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Page 2AA — COLORADO REAL ESTATE JOURNAL — February 18-March 3, 2015
by Jill Jamieson-Nichols
After 24 years of ownership,
Elcor Partners Ltd. has decided
to let someone else take the reins
of an important piece of Den-
ver’s history.
“It was time,” Bill Saslow of
Elcor Partners said of the Ele-
phant Corral, an office prop-
erty Stoltz Real Estate Partners
bought for $17 million. “There’s
been so much interest in prop-
erties in Lower Downtown.
Even though we didn’t list it
and weren’t really thinking
about selling the property, we
received a number of unsolic-
ited offers last spring, largely I
suspect because of the interest
that Union Station and Platte
Valley focused on the Lower
Downtown area. We ended up
deciding to sell it, got an offer
we were pleased with and sold
it,” he said.
The sale included the approxi-
mately 57,200- and 9,000-square-
foot office buildings at 1444
and 1408 Wazee St. and surface
parking lots at 1401 and 1406
Wazee. The smaller building
also includes a residential con-
dominium.
The U-shaped office space
is spread over three stories,
including a garden level with a
large courtyard facing the street.
It houses predominantly small
tenants and was approximately
98 percent occupied at the time
of the sale.
The Elephant Corral is notable
because the property served as
a wagon train depot during the
Colorado Gold Rush that began
in 1958. Oxen, horses and mules
were traded there, giving rise,
some say, to the National West-
ern Stock Show. The first log and
canvas-roofed structures, along
with a hotel and restaurant that
served as Denver’s public meet-
ing house, were destroyed in
a big fire in 1863, according to
the Lower Downtown District,
which dates the oldest portion
of the existing structures to 1902.
The property’s name could
derive from a similar Midwest
location or from the American
pioneer saying to “see the ele-
phant,” which related to seek-
ing out some-
thing new
and exciting.
T o d a y ’ s
Elephant Cor-
ral illustrates
the historic
b r i c k - a n d -
timber con-
struction that
is so desirable
to tenants in Lower Downtown,
said Geoff Baukol of CBRE, who
represented the seller. Although the property wasn’t listed for sale, “I still think it’s
a very good example of the
demand for brick-and-timber
real estate in Lower Downtown,
which has an incredible appeal
for tenants and a corresponding
strong appeal to investors. True,
historic brick-and-timber office
space in LoDo is actually quite
limited,” he said.
Elcor Partners purchased the
main building in 1990 and later
acquired the smaller building
and parking lots, which have a
total of 87 spaces.
The buyer, Pennsylvania-
based Stoltz Real Estate Part-
ners, has been collecting office
and industrial properties in the
Denver metro area for several
months. Its acquisitions includ-
ed the historic Cable Building
at 1801 Lawrence St., which was
built as a powerhouse for Den-
ver’s public cable car system in
1899.
Other News
n A user paid $1.04 million
or $163.96 per square foot, for a
6,320-sf office building at 9559
S. Kingston Court in Meridian
International Business Center
in Englewood. The building
is located off Lincoln Avenue
and Peoria Street, on the 16th
fairway of the Meridian Golf
Course.
Roper LLC purchased the
property from Infinity Real
Estate Holdings LLC. Roper
Insurance will occupy approxi-
mately two-thirds of the build-
ing, which was built in 2000.
Spyderlynk leases the rest of the
building.
Matt Call of NavPoint Real
Estate Group represented the
seller. Mark Grillo of Grillo
Commercial Real Estate repre-
sented the buyer.s
Office
CoStar Group
The property that houses the Elephant Corral was a hub of activity dur-
ing Colorado’s Gold Rush.
Geoff Baukol
ʻTrue, historic
brick-and-
timber office
space in LoDo
is actually
quite limited.ʼ
– Geoff Baukol, CBRE