on 0.29 acres, which includes a small parking lot, was purchased by OGRE LLC, an entity that lists a Greenwood Village office address corresponding to that of Westside Investment Partners.

Related Articles

• Americans staying put: US home turnover rate at lowest level in decades as housing slump drags on
• Average long-term US mortgage rate dips to 6.17%, its lowest level in more than a year
• Is Telluride ready to ‘chuck Chuck?’ Why the opulent ski town turned on the resort’s longtime owner
• Former Colorado Department of Labor and Employment office building up for sale
• Complex property deal involving Lakewood, Jeffco Schools and a nonprofit group has landed in court

Westside founder Andy Klein declined to comment. The firm is a major real estate player locally. It recently closed its Park Hill Golf Course land swap deal with Denver and has bought numerous office buildings at deep discounts in recent years.

Phillip Lee, a JLL broker who represented the buyer alongside his father David Lee, said the buyer plans to keep the existing building.

The 55 Adams building was sold by Oklahoma City-based MidFirst Bank. It which acquired the property as part of its 2015 acquisition of Denver-based Steele Street Bank & Trust, which erected the building in 2006 after paying $945,000 for the land the previous year, records indicate.

MidFirst didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Jeff Caldwell of Pinnacle Real Estate, who represented the seller in conjunction with Lincoln Property Co.’s Scott Caldwell and Mark Dwyer., said MidFirst used the building minimally over the years, and it was sold empty. The property was originally listed for $5.2 million.

“Cherry Creek continues to be such a dynamic, active and positive market,” Caldwell said.

Read more from our partner, BusinessDen.

Get more business news by signing up for our Economy Now newsletter.

A luxury penthouse in Cherry Creek owned by the estate of prominent venture capitalist George A. Wiegers sold this month for $350,000 above its list price.

The penthouse property at Laurel Cherry Creek, listed for $9.8 million on Sept. 15, went under contract after a bidding war on Sept. 18. The sale closed for $10.1 million on Oct. 8.

Wiegers, the founder and CEO of Wiegers Capital Partners and former chairman of Hart Energy, died on Nov. 24.

The penthouse is one of 71 condominiums in Laurel Cherry Creek at 155 Steele St. JNS Architecture + Interior Design, a Denver-based firm, designed the 12-story building, which was constructed in 2017.

Wiegers’ 4,761-square-foot penthouse included three bedrooms, four baths and terraces facing west, north, and east. The chef’s kitchen features professional-grade Wolf appliances, a walk-in pantry with a prep sink, and waterfall stone countertops.

Wiegers purchased the penthouse for $6.7 million in June 2019 using 155 Steele St LLC. Josh Behr with LIV Sotheby’s International Realty represented the seller.

Mckinze Casey with LIV Sotheby’s International Realty represented the buyer, Hoops Trust, which lists an address in the San Francisco Bay Area.

The fast sale over list price comes in contrast to September’s statistics from the Denver Metro Association of Realtors, which show buyers continue to favor detached homes. In September, sales of attached homes in the Denver metro area dropped 17% year over year.

Related Articles

• Americans staying put: US home turnover rate at lowest level in decades as housing slump drags on
• Average long-term US mortgage rate dips to 6.17%, its lowest level in more than a year
• Is Telluride ready to ‘chuck Chuck?’ Why the opulent ski town turned on the resort’s longtime owner
• Former Colorado Department of Labor and Employment office building up for sale
• Complex property deal involving Lakewood, Jeffco Schools and a nonprofit group has landed in court

The median days on market rose to 32 days, up 540% from 5 days in 2021. Sales volume of attached homes in the $1 million-plus category was down almost 25% year over year.

Casey attributed the penthouse’s swift sale to its prime location in Cherry Creek.

“This penthouse had everything today’s luxury buyers are looking for–unobstructed, protected views, and life-changing amenities, all within Cherry Creek, where Denver’s best shopping, dining, and lifestyle experiences come together in one elegant neighborhood,” she said.

“Representing the buyer, it was clear from the start that today’s market favors buildings offering true value from a service and lifestyle perspective–and there’s simply no building in Denver that delivers that better than The Laurel.”

Read more from our partner, BusinessDen.

Get more business news by signing up for our Economy Now newsletter.

In the tug of war between sellers and buyers, metro Denver’s housing market remains competitive, but sellers are definitely feeling the rope burn their hands and their feet skid as they try and fail to stay firm on price.

Nearly a third of Denver area home sellers, 31.1%, lowered their listing price in September, the highest share of any major metro in the country and nearly double the U.S. average of 16.7%, according to a study earlier this month from Seattle brokerage firm Redfin. The average discount sellers offered was 3.3%.

“Denver is shifting to a buyer’s market for much of the same reason most of the country is — there is now more inventory available as sellers slowly become unlocked. At the same time, demand is declining with affordability still strained and buyers feeling jittery about the economy,” Chen Zhao, who heads up Redfin’s economics team, said in an email.

After Austin, Denver has experienced the second-largest swing toward a buyer’s market over the past year among large metro areas, another Redfin study found. Sellers outnumbered buyers by about 10% a year ago, close to a balanced market. Now that gap is 55.7% with 15,812 sellers active for every 10,158 buyers last month, or two buyers active for every three sellers.

That’s higher than the U.S. ratio of 36.7% in favor of sellers, but Denver hasn’t reached the ranks of the most extreme buyer’s markets yet. In Austin, sellers outnumber buyers by 130%. Fort Lauderdale, north of Miami, is second on the list at 118.5%, followed by West Palm Beach, to the north, at 133%, followed by Miami at 112.2%.

