Colorado Real Estate Journal - January 21, 2015
Dr. W.L. Asher runs a weight loss clinic in Littleton. But through his Asher Investments, he also has been an avid investor in apartments in the Denver metro area since the 1970s. Late last year, Asher Investments purchased the 297-unit Alta Harvest Station from its developer, Wood Partners, for just under $64.5 million. The sales price for the community at 11775 Wadsworth Blvd. in Broomfield equates to $217,000 per unit. “I’m not sure if this was his biggest transaction ever, but it was pretty big for him,” said David Potarf, who listed and marketed the property with fellow CBRE team members Dan Woodward and Matt Barnett. Asher, who could not be reached for comment by press time, beat out a number of other buyers for the 13-building Alta Vista community, which opened in early 2014. “We had a dozen or so offers for Alta Vista,” Potarf said. “A number of institutional investors were extremely interested in buying it,” he said. Prospective buyers really liked its location and the quality of construction, he added. “Dr. Asher was competing against a lot of institutional investors,” Potarf said. “He really knows and understands that market, so I think it being in his backyard, so to speak, he really knows its potential,” Potarf said. “Alta Harvest Station represents a great collaboration with the city of Broomfield, who worked closely with us to rezone the site to allow multifamily housing,” said David Jaudes, development associate at Wood Partners. “The project is also adjacent to the U.S. 36 Bus Rapid Transit, an important component of FasTracks often overlooked.” Potarf noted that it is close to many high-tech firms in the Interlocken business park in Broomfield and is midway between Boulder and downtown Denver. The community has 283,175 square feet of space. Wood Partners understood the importance of the site when it earmarked it for development. “Our primary goal for this new multifamily community is to serve the nearby Interlocken/Broomfield business hub, where recent job growth has been strong,” director Tim McEntee, who handles all Wood Partners’ developments in the Rocky Mountain area, said when Wood Partners announced the community. Alta Harvest Station has 175 one-bedroom units, 107 two-bedroom units and 15 three-bedroom units. The average size of a unit is 940 sf. It was designed by the Dallas based architectural firm of Womack + Hampton.