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— Office Properties Quarterly — March 2016
CONTENTS
Letter from the Editor
O
n April 22, the RTD’s A line
opens, running from Union
Station to Denver Interna-
tional Airport. The long-
awaited opening will usher
in a new age of transportation,
putting us on the map with other
domestic and international cities
touting easy public transit from air-
ports to city centers.
DIA is taking steps to ensure its
offerings are ready
with the new on-
site Westin Hotel, a
public transit cen-
ter, an expansion
of the C Concourse
and new destina-
tions such as the
nonstop flights to
Munich and Tokyo.
The airport din-
ing experiences are becoming more
Colorado-specific, including a proj-
ect between Tivoli Brewing Co. and
Tom’s Urban, which will join other
local airport successes like Elway’s,
Smashburger, Root Down and CRÚ.
The FasTracks line to the airport
helps Denver on its mission to
become a world-class city. For the
office market, this means three
things. First, it makes Denver a
more competitive city for attracting
businesses. Of our regional compet-
itors, Denver has an advantage.
It was a determining factor for
Panasonic, which recently selected
Denver for its Panasonic Enterprise
Solutions Co. offshoot. The 400-acre
development at the 61st and Peña
Boulevard light-rail station is the
first stop from the airport.
“Panasonic looked at 22 cit-
ies across the country and picked
Denver, and then picked that site
because of the transit,” said Tom
Lee, executive managing director
with Newmark Grubb Knight Frank.
The location was ideal for the com-
pany to hire the kind of people they
want and to offer easy proximity to
the airport, he said.
Second, for investors, it’s one
more check on a list in determining
a prosperous location. This is exem-
plified by the fourth-quarter pur-
chase of the CoBank Center in the
southeast submarket by Samsung
SRA. The transit-oriented develop-
ment was acquired for $113.5 mil-
lion, or $413.67 per square foot. It
was the first Asian institutional
capital invested in the Denver office
market in the cycle, according to a
CBRE report.
And third, the line makes all TOD
more desirable. It will drive demand
as tenants seek offices along the
lines.
“People have been excited about
having a direct line to the airport
for years,” said Geoff Baukol, execu-
tive vice president with the CBRE
capital markets division. “I remem-
ber interviewing tenants on a build-
ing we sold in 2011 that was a block
from Union Station and they were
really excited about the DIA line
and it was five years away.”
Michelle Z. Askeland
303-623-1148, Ext. 104
