Colorado Real Estate Journal - September 20, 2017
Western Union will move its global headquarters into 249,552 square feet at One Belleview Station and will lease another big block of office space in the vicinity. “We’re excited to have them here. It’s a great, iconic, longtime Denver company that is perfect for this location,” said Jim Neenan, president and chief operating officer of Prime West Development LLC, which developed the new 15-story building at 7001 E. Belleview Ave. in Denver. Western Union will move in November from its current headquarters at 12500 and 12510 E. Belford Ave. in Englewood. It has those buildings, which total 391,148 sf and house 1,306 employees, listed for sale or lease. The global payment services company is negotiating a lease for a “secondary space in the general area” of One Belleview Station that, combined with the new headquarters, will give it approximately the same amount of square footage it currently occupies, according to Brad Jones, senior manager of Global Corporate Communications. Jones said the Fortune 500 company selected the high visibility One Belleview Station “for a host of reasons, including its modern and open office setting, which is conducive for Western Union’s highly collaborative work culture. In addition, its centralized location and proximity to light rail provide enormous commuting benefits for the company’s employee base.” “This modern facility will enable our company to strengthen and grow while demonstrating our longstanding support for this great city,” the company said in a statement. Class A office spaces large enough to house Western Union are exceedingly rare in the southeast suburban submarket. In fact, Prime West, which developed the 318,000-sf One Belleview Station on a speculative basis, was “very close to signing leases” with a few other, smaller tenants when Western Union committed to its lease. “They would have been fabulous tenants to have in the building, but the scale and quality of Western Union just outweighed the ability to accommodate them,” said Neenan. With One Belleview Station now fully leased, Prime West is considering launching a second new office building at Belleview Station, a mixed-use transit-oriented development at the Belleview light-rail station. Neenan said the company is “in the process of thoroughly evaluating market conditions and tenant interest, etc.,” but feels fairly confident it will be able to develop the approximately 370,000-sf building, likely to be called 6900 Layton, in the near future. The building will include about 25,000 sf of retail space and be located a block north of East Belleview, in the center of the 42-acre Belleview Station development. Alec Wynne, principal and managing director in Avison Young’s Denver office, represented Western Union in its lease. Ryan Stout and Nate Bradley, managing directors at Cushman & Wakefield, represented Prime West. Wynne and Rick Egitto, principal of Avison Young’s Capital Markets Division, are marketing Western Union’s current headquarters off E-470 and Interstate 25. There are two three-story buildings connected via a basement-level walkway. The buildings feature approximately 53,000-sf floor plates and just over 4.3 parking spaces per 1,000 sf, including 70 covered, executive parking spaces. The campus has a cafeteria, fitness facility and meeting rooms, plus 48.3 acres of adjacent ground that could be acquired for future expansion.