Cities that people left during the pandemic have found a new popularity as the economy weakens, Zhao said. Newark and New Brunswick, N.J.; Nassau County, N.Y.; Montgomery, Pa., and Cleveland currently have the strongest seller markets, per Redfin’s analysis.

Another sign that sellers are losing their grip comes in the rising share of contracts canceled before closing. Finding a willing buyer isn’t enough anymore. About 15% of home purchase contracts nationally were terminated last month. In Denver, that rate was 17.1%, up from 16.3% a year earlier, according to Redfin.

Tampa led the country with one in five contracts canceled. Orlando, Atlanta, and San Antonio and Fort Worth, Texas, also had higher rates of buyers dropping out. Most cancellations, about seven in 10, happen during inspections, when buyers make repair requests of sellers for problems they find, according to Redfin.

“Buyers, sellers, and real estate professionals are confronting a hard reality that has been months in the making, and September made it clear: it is not a great time to sell a home,” said Cooper Thayer, a Denver County Realtor, in comments on the September market provided by Colorado Association of Realtors.

On the flip side, buyers are seeing the most favorable conditions in years, with more options to choose from, more time to review prospects and more room to negotiate terms and price.

“When selling gets tougher, buying gets better, and today’s market gives buyers more leverage and choice, even with higher rates,” Thayer said. “After a long seller-dominated run in Colorado, the shift is healthy and a welcome change for homebuyers.”

One of the most important things sellers need to get right in a buyer’s market is their initial listing price. Despite an abundance of resources to help with that, many sellers put themselves in a predicament from the start.

“It is more important now than it has been in the past couple of years to get it priced right straight out of the gate. Because you can hurt yourself by (a listing) becoming stale,” said Matt Purdy, a Redfin agent active in northern Colorado.

Buyers look at the equation in terms of what the monthly payment is and what they can afford. Sellers look at it in terms of what they paid and what the maximum price they can obtain is.

For most households, a home represents their biggest investment and most important source of wealth. The inclination is to try and obtain top dollar, even if that means ignoring the signs that the market is softening, Purdy said. Some agents will tell a seller what they want to hear rather than what they need to hear in terms of a workable list price.

“Many are thinking about yesterday’s market when they price instead of where the market is headed,” Zhao said. Testing the market by pricing high is becoming a losing and time-wasting strategy.

That mismatch in pricing is resulting in listings spending more days on the market. It now takes 56 days on average, nearly two months, for a listing to sell in metro Denver, compared to 44 days a year ago and only 14 days in September 2021, according to the Colorado Association of Realtors.

Some sellers, especially those who bought recently, are overpricing to avoid taking a loss. Metro Denver home and condo prices have bounced around in a narrow range since 2022, rising only $10,000 to a median price of $585,000, according to Homes.com.

For anyone who purchased after 2022, their home may not have appreciated enough to cover the transaction costs of a sale. In some areas, and with some home types, like condos, sellers may be facing a loss. The temptation to overprice is stronger.

Related Articles

• Americans staying put: US home turnover rate at lowest level in decades as housing slump drags on
• Average long-term US mortgage rate dips to 6.17%, its lowest level in more than a year
• Is Telluride ready to ‘chuck Chuck?’ Why the opulent ski town turned on the resort’s longtime owner
• Former Colorado Department of Labor and Employment office building up for sale
• Complex property deal involving Lakewood, Jeffco Schools and a nonprofit group has landed in court

The Denver area neighborhoods seeing the biggest increase in listings in September include Lower Downtown, the Central Business District, Hampden, Cherry Creek, Candelas and north Broomfield, according to Homes.com, a listing portal.

Another tip from agents to prevent an offer from falling through is that sellers should obtain a pre-inspection that identifies major issues before listing. They should fix any problems identified to avoid surprises and delays, with special attention paid to the roof, plumbing and drainage.

And sellers need to prepare to negotiate concessions like price credits and repairs rather than be offended by them.

Purdy notes that he is seeing more investors start to unload rental properties because of stricter state rules on landlords, higher capital and operating costs and the ability to earn comparable returns in risk-free investments. Those additional listings will provide even more competition for sellers in the months ahead.

Get more real estate and business news by signing up for our weekly newsletter, On the Block.

Peter Culshaw is building out what he thinks is the future of the Denver Tech Center in his own backyard.

“We live five miles west of here. I can drive to Cherry Creek, but it’s a half an hour drive, and we don’t really want to go down there and mess with the parking. And the idea is to bring Cherry Creek sizzle to the Tech Center, available for folks living and working here,” Culshaw said.

The executive with Shea Properties leads its Colorado operations out of an office building at 8351 E. Belleview Ave. that was fashioned from a former 24 Hour Fitness.

Related Articles

• No City of Denver bailout for investors who bet on risky metro district bonds (Editorial)
• Following last year’s closure, 14er Brewing to move from Denver’s RiNo to Chaffee County
• After bankruptcy, a Colorado apparel company rebuilt — in Vietnam
• Denver startup Frameflow launches to connect small businesses with vetted creators
• Denver CEO sues following ban from Colorado Golf Club, claims it cost business deal

Just west of its office, Shea broke ground this summer on a redevelopment of the 13-acre Marina Square retail site. The firm demolished the roughly 45-year-old, 94,000-square-foot shopping center and is building 481 apartments and space for 10 retailers across 32,000 square feet, public records show.

But Shea is also eyeing a major project just east of its office building, at 8401 E. Belleview Ave.

Earlier this month, the company submitted plans to Denver that proposed tearing down the existing U.S. Bank branch on 4 acres. In its place, it called for erecting a 239-unit apartment complex and two retail buildings spanning 7,000 square feet along the street.

