Colorado Real Estate Journal -
McGraw-Hill has leased the last two floors of office space at 1800 Larimer, a 495,518-square-foot LEED Platinum building in Lower Downtown Denver. The deal will allow the company to consolidate offices in Westminster and Evergreen into a single location. The Westminster office, located in Ten West at Westmoor Technology Park, houses about 50 Platts employees and 15 J.D. Power & Associates staff. The Evergreen office is the home of BENTEK Energy, which Platts acquired in 2011. Approximately 100 employees work in that office. Platts is a global provider of information in the energy, petro chemicials and metals industries. BENTEK is an energy market analytics company, and J.D. Power is a business and consumer information provider covering a variety of industries. “We were seeking a centralized location for bringing the two offices together, and a downtown location provided employees with options for utilizing public transportation to commute to work. It was also perceived as the best option for retaining and recruiting employees, and bringing them closer to their customers and the oil and gas community,” Patricia Wood, senior director of communications for Platts, The McGraw-Hills Cos., said in an email. “We selected 1800 Larimer because it is LEED Platinum, which is important to McGraw-Hill, and also because it provides an abundance of amenities for our employees, with parking and public transportation within blocks of the building,” she added. The relocation is expected to take place in early August. McGraw-Hill will occupy the 19th and 20th floors of the 22-story building, for a total of approximately 48,600 sf. The deal leaves a single, 10,509-sf vacancy at 1800 Larimer, which Westfield Company Inc. developed in 2010. The first office tower to be built in Denver’s central business district in 25 years and the first Platinum office tower west of the Mississippi, 1800 Larimer sold to Invesco Real Estate two years ago for a record-breaking $430 per sf. Xcel Energy is the building’s anchor tenant, occupying nearly 70 percent of the office space. Tom Lee of Newmark Grubb Knight Frank represented the landlord in the McGraw-Hill lease. Richard Damm of CBRE represented the tenant.