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Page 18 — Office Properties Quarterly — September 2017
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Denver Highlight
T he new Rocky MountainTech-
nology Boulevard is being
forged in the foundations of the
former iron works, smelters and
other industrial uses that once
dominated Denver’s River North neigh-
borhood. In just a few short years, RiNo
has transformed from its owner-occu-
pied industrial origins into a vibrant
community featuring a cadre of highly
creative companies, cooperative work-
spaces, brew pubs and eateries, and an
eclectic arts scene.
If this seems like a stretch, let’s look
at particulars. Pioneering projects like
Mickey Zeppelin’sTaxi project trans-
formed a vacant dispatch center and
corporate headquarters into flexible
workspace 10 years ago, initiating
RiNo’s revolution. Investors took note
of the transforming neighborhood and
infused the area with capital.Today,
new and under construction projects
like Industry, Catalyst and Zeppelin
Station feature flexible work and cre-
ative spaces and evolving ecosystems
that attract the mushrooming nimble
technology startups integral to the
area’s evolution into a technology cor-
ridor.
Colorado-based Home Advisor
reaffirmed its intention to move its
headquarters from Golden to RiNo,
recently committing to 58,000 square
feet at The Hub, which broke ground in
August. Boston-based Beacon Capital
Partners recently purchased the 2-acre
site, allowing the stalled project to pro-
ceed.
Also breaking ground this year is
Phase I of Formativ’s newWorldTrade
Center campus, featuring a 200,000-sf
international business and trade eco-
system to house best-in-breed large
and small interna-
tional businesses,
representing indus-
tries and innova-
tive technologies
from around the
globe.The National
Renewable Energy
Lab and the Uni-
versity Corporation
for Atmospheric
Research recently
announced their
intention to partner
to launch “The Colo-
rado Innovation Cor-
ridor” on the campus to better connect
the national research facilities with
public and private sectors.
Numerous other projects are under
way or in the planning stages in RiNo.
Westfield’s Midtown Industrial 14-acre
site could develop up to 1 million sf of
mixed-use product. Given the proxim-
ity to the 38th Street A Line station and
immediate access to Interstate 70, this
project is expected to attract large cor-
porate users wanting a campus envi-
ronment, as well as smaller creative
and startup companies.
It is not hyperbole to say Colorado
is poised to become the AgTech capi-
tal of the world. Consider the state’s
agricultural roots combined with our
innovative tech culture, pool of highly
educated and motivated workers, capi-
tal influx and ongoing infrastructure
investments – these factors combine to
position the area as the “SiliconValley
of agriculture,” as noted by the Univer-
sity of Colorado back in 2014.
RiNo – and the Brighton Boulevard
corridor/NationalWestern Complex
redevelopment project, in particular –
offers an interesting
union of Denver’s
agricultural history
and its innovative
tech scene, combin-
ing to elevate the
community into the
Rocky Mountain
Technology Bou-
levard. Colorado
State University, the
state’s land grant
university, is a
founding partner in
the NationalWest-
ern Complex project, with state fund-
ing of $200 million to construct the
CSUWater Resources Center, a facility
for equine medicine and the multi-
modal CSU Center on site.
RiNo’s access to fiber is another
drawing point.The Fortrust Denver
data center, located in RiNo, is the larg-
est data center in the region with over
300,000 sf and 34 megawatts of data
center capacity.This capacity provides
an optimal power infrastructure and
connectivity to safeguard mission-crit-
ical business services, which is critical
to today’s technology-focused tenants.
This development boom in RiNo, and
also in the Platte Street neighborhood,
is literally changing Denver’s cen-
tral business district. As a result, our
research redrew its office submarket
boundaries to move these neighbor-
hoods from the Midtown submarket
to the Lower Downtown/Central Platte
Valley micromarket.
“These buildings – whether redevel-
opments or new – compete with the
CBD for tech, creative tenants and cor-
porate tenants,” said Lauren Douglas,
NKF’s Colorado director of research.
“The resulting expanded submarket,
renamed the downtown submarket,
will provide a clearer and more precise
snapshot of the Denver office market,
both now and in the future.”
As of second quarter, the downtown
submarket led the overall Denver office
market with year-to-date absorption
of 370,393 sf (total market absorp-
tion was 385,414 sf).The LoDo/Central
PlatteValley micromarket, home to
the vast majority of the submarket’s
coveted new construction, continued
to outperform the Skyline and Uptown
micromarkets; LoDo/CPV posted year-
to-date absorption of 286,331 sf, while
Skyline and Uptown logged absorption
of 30,977 sf and 53,085 sf, respectively.
The RiNo and Platte Street neighbor-
hoods currently offer a relatively small
amount of office space – just over
775,000 sf – and more than half of this
inventory was delivered during the cur-
rent development cycle. A snowballing
construction boomwill deliver almost
600,000 sf of office space in five projects
in RiNo alone by 2018, representing 31
percent of the current downtown pipe-
line totaling 1.9 million sf, with another
2.5 million sf planned in RiNo. In fact,
there is more development in terms of
the amount of buildings either under
construction or well into the planning
stages than any other neighborhood in
Denver – positioning the area to double
or triple in size.
With Industry, Zeppelin Station and
Catalyst boasting some of the biggest
names in tech, both locally and glob-
ally, and the NationalWestern Com-
plex with its potential to be the AgTech
capital of the world, the RiNo neighbor-
hood is not so quietly emerging as a
technological hub.s
Andrew
Blaustein
Managing director,
Newmark Knight
Frank, Denver
Matt Davidson
Managing director,
Newmark Knight
Frank, Denver