Culshaw declined to discuss the plans for the US Bank site, which the bank owns. He also declined to discuss the future retail tenants at Marina Square, although he said he hopes they’ll be open by this time next year. The apartment component of the project will take longer to complete, he added.

US Bank, which has 56 branches in the metro, also declined to comment, but Marina Square plans show space for a new retail bank branch – likely for the Minneapolis-based bank.

“What I can tell you … what we’re doing is going to be really high image, high-end stuff,” he said, adding the Marina Square redevelopment will cost north of $200 million.

A few future Marina Square tenants have been disclosed. Salad chain Sweetgreen, which has four Colorado locations, plans to open, according to a listing brochure for the project from local brokerage David, Hicks & Lampert. Solidcore, a fitness studio with three Denver locations, has also committed.

Both have existing spots in other prominent Denver neighborhoods: LoHi, RiNo, Berkeley and of course, Cherry Creek.

Shea bought the Marina Square property for $16.8 million in 2003, according to public records.

“There was kind of a big name retailer called Montaldo’s, which was a very high-end ladies clothing store. There was Marina Landing, which was a hip restaurant,” Culshaw said.

“And then over time, the tenants went away and different things. COVID hit and all of them went out of business so we decided to demolish, and that’s kind of when we started really focusing on the brainchild for the current development.”

Read more from our partner, BusinessDen.

Get more business news by signing up for our Economy Now newsletter.

Landlords anxious to fill their empty apartments have sweetened incentives to levels unmatched in the past 15 years, with some newer buildings offering up to three months of free rent, according to the Apartment Association of Metro Denver.

The average concession is more in the three-to-four-week range, and free rent deals are being offered on properties of all age ranges, except for the most popular buildings in the most popular locations. Concessions are pushing down “effective” rents to the point that older properties with fewer amenities are having a hard time keeping their tenants from upgrading.

“This is impacting the entire market. You’re seeing basically what I would call a move-up effect, or a ladder effect, where the newer properties are offering significant concessions and that’s bringing their effective rents down,” said Scott Rathbun, president of Apartment Insights, which prepares a quarterly report for the AAMD.

Rathbun said tenants are leaving older apartments to occupy shiny new units and paying similar or only slightly higher rents. With about half of the apartments turning over in a given year, tenants are finding it worthwhile to shop the offers.

Apartment owners are hesitant to drop actual rents and view incentives as a way to attract tenants while they wait for an oversupplied market to turn around. Those offers can be fine-tuned or taken off the table when it comes time to renew a lease.

But so much new supply has hit the market that stated rents have moved lower in three of the past four quarters, with the average rent down 5% over the past year to $1,816 a month. Rents are now at their lowest levels since the first quarter of 2022, according to the AAMD’s Vacancy & Rent Report released Tuesday.

Beyond that, concessions now represent 5.8% of the stated rate, the highest level seen since 2010, when a severe housing downturn was weighing on the market. Rental concessions averaged $107 in the third quarter, bringing the average effective rent to $1,709 a month.

Compared to two years ago, when the effective rent was $1,874, a typical renter is saving $165 less per month or nearly $2,000 a year.

One-bedroom units, looking at effective rents, are now competitive with affordable rents targeting tenants making 60% of the area median income (AMI), not counting the additional break on utilities that affordable developments provide, Rathbun said. Two-bedroom effective rents are averaging at around 65% to 67% of AMI.

But the more generous incentives could prove a limited-time offer. The apartment vacancy rate fell from 6.4% in the second quarter to 6.3% in the third and is down from what, barring a recession, may end up being a peak of 6.9% reached in the fourth quarter of 2024.

Related Articles

• A dying breed? Aurora City Council’s progressive voices are increasingly boxed out on the 11-member body
• Denver revamps elevator inspection process to address ‘growing public safety crisis’
• Developer Shea Properties looks to bring ‘Cherry Creek sizzle’ to Denver Tech Center
• Denver-based Zocalo Development breaks ground on 461 residential units near Sloan’s Lake
• Colorado envisioned a renewable energy park near Golden. Neighbors don’t like what might get built instead.

Last year, developers added 20,000 new apartments in metro Denver, about double the average pace seen in recent years. Just under 15,000 have been added in the past 12 months. But higher borrowing costs, lower returns and heavier regulations have significantly shrunk the pipeline of projects.

“The number of new apartments under construction continues to decrease from its peak in mid-2023,” Rathbun said. “This should lead to fewer units available in the coming quarters and continue this downward trajectory in vacancies.”

Boulder and Broomfield, which are combined in the report, continue to claim the lowest vacancy rate at 5.1%, while Arapahoe County has the highest at 7.0%. The biggest rent declines are coming in properties built in the 2020s and in the 1970s.

Get more real estate and business news by signing up for our weekly newsletter, On the Block.

The Denver Post has not paid more than $2 million in rent to the city as the newspaper attempts to buy out its long-term lease of the 11-story building it once called home.

That figure includes three $650,000-a-month rent payments that have not been paid since August, plus tens of thousands of dollars in late fees, according to city documents.

While the mostly vacant building still bears The Post’s name, the newspaper hasn’t operated out of the space at 101 W. Colfax Ave. in seven years. The last of parent company MediaNews Group’s employees moved to offices at the paper’s Adams County printing facility in 2020.

The city of Denver bought the building in 2024 and assumed The Post’s lease.

DP Media Network LLC, the newspaper’s legal name, has offered to buy out its lease with the city and hopes to reach a mutually beneficial arrangement, the company said in a statement.

“We stopped occupying this space while the building was under private ownership long before the city purchased it, so there was never any impression we would be using the space when the city made the decision to purchase the building,” said Marshall Anstandig, general counsel for The Post’s parent company, MediaNews Group.

The lapse in rent payments, first reported by CBS Colorado, comes as Denver battles a budget crisis that has led to layoffs, a hiring freeze and service cuts. The crisis is due to an estimated revenue shortfall of $200 million in 2026.

In an emailed statement, a spokesman for Mayor Mike Johnston said the city is working with The Post to resolve the issue, and added that officials “intend to recover every penny.”

“Denver pays its debts on time and DP Media Network should do the same,” spokesman Jon Ewing said.

Laura Swartz, a spokeswoman for Denver’s finance department, said the city pursued the property specifically because of the lease lasting through 2029, which made the deal financially feasible. A majority of the City Council approved the deal with that understanding as well.

Councilwoman Flor Alvidrez was one of four members to vote against the deal.

“I didn’t vote for this purchase because I knew Denver couldn’t afford it without guaranteed income,” she said. “Now that DP Media has stopped paying rent, our residents are left carrying the burden.”

The roughly 306,000-square-foot building opened in 2006 as the base of operations for both The Post and the Rocky Mountain News, which closed in 2009 — though neither newspaper ever owned it.

Related Articles

• Denver City Council greenlights city raising up to $115M to buy Denver Post building, former Embassy Suites hotel
• City purchase of Denver Post building wins approval, but nearly $89 million deal not done yet
• City strikes nearly $89 million deal to buy former Denver Post building at Civic Center

The Post, whose parent company MediaNews Group is owned by Alden Global Capital, moved its operations out of the downtown building in a cost-saving move between 2016 and 2018. The remaining corporate employees moved out in early 2020.

In 2024, the City Council approved the city’s purchase of the building from owner American Properties for $88.5 million, with plans to convert it into a courthouse.

The Post has about four years remaining on the master lease of the building, and also subleases space to other entities — including the city of Denver.

Today, as downtown Denver’s office towers and commercial spaces still struggle to recover from the pandemic, the building is largely empty. The city vacated several floors it had subleased from The Post when that agreement ended in February, according to the newspaper. It still subleases other parts of the building, as does Enova International.

Get more real estate and business news by signing up for our weekly newsletter, On the Block.

Colorado continues to be one of the priciest states for homeowners’ insurance due in large part to devastating hail storms and high wildfire risk and aggravated by inflation and tariffs. One national trade organization projects that the state’s annual average premium will increase by 11% to $6,630 by the end of 2025.

Reporter Judith Kohler would like to talk to people who have experienced big increases in their home insurance premiums, haven’t been able to renew their policies or can’t get a new policy.

If you’re interested in sharing your experience for an article, please fill out the information below.

 

Get more business news by signing up for our Economy Now newsletter.

Ira Wertenteil chooses to believe the Peabody-Whitehead Mansion has no ghostly grudge against him. Still, he prefers the idea of ghosts terrorizing him to the idea of being punished by God for some crime he’s oblivious to.

“I started this project a healthy human being,” said the 65-year-old developer, also a globe-trotting mountain climber who describes himself as an art- and architecture-school dropout (later attending University of Colorado Business School).

Wertenteil bought and began renovating the Queen Anne-style Victorian mansion at 1128 Grant St., in Denver, with his wife Cindy Powders 12 years ago. Since then, he’s been haunted by health problems.

“My hands and feet started withering away,” he said. “Then we learned my spine had completely fused, although that had been probably been going on for years. Then I started going blind every six months, and right now I’m battling three types of cancer.”

The historic Peabody-Whitehead Mansion in Denver, as seen on Wednesday, Oct. 8, 2025. The three-story brick mansion was build in 1889 and designed by architect Frank Edbrooke, designer of Denver’s Brown Palace Hotel. The mansion has been under a $3 million renovation for more than a decade. (Photo by Hyoung Chang/The Denver Post)

The $3 million project, however, is coming to an end as Wertenteil and Powders finally move into their master condo inside the eight-unit Capitol Hill home. The other seven will be leased publicly. New residents of the luxury condos will find a grand, restored icon that’s one of the last vestiges of Denver’s so-called Millionaires’ Row, but a home with a bold design and eclectic, at times creepy decorating that honors its ghostly reputation.

A restored 1929 Model A car beckons passersby from the front yard — appropriate given one of the house’s boom eras. Peabody-Whitehead was formerly a boarding house, several nightclubs and restaurants, and clerical offices, among other commercial uses, Wertenteil said.

“It’s a huge undertaking that reflects a lot of our background in art and architecture,” said Wertenteil, who officially bought the mansion on Oct. 31, 2013. “But we haven’t quite gone the route of the crazy, crazy people who build these castles and stuff over like 300 years. We’re in training to get to that point.”

As they’ve wound through their maze of permits, designers and stop-start subcontractors, Wertenteil and Powders have had plenty of time to consider the details. The rich wood and thick walls inside the structure have been preserved and updated with a mix of ultra-modern and historic accents. That extends from the light red bathroom tiles that mimic shiny, brick walls to an intertwining, metal branch sculpture canopy that greets visitors.

The aesthetic blends industrial and exposed elements, such as a split black steel stairwell, and adds touches like grated cages with relevant curios, as well as preserved windows and doors that hang like museum pieces (as opposed to functional hardware). Original 2x4s were sliced and used for wall accents. The cross-section approach exposes original electrical work and historic wallpapers in tidy squares.

