Culshaw’s company, Shea Properties, purchased the four-story, 124,000-square-foot building at 4340 S. Monaco St. in the Denver Tech Center for $12 million on Thursday, according to public records.

The deal, for about $97 a square foot, paves the way for the region’s first post-pandemic conversion of a large office building into residences.

“Call me crazy,” Culshaw quipped.

The deal is the culmination of a year and a half of securing financing, finalizing plans and even warding off some opposition from neighbors. But with the building under his firm’s ownership, Culshaw now expects to fashion it into 143 income-restricted apartments in about a year.

The deal is financed through a combination of private equity, $29 million in Denver-issued private activity bonds and an additional $4 million in federal and state tax credits. Culshaw said he sold the bonds at the start of April, right before markets were jolted by President Donald Trump’s April 2 tariff announcement.

“I think it’s a mixture of luck, and we thought it was a good time to do it,” Culshaw said.

The building lends itself well for a conversion, he added. It has few columns and wide-open spaces with huge glass windows that host what he called great views.

“You’re starting with kind of a blank slate, which I think makes it a whole lot easier,” Culshaw said.

It’s not the first time the developer has worked with a blank slate at this site, though. Culshaw said he sold the land for development in June 2000 for $7.2 million. The property traded hands a couple of times thereafter. It last sold for $69.3 million in March 2006, though that deal included another office building next door. By the time Culshaw got around to buying the 4340 building, it was entirely vacant.

“I knew that building was empty, and I knew the broker that was trying to lease it really well, and so I called him up and said, would they sell it and give me a year to convert it or to plan a conversion? And we made a deal,” Culshaw said.

That arrangement includes a first right of refusal for Shea Properties to buy the office building to the south at 4350 S. Monaco St., public records show, which was rezoned along with Culshaw’s 4340 building last summer.

The Monaco project is the furthest along of the 10 proposed office-to-residential conversions BusinessDen has reported on since the pandemic. Proposals have been submitted for a slew of downtown office towers, including most recently for the two at 621 and 633 17th St.

Denver’s most recent residential conversion, which was initiated before the pandemic, was Nichols Partnership’s transformation of the former Art Institute of Colorado building in Cap Hill.

This story was originally published by BusinessDen.

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Texas-based apartment developer Quarterra and New Jersey investor PGIM Real Estate purchased the 15-acre site of a former shopping center at 5151 S. Federal Blvd. in Littleton for $14.3 million at the end of February.

The two are planning to turn the onetime retail center, which became vacant over a decade ago and was demolished in 2018, into a seven-building apartment community with 373 units. Over 7,000 square feet of commercial space will be added as well.

Quarterra is a subsidiary of giant home building firm Lennar Corp. PGIM is a subsidiary of global insurance and financial services titan Prudential Financial. Neither firm responded to a request for comment.

Kairos Investment Management out of Southern California was the seller. The firm also did not respond to a request for comment. Kairos CEO Carl Chang and his family had owned the site for decades.

The site at the southwestern corner of Federal Boulevard and Belleview Avenue has long been targeted for redevelopment.

In 2016, Chang appeared in front of Littleton City Council, apologized for his property’s blighted condition and promised that plans to turn it into something better would come soon. Two years later, a proposal came in to turn the strip mall into hundreds of apartments. That plan never moved forward; city officials complained about struggling to communicate with Chang.

On Christmas Eve 2020, Quarterra entered the mix, sending a letter to the city that it was under contract to buy the site. BusinessDen first reported on the plans last year.

Littleton Senior Planner Teri Whitmore said the firm has submitted all its building permits, and the city expects to issue them in May.

The shopping center site will be one of several large redevelopment projