Colorado Real Estate Journal - February 18, 2015
After 24 years of ownership, Elcor Partners Ltd. has decided to let someone else take the reins of an important piece of Denver’s history. “It was time,” Bill Saslow of Elcor Partners said of the Elephant Corral, an office property Stoltz Real Estate Partners bought for $17 million. “There’s been so much interest in properties in Lower Downtown. Even though we didn’t list it and weren’t really thinking about selling the property, we received a number of unsolicited 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 approximately 57,200- and 9,000-squarefoot office buildings at 1444 and 1408 Wazee St. and surface parking lots at 1401 and 1406 Wazee. The smaller building also includes a residential condominium. 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 Western Stock Show. The first log and canvas-roofed structures, along with a hotel and restaurant that served as Denver’s public meeting 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 elephant,” which related to seeking out something new and exciting.
Today’s Elephant Corral illustrates the historic brick-and timber construction 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 Partners, has been collecting office and industrial properties in the Denver metro area for several months. Its acquisitions included the historic Cable Building at 1801 Lawrence St., which was built as a powerhouse for Denver’s public cable car system in 1899.