It’s part museum, part playground and all impressively elaborate. But as difficult as the project has been, Wertenteil and Powders are still sad to see it end.

“In some ways, we’re not willing to let this go,” he said. “It’s like having a really cool car in the garage and never driving it. Except this is a $3 million project that I lose $20,000 per month on by not renting it, and instead showing it off to my friends.”

The 6,600-square-foot, three-story brick house was built in 1889 and designed by Frank Edbrooke, the influential and prolific Colorado architect who also designed the Brown Palace, according to History Colorado. It was first owned by Dr. William Riddick Whitehead, a surgeon at Arapaho County Hospital who went on to lead and co-found other seminal Colorado medical institutions, according to the Denver Public Library. Colorado state archives note that Governor James Peabody, who’s known for putting down a miner’s strike in Cripple Creek in 1903, also inhabited the home.

In 1993 it was declared a historic landmark by the City and County of Denver’s Preservation Commission, which has helped anchor it to Grant Street even as other historic buildings have fallen around it, some replaced with apartment high-rises.

Ghost hunters, tours and TV shows love the mansion because of its deep and haunted lore, Wertenteil said, with decades-old legends telling of “a chandelier that lights up without power; a grouchy, undead bartender; (and) the ghosts of a war long past,” wrote ghost-tour company Denver Terrors on its website.

Related Articles

• As Central City considers plan for casino hotel tower, neighbors worry: ‘They’re trying to take away my sunshine.’
• Historic El Rancho building to be revived by Evergreen bike shop
• Colorado agency demolishes buildings at Denver’s Burnham Yard, stirring preservation backlash

A dozen-plus books and local guides speak of flying silverware, random sobbing noises and other spooky occurrences. Wertenteil and Powders leaned into that with displays of anatomical models and surgical equipment, amid other densely packed corners of the first floor.

The house’s checkered past is one reason why Wertenteil’s friends speculate he might be cursed. At the moment, he’s just trying to roll with his chemo treatments as the house finally debuts to the public.

But don’t call it a legacy project.

“I grew up in a house with a mother who was an artist, who dragged me to museums, and I’ve been taking things apart since I was a kid,” Wertenteil said, noting the influence of artists Louise Nevelson, Mark di Suvero, Richard Cera, Gordon Matta-Clark and Gaudí on Peabody-Whitehead’s renovations.

“I’ve come down with so many frickin’ diseases since we started, and sometimes I wonder if the ghosts that hunt the place are taking out their aggression and frustration on me,” he added, noting that he and Powders will likely hold an open house at the mansion on Halloween — 12 years to the day that he bought it. “But I tend to believe it’s just fate.”

Denver Post photographer Hyoung Chang contributed to this report.

Subscribe to our weekly newsletter, In The Know, to get entertainment news sent straight to your inbox.

CENTRAL CITY — Bob Powe likes to sit on his front porch in the mornings, coffee in hand, and watch from his house on Casey Street as the sun slowly skirts the ridgeline across Gregory Gulch.

The warmth from the sky, Powe said, is vital in this Gilpin County town that’s perched at 8,500 feet, and where during the fall and winter the sun sits low on the horizon and shades Central City for part of the day.

Now, he said, that view and the precious few hours of sunshine are at risk. In Gregory Gulch below Powe’s Victorian Gothic home, a developer has proposed a 27-story hotel tower with 600 rooms and a 100,000-square-foot casino, along with other components of a large resort plan. If built, the tower threatens to cast his 1865 house largely in the shadows for months at a time.

“This house depends on the sun to heat it up,” said the 74-year-old contractor, who has lived on this street cut out of the hillside since he was an infant. “After 160 years, they’re trying to take away my sunshine.”

The hotel tower is part of the Gregory Gulch Gaming Resort project pitched by Raleigh, N.C.-based G3 Gaming. The project — featuring 1,000 slot machines and 50 table games, gift shops and restaurants, workforce housing and around 2,000 parking spaces — has drawn opposition for weeks as neighbors decry its potential impact on this historic mining town.

But at the same time, some city leaders see in the project the chance to compete more strongly against Black Hawk, its appreciably busier neighboring casino town, which has drawn greater investment in the decades since Colorado authorized gaming in both.

For neighbors like Powe, the new tower will destroy the view of the mountainside across the gulch, with which he has a “spiritual connection.” He has posted “No Tower” and “Not Black Hawk” signs around his home, calling them his “paper swords” in his fight against the project.

“You’ll be able to look right into the hotel windows and they’ll be able to look right at me,” Powe said of guests. “This will destroy my privacy, the view and the sunshine.”

The project, which would be built down the valley from the city’s historic center, is expected to go before the City Council on Nov. 4 for a presentation and dialogue. It’s not yet clear if the night will also feature an up-or-down vote on the resort.

Bob Powe put up a sign overlooking a gulch in front of his home where a 27-story casino hotel project is being proposed in Central City, Colorado, on Oct. 15, 2025. (Photo by RJ Sangosti/The Denver Post)

If built, the resort would have the most rooms of any hotel in the two towns. G3 is seeking a variance to allow it to build above the city’s 53-foot height limit. It’s the proposed 345-foot tower at the center of the project that is provoking the strongest reaction in this town of 650.

Only the Ameristar Black Hawk casino, at 34 stories, would be taller.

Last month, the Central City Planning Commission unanimously recommended that the City Council turn down the project. That vote, however, was made with the recognition that a rejection would come with consequences.

Commissioner Dena Hunter laid out the city’s quagmire starkly during the Sept. 3 meeting.

“The tower is the huge elephant in this room,” she said, adding in the next breath: “My concern is, at this point in time, Central City is dying. It’s dying out there. This could be a saving grace.”

Money vs. history

The Gregory Gulch Gaming Resort could bring substantial fiscal relief to Central City, one of three economically beleaguered Colorado mining towns that voters approved for gambling 35 years ago.

The mountain town received just over $1 million in state gaming tax revenue in the 2025 fiscal year — a far cry from the $12.2 million Black Hawk pulled in during the same time.

A conceptual rendering of the Gregory Gulch Gaming Resort in Central City, Colorado, by Obermeier Sheykhet Architecture for G3 Gaming. Some residents who live in homes on the hillside above the gulch (behind tower and to the right) have pressed concerns about the project's impact. (Screenshot from draft submittals filed with the city)

According to city documents, tax revenues from the new hotel project could net Central City $8 million annually, though it was not clear how much of that total would come strictly from gaming.

That’s real money to Jenny Earnest, a five-year resident of Central City and owner of Office Rebel, a company that provides administrative services to businesses in Colorado’s mountain towns.

Not only would the cash bulk up the city’s coffers for municipal needs and wants, it would provide a critical financial boost to the city’s “historical assets that are crumbling right now,” she said.

“We have to weigh the downsides with the upsides,” Earnest said. “We’ve lost a significant portion of our historic assets in the last 20 years, and we don’t have the money to save them.”

Central City was founded in 1859, the same year prospector John H. Gregory discovered gold dust in the gulch that now bears his name. The population quickly grew to 15,000 and the area became known as “The Richest Square Mile on Earth.”

Theaters, hotels and churches sprouted up, but the gold didn’t last. People drifted away and Central City fell on tough times. The Urban Land Institute in 2019 released a study that concluded that around 40% of downtown spaces were vacant, visitation was stagnant and debt from building the Central City Parkway — an alternative access road from Interstate 70 that avoids taking travelers through Black Hawk first — continued to stress the city’s finances.

Amid those pressures, there is the challenge and cost of maintaining 150-year-old buildings in Central City. Take the Belvidere Theater, built in 1875. It hosted dances, plays, music, and movies for miners and their families. It also survived a fire that burned in the ceiling in the 1970s. It’s estimated that it will cost Central City $9 million to restore the building, which it is in the midst of doing.

Colorado State University’s Office of Engagement and Extension documented the condition of nine other Central City historic buildings, including the 1872 Teller House and the Central City Opera House, built in 1878.

“That’s what our town is all about — our history,” Earnest said.

Central City, Colorado, is photographed from the hillside above town on Oct. 15, 2025. (Photo by RJ Sangosti/The Denver Post)

Peter Droege understands the importance of preserving the historic facets of Central City. After all, he’s the president of the Belvidere Theater Foundation.

But having a gleaming colossus at the entrance to Central City may be too big a tradeoff to make, he said.

“I support economic development as long as it conforms to the historic nature of the town,” he said. “The idea of having a 300-foot-plus tower in the middle of a historic district — my immediate reaction is that it is not a fit.”

Droege, 64, grew up in Central City and owns a claim in the nearby, and now defunct, Topeka gold mine. The original deed to his 1880s-era house, a former dynamite bunker for mining operations, was held by none other than John Gregory — the same man who put Central City on the map.

“Central City just has a historic quality that not many other communities in the country have — where you drive into it and it feels like you are stepping back in time,” Droege said.

G3 Gaming hired Denver-based Obermeier Sheykhet Architecture to draw up the plans for Gregory Gulch Gaming Resort. The design firm’s president, Aleksandr Sheykhet, is also working on an update to Central City’s comprehensive plan, which has some in town wondering about a potential conflict of interest.

Neither Sheykhet nor G3’s CEO, David Johnston, would answer questions submitted by The Denver Post. But Sammie Mason, a spokeswoman for the project, said G3 has every intention of respecting the mining town’s rich history.

“Rather than replicating or mimicking historic buildings, the project aims to incorporate architectural elements that complement the city’s character while meeting modern standards,” she wrote in an email.

(Watch on YouTube.)

G3, Mason said, already held two public meetings on the project in July.

“The fiscal impact and tax revenue generated by a development of this magnitude could provide meaningful, long-term benefits — funding improvements to roads, utilities and other essential infrastructure while also supporting historic preservation efforts,” she said. “These are investments the city urgently needs but cannot currently afford without a catalyst for new growth.”

Town ‘is hurting for money’

Anne Powe, Bob Powe’s daughter, lives not far away from her father in Gilpin County. She often visits and wants his house to stay in the family.

But she’s not certain that will happen if the Gregory Gulch project goes forward.

“The fact that you’ll be sitting on the porch and staring into hotel rooms is not what I envisioned for the girls,” she said of her two young daughters. “It definitely is going to impact the house.”

Bob Powe stands on his front porch looking out to where a 27-story casino hotel project would be built in the gulch in front of his historic home in Central City, Colorado, on Oct. 15, 2025. (Photo by RJ Sangosti/The Denver Post) Related Articles

• MSU Denver archaeology students sift through history at site of Central City brothels
• Central City to consider letting strip clubs operate in industrial zones
• Why is the EPA spending money on an old Colorado theater, auditorium and grocery?

Bob Powe worries, too, about the noise and commotion that standing up a project of this scale will generate over the several years it takes to build. What if the project is halted in the middle of construction because of financial constraints or dried-up funding?

“One of my fears is they get the tower halfway up and then it fails,” he said of the project.

Powe has suggested that the developers scale down the hotel tower’s height, but he knows that subsidence and stability problems — from decades of mining in the gulch — make it challenging to orient the project more horizontally.

