Page 12 —
COLORADO REAL ESTATE JOURNAL
— December 17, 2014-January 6, 2015
Boulder County & U.S. 36 Corridor
by Jill Jamieson-Nichols
Developers are betting more
people who work in Boulder
would live there if they could,
and so they’re building housing
and amenities where there are
jobs.
Gunbarrel, which along with
East Boulder accounts for nearly
80 percent of Boulder’s primary
jobs, is a recipient of that invest-
ment.
Crossbeam Concierge, a
national real estate investment
company that specializes in
multifamily, recently opened
Apex 5510, the first large-scale,
modern apartment community
in Gunbarrel. The smoke-free
community at 5581 Spine Road
offers mountain views, gour-
met kitchens, custom cabinetry,
an upscale clubhouse, off-leash
dog park and other amenities
within walking or biking dis-
tance of employers including
IBM, Crispin Porter + Bugusky,
Qualcomm, Lockheed Martin,
Celestial Seasonings and others.
Rents are roughly $1,300 to
$2,300.
Just south across Lookout
Road, the Wolff Co. is under
construction on Gunbarrel Cen-
ter, which will have 251 apart-
ment units in an urban-style
development with 16,000 square
feet of commercial space.
Brad Blash, co-founder and
m a n a g i n g
partner
of
C r o s s b e am
Co n c i e r g e ,
w e l c o m e s
the competi-
tion because
of the retail
and restau-
rants it will
bring,
and
he believes
there’s room enough for both
multifamily projects.
“Fifty-thousand people a day
commute into Boulder who
can’t afford to live there, or they
don’t have a sufficient amount
of housing stock to house those
folks,” he said.
Instead of being among the
thousands who commute to
more than 9,000 jobs in Gunbar-
rel each day, he said, “Why not
have phenomenal views, access
to the trail systems and be able
to walk to work?”
Apex 5510, which Cross-
beam Concierge is developing
in partnership with Trammell
Crow Residential, is an approxi-
mately $48.5 million develop-
ment whose amenities include
a resort-style pool and spa, a
sundeck with mountain views,
electric-vehicle charging sta-
tions, dedicated bicycle park-
ing, a fitness center, residential
lounge, dog “spa” and commu-
nity garden within five miles
of downtown Boulder and the
Pearl Street Mall. It includes a
retail space being targeted for a
coffee shop or similar use and
is right next door to Finkel &
Garf’s brewery and taproom.
Crossbeam Concierge, which
met its affordable-housing
requirement through a partner-
ship with the Koelbel family,
which delivered 66 units off site,
provided a public easement for
a trail extension the city of Boul-
der is building. That will enable
tenants and others to connect to
more than 300 miles of trails in
the Boulder and Longmont area.
“Boulder is about getting out-
side and staying healthy,” Blash
said. “You can lace up your
shoes or get on your bike and
be in Boulder’s pristine open
space and mountain parks in
minutes.”
Boulder, generally, saw next to
no new apartment development
from the 1980s until the past few
years, and it is very difficult to
build large-scale projects in the
central part of the city. “Afford-
able market-rate apartments
are in very high demand,” said
Blash. “The opportunity for
development really is from 28th
Street out to Gunbarrel.”
Other areas of Boulder also
are seeing increased develop-
ment with the upswing in the
economy.
“I think institutional capi-
tal is recognizing Boulder as a
high-barrier-to-entry market,
and we’re seeing a lot of invest-
ment,” said Blash. “Boulder has
a profile from an institutional
investment perspective that
people would say is similar to
San Francisco or Seattle in the
sense that it’s difficult to devel-
op, but once you’re there you
have a great, captive demand
base and you have a city that’s
dynamic.
“We have always done well as
an investor in the Boulder mar-
ket,” Blash said.
Others have, too.
Developers of the Two Nine
North apartments near the
Twenty Ninth Street shopping
area received $392,857 per unit
when they recently sold that
property, a record per-unit price
for the Denver metro market.
In Gunbarrel development “is
driven by a number of factors,
including the desirability of the
location, employer base, avail-
ability and price of land, and the
area’s well-educated and highly
skilled workforce,” said Jennifer
Pinsonneault, business liaison
for the city of Boulder Commu-
nity Planning and Sustainability
department.
While he agreed that there is
a “clear need for high-quality
apartment housing in the Boul-
der area,” Rob O’Dea, spokes-
man for the Wolff Co., said,
“The Gunbarrel location specifi-
cally has an amazing density of
great employers that are in close
proximity to the project site.”
Gunbarrel Center, which is
next to a King Soopers-anchored
shopping center, will deliver
residential units early next year.
Commercial space will follow in
June and July.
With employment and now
apartments, Gunbarrel needs to
mature in terms of more res-
taurants, retail and housing
options, Blash said.
“That’s happening little by
little, and we’re excited to be a
part of it,” he said.
s
Apex 5510 recently opened its first units in Gunbarrel.
Gunbarrel Center combines apartments with ground-floor commercial
space.
Brad Blash
Grant Street Mansion was an
irreplaceable property locat-
ed in an outstanding Denver
neighborhood known for its
combination of historic charm
and cosmopolitan ambiance.
Capitol Hill has undergone
a significant gentrification,
spawning an influx of new
bus ines ses ,
res t aurant s
and young,
hip
resi-
dents,” said
Lorne Polger,
P a t h f i nd e r
senior man-
aging direc-
tor.
Man s i on s
aren’t
for
everyone. “It takes a unique
person,” said Finholm, noting
buyers have to appreciate the
history and uniqueness of the
asset, and typically fall in love
with when they walk in the
door.
That certainly was the case
for Ayuda Management Corp.,
whose owners bought the Chit-
tenden House. “They just fell in
love with the historic mansion,
the fact that it was completely
redone,” said Trent Rice of NAI
Shames Makovsky, who repre-
sented the buyer. The owners
wanted to own vs. lease, so, “It
just fit really well for them,”
he said.
Owning a historic structure
often means higher operating
expenses and taking on a cer-
tain amount of unusable space,
with back staircases and inef-
ficient floor plans, for instance,
said Finholm. In addition to
improving existing suites,
landscaping and security, and
curing deferred maintenance,
San Diego-based Pathfinder
Partners turned a former resi-
dential unit and a kitchen at
the Grant Mansion into three
office suites and reconfigured
other suites to make themmore
functional.
The owners of Unbridled
Solutions, an event planning
company that will occupy the
vacant space, purchased the
property through an entity
called Unbridled Holdings
LLC. Unbridled Solutions cur-
rently is located near Coors
Field, and the new location will
satisfy its desire to remain in
the downtown/midtown area,
said Tom Harkness of Hark-
ness & Associates, who repre-
sented Unbridled Holdings in
the transaction.
s
Stockton Baker of Cassidy Turley is marketing the Brind Mansion, an
1895 structure by the same architectural firm that designed the Daniels
& Fisher Tower.
The Chittendon House sold earlier this year for $239.76 per square foot.
Lorne Polger
