Every month, LIFE will provide answers to the community’s burning questions about new and ongoing developments. If there is a pile of dirt you’re curious about, or if you want to know how much longer your street parking will be sacrificed during construction, email Stacey McDole at capitolhill303@gmail.com. She’ll do the investigation for you and report back.
1600-1608 E. Colfax Ave. – previously Bourbon Chicken
Pando Holdings purchased the two buildings at 1600 and 1608 E. Colfax Ave. under the name South Broadway & East Arizona, per property records, for a cool $3.2 million in December 2017. The property offers 11,250 square feet of commercially-zoned land.
The property is zoned C-MS-8, Main Street Districts, per the Denver zoning guide. Its specific intent “applies primarily to arterial street corridors, or may be embedded within a larger commercial shopping center or mixed-use area, where a building scale of two to eight stories is desired.”
In an email to the developer, they had little to say about the property, other than nothing was proposed and to check back in a few months.
An existing tenant, Denver Fresh Mex, is actively looking for a new location, hopefully within the Capitol Hill area. After Pando Holdings bought the building, Fresh Mex was given until May 2018 to vacate, but it has been given an extension until August 2018. The extension is a blessing, as the search has been difficult. Denver Fresh Mex’s current location has ample parking for its customers, a commodity hard to find in the density of Capitol Hill.
Both properties lay within the boundary of the Wyman Historic District.
“We had met with an earlier developer, but it has since changed hands,” said Historic Denver Inc.’s Executive Director Annie Levinsky. “We have not had contact with the new developer. We are interested in what will be proposed there, as that block is in the Wyman Historic District, but the buildings on the corner are obviously suffering from neglect.”
Pando Holdings is the developer of the controversial micro-unit building on 16th Avenue and Humboldt Street, now dubbed The Economist. The neighborhood was in an uproar over the lack of onsite parking for its 100-plus units.
1849 Emerson St. – Denver Community Recreation & Adaptive Recreation
The March 7 fire at 1833 Emerson St. affected many buildings within its sphere of influence. One building was the Denver Community Recreation building on the corner of 18th and Park avenues.
Bill Nunes, assistant director of Parks, said the building is closed with a TBD date, but will reopen once repaired. While the building did receive a clean bill of structural health from a recent inspection, the city won’t know what it’s up against until the electricity is restored.
“The building was spared in so many ways because of the wind direction, but the heat from the fire destroyed the roof and the electrical,” said Nunes. Once the electrical is operative and up to current building codes, other systems will then be tested.
“We won’t know the extent of the damage until the electricity is restored. Systems such as the HVAC and phones will either need to be repaired, or we will be able to easily knock them off the list and move on.”
Because hidden repairs may lurk within the building’s brick exterior, an estimate of the cost of repairs is unknown.
Nunes complimented the city for its support of the recreation center after the fire. Between 10-15 full-time employees were reassigned to another center located at 4495 Jason St., where they have an office to report to, complete with cubicles, computers and phones.
“No one expects this kind of disaster to happen,” said Nunes. “However, we received a high level of response from the city. They made the transfer seamless for these employees with minimal downtime and were able to provide the same tools the employees had at the 1849 Emerson building.”
900 E. 11th Street – previously Whole Foods
The previous Capitol Hill Whole Foods sits depressingly vacant waiting for a new life.
Gary Antonoff of Antonoff & Co. Brokerage, Inc., who owns the building, says in a telephone interview that Whole Foods has a long-term lease on the building. During his communication with the grocer, it was known that Whole Foods was considering the building’s best use.
When asked, Allison Phelps, a spokesperson for Whole Foods, said they are still interested in the space, but don’t have any news to share.
Correction:
A private residence is being built at 1311 Pearl St. Kirkland Museum does not and never did own the building—it was generously provided to the museum for its use. The museum is not involved in the future use of the building, and officials ask for respect for the privacy of the individuals involved.
The museum sold an auxiliary property on the south corner, not the north corner.