His daughter hopes G3 Gaming will alter its design to mitigate its impacts on longtime residents. But she is far from certain that will happen, given Central City’s fiscal situation — and the lure of what brought prospectors to these parts more than 160 years ago.

“They’re coming in knowing this town is hurting for money,” she said. “They are going to be able to set the rules and walk all over us.”

Get more Colorado news by signing up for our daily Your Morning Dozen email newsletter.

Colorado’s housing market continues to offer buyers more choices and negotiating power despite continued high interest rates.

According to the latest report from the Colorado Association of Realtors, September statistics show a decrease in listings but an increase in buyer leverage, marking one of the best environments for homebuying in years.

As the housing market rebalances, potential buyers can capitalize on favorable conditions, even as median prices remain relatively stable.

“Buyers, sellers, and real estate professionals are confronting a hard reality that has been months in the making, and September made it clear: it is not a great time to sell a home. Still, there is a bright side,” said Denver-Douglas County-area realtor Cooper Thayer.

“When selling gets tougher, buying gets better, and today’s market gives buyers more leverage and choice, even with higher rates. By most metrics, this is the strongest buyer footing in years, and by some measures in decades, with more time to decide, more options to choose from, and more room to negotiate. The bottom line: this is a rebalancing, not a breakdown.”

September’s data showed a decrease in active, sold, pending, and under contract listings compared to August.

However, all those categories remain up from the same time last year. Inventory statewide is up 8%, sold listings are up 8%, and average days on market are up 18%.

Median pricing largely held steady and is up .5% from a year ago.

Community roundup

• Aurora: Increased momentum with declining inventory, rising prices, and faster sales. Pending sales up 11%; median prices are $566,000 (Arapahoe) and $515,000 (Adams).
• Boulder and Broomfield counties: Shifting to a buyer’s market; inventory up over 10%. Prices up 2% but concessions show declines, especially condos (-11%). Homes are taking longer to sell.
• Colorado Springs: Stable market with flat prices and unpredictable transactions. More listings and sales give buyers increased options.
• Denver metro: Clear shift favoring buyers, with homes selling for less than list price and growing inventory, especially for condos (down 2.4%).
• Fort Collins: Balanced market; well-priced homes sell quickly, while others don’t. Listings up 12% and sales up 13.5% year-over-year, with cautious buyers.

“The real estate tides have turned in Boulder and Broomfield counties, and buyers are loving it,” said Kelly Moye of Compass.

Even with increased inventory, economic and political uncertainty, along with higher mortgage interest rates, are keeping many potential buyers on the sidelines.

Related Articles

• October 10, 2025 Sponsored: Denver area home buyers want houses, not condos or townhomes
• October 3, 2025 Sponsored: Why Denver homeowners spend more on renovations than anyone else in America
• October 3, 2025 Sponsored: As Keystone becomes its own town, just nine luxury condos are left in its centerpiece resort
• September 26, 2025 Sponsored: Why downtown Denver needs to add more housing to thrive
• September 19, 2025 Colorado’s housing market trends: Why buyers are scared to act

Sellers with built-up equity from the past five years are reluctant to give up ultra-low interest rates. This ongoing struggle is slowing the housing market as winter approaches.

“The September housing market in Fort Collins sputtered along as balanced markets are wont to do,” said Chris Hardy with Elevations Real Estate in Fort Collins.

Some well-priced, well-maintained homes go under contract in just days, often with multiple offers, Hardy said. However, other homes linger on the market due to factors such as pricing, competition from new construction, neighborhood appeal, and, most importantly, condition.

The news and editorial staffs of The Denver Post had no role in this post’s preparation.

A senior living facility in the works for more than five years has broken ground off Speer Boulevard in central Denver, but the company that planned it isn’t the one building the structure.

Houston-based Hines sold its 0.78-acre site at 96 N. Emerson St. for $14 million last month, according to public records.

And last week, the buyer — Denver-based NexCore Group — broke ground on the five-story, 112-unit building that Hines drew up, according to NexCore Chief Investment Officer Michael Ray.

Hines didn’t respond to requests for comment on the deal, and Ray said he didn’t know why the company opted to sell.

“For us, it was an opportunity to continue to invest in a market that we believe has runway in this space,” he said.

Dubbed Cherry Creek Reserve, the building will feature underground parking, a rooftop deck and three dining areas for residents. Ray declined to disclose the total development cost, but a valuation permit filed in the spring said the 141,000-square-foot building would cost $35.4 million to construct.

Related Articles

• Denver real estate firms launch joint venture with $8.5M loan for Vail residential site
• US home sales accelerated in September to their fastest pace since February as mortgage rates eased
• The Denver Post stops paying rent to city for downtown building as newspaper seeks to buy out lease
• A $4.2 million estate — a ‘piece of Denver’s past’ — has hit market in Washington Park neighborhood
• Denver-based Zocalo Development breaks ground on 461 residential units near Sloan’s Lake

Construction is expected to take about two years, Ray said. After that, NexCore’s subsidiary Experience Senior Living will operate the building.

NexCore has acquired and developed 17.4 million square feet in real estate since its founding and entered the senior-living market in 2015. It owns medical office buildings and laboratories, as well, and manages nearly nine million square feet across the U.S.

“We’ve been headquartered and located in LoDo for all of our 20 years. We’re committed to the city and love it, but we’re also a national developer,” Ray said.

Hines purchased the development site in 2020 for nearly $8.8 million, records show. At the time, part of the site was home to a six-unit condominium building called Carmen Court, which some nearby residents initially sought to preserve. Hines demolished Carmen Court earlier this year.

Read more from our partner, BusinessDen.

Get more business news by signing up for our Economy Now newsletter.

A residential project that will span a full city block at the southeast corner of Sloan’s Lake Park is finally underway after a developer navigated what he calls “a truly complicated choreography of financing.”

Denver-based Zocalo Development, led by CEO David Zucker, has broken ground on a parking garage next to Sloan’s Lake Medical Center

Its completion, forecast for late April, will allow Zucker to start work on the meat of the project — 461 residential units, nearly all rentals and more than a third of them income-restricted, that will go up on a surface parking block currently utilized by the medical center.

Zucker said the groundbreaking follows 10 years of work. He first discussed the project publicly in 2018 and received the necessary rezoning the following year. But the site has sat unchanged until now.

Zucker said he has closed on $300 million of financing for what are essentially three separate projects within one.

The north end of the site, along 17th Avenue and closest to the park, will feature a 16-story tower dubbed Aliyah with 294 units: 269 market-rate and 15 income-restricted apartments, as well as 10 market-rate townhomes.

The income-restricted units are reserved for Denver Public Schools educators at 60% of the area median income, or AMI. Northwestern Mutual is both a lender and equity investor on the tower.

“It will be the nicest residential project in Denver,” Zucker said. “It is the sum of everything that we know about delivering on the goals of the residents.”

The south end of the site, along 16th Avenue, will house 158 income-restricted apartments in a four-story structure dubbed Liora. Max income will vary by unit from 30 to 60% AMI, and Zucker said there will be seven three-bedroom units for larger families.

Liora will be financed with bonds, low-income housing tax credits and $9.5 million from the Colorado Division of Housing. The building will ultimately be owned by the New York-based NHP Foundation, using funds granted by the State of Colorado through the Proposition 123 land-banking program.

The project will also include some retail space, and nine townhomes facing a newly created stretch of Meade Street that will be reserved for those making up to the area median income.

“There’s nothing as life-changing for either a former renter or for me as builder as building affordable for-sale,” Zucker said.

The 330-space parking garage currently underway is at the corner of 16th Avenue and Meade Street, at the southeast corner of the site. It will ultimately serve the adjacent medical facility once known as Beth Israel Hospital, as well as Liora.

Related Articles

• Denver real estate firms launch joint venture with $8.5M loan for Vail residential site
• US home sales accelerated in September to their fastest pace since February as mortgage rates eased
• The Denver Post stops paying rent to city for downtown building as newspaper seeks to buy out lease
• A $4.2 million estate — a ‘piece of Denver’s past’ — has hit market in Washington Park neighborhood
• Denver-based NexCore Group breaks ground on 112-unit senior living facility off Speer Boulevard

Zocalo will both develop the buildings and manage them upon completion. A new affiliate of the company, BLDRS, is the general contractor. JG Architecture and Craine Architects were the project architects.

The smaller building is expected to take 16 months to build, and the tower 26 months. The townhomes will be completed between the two buildings, Zucker said.

“Liora at Sloan’s Lake is a model of what we can achieve when public and private partners come together with a shared commitment to making housing more affordable for Colorado residents,” Maria De Cambra, executive director of the Colorado Department of Local Affairs, which facilitated the state housing division loan, said in a statement.

Zucker had once hoped to make the tower market-rate condominiums. But those plans were jettisoned in part due to lackluster sales at LakeHouse Residences, a condo project completed in 2020 four blocks to the west.

Read more from our partner, BusinessDen.

Get more business news by signing up for our Economy Now newsletter.

Oil and gas giant EOG Resources has signed paperwork to move its Denver office from Upper Downtown to LoDo.

The Houston-based public company, a spinoff of the infamous Enron Corp., has leased 100,000 square feet at 1550 17th St., just a block from Union Station, according to public records.

The 17-year-long lease will commence at the start of 2026, with two five-year renewal options when the term expires in June 2043, the documents state. The 138,000-square-foot building currently known as Millennium Financial Center will be renamed the EOG Resources Building.

EOG declined to comment. The lease memorandum is dated July 18, two days after BusinessDen reported the deal was in the works. It is one of downtown’s largest leases this year.

The move will be a downsizing for EOG. The company currently has about 165,000 square feet in the Dominion Towers office complex at 600 17th St. Its lease there comprises about a quarter of the building and expires at the end of next year.

Related Articles

• Denver real estate firms launch joint venture with $8.5M loan for Vail residential site
• US home sales accelerated in September to their fastest pace since February as mortgage rates eased
• The Denver Post stops paying rent to city for downtown building as newspaper seeks to buy out lease
• A $4.2 million estate — a ‘piece of Denver’s past’ — has hit market in Washington Park neighborhood
• Denver-based NexCore Group breaks ground on 112-unit senior living facility off Speer Boulevard

The oil and natural gas producer was founded in 1999. It raked in $23.7 billion in revenue last year and has a market capitalization of nearly $60 billion.

The six-story, 25-year-old Millennium Financial Center was the longtime home of law firm Davis Graham & Stubbs, which moved to RiNo last year. Fortis Bank, which operated on the first and second floors for years, has taken space in the Denver Tech Center and no longer lists the building on its website; its signage has been removed from the property.

JLL, which is marketing the building’s office space for lease, lists the only vacancy on the second floor, spanning 16,320 square feet. EOG’s lease allows it to take that space through 2027.

Permitting records show the building’s owner, LPF Millennium Financial Center LLC, is spending $2.6 million to remodel the lobby and an additional $350,000 on exterior building work.

Read more from our partner, BusinessDen.

Get more business news by signing up for our Economy Now newsletter.