Colorado Real Estate Journal - January 6, 2016
Sonia Danielsen’s roots in River North have grown in a new direction, and countless folks will be thankful for that. Danielsen has reinvented the Blake Street print shop she inherited from her father and grandfather as a many-sided project called Bindery on Blake. People can watch beer and hard cider being produced while taste testing beverages with a meal. They could rent an artist studio for $500 a month, or they may happen to work for one of the companies that leased up all the office space before the project’s delivery this month. “Twenty years ago, I had a vision of what I wanted it to look like when printing was no longer,” said Danielsen, who sold the printing business in 2014 and kept the real estate at 2875 and 2901 Blake. Danielsen originally thought she’d convert the building to multitenant industrial space. Instead it became all things RiNo. “The vision started in my head, and not necessarily in my husband’s head,” said Danielsen, who developed the Bindery with her husband, Barry, whose background is in commercial real estate. “I had to prove to him that this was the right thing to do,” she said, sitting amidst reminders of her earlier life, like pieces of printing presses fashioned into a long dining table inside the Rackhouse Pub. The Rackhouse is Bindery on Blake’s restaurant, a mezzanine-level venue sandwiched between Bierstadt Lager and C Squared Cider. From the Rackhouse, with its imported copper brew kettles, you can look below at the production facilities and C Squared’s office – a repurposed trailer home. Danielsen’s company, Eastwood Printing, built the 21,000-square-foot building in 1997 because it needed more room, and the 4,000-sf mezzanine has been added. The building has been branded The Juicebox. Loading docks joined the building to the original, 1927 printing plant, which comprises 46,000 sf. The buildings were separated during redevelopment to create a pathway to Coors Field parking that the Bindery will share. Davis Partnership Architects will occupy the older building, called The Sandbox. Also in the building will be advertising firm Motive; Metropolitan Hardwood Floors; Spazo Prego, an Italian kitchen and bath company that will have a showroom on Blake; Danielsen Investments; and Centro Consulting. The Sandbox also includes 13 200- to 250-sf artist studios, “part of giving back to RiNo and giving back to the artists that have done so much to put RiNo on the map,” said Danielsen. “It’s giving them a place to create. I didn’t want to see them get pushed out like they did in LoDo 20 years ago.” Sprung Construction was the contractor, OZ Architecture designed the core and shell, and Davis Partnership played a big role in the design. Except for the artist studios, which will be leased on a month-to-month basis, “We’ve been completely leased, with leases signed, since July,” said Danielsen. Danielsen, who developed the Rail Yard Lofts in RiNo, handled all the leasing, starting with an ad on Craigslist that elicited a call from the cidery’s owner. He originally wanted 4,000 sf in The Juicebox, but Danielsen wouldn’t divide the building to that level. A few days later he called back and said, “I think I have a way to take the whole thing.” Danielsen said what has happened in River North is much as her dad, Nick Siegel, predicted in the 1980s, when he used to attend Upper Larimer Neighborhood Association meetings. “People would just laugh at him,” Danielsen recalled. At that time, and for years thereafter, the neighborhood “was scary,” she said. “I would never leave after dark without a really big man walking me out the door to my car,” said Danielsen, who lights up at the neighborhood’s transformation. “It’s fun, dynamic, energetic. It just has the right vibe, and every day it changes,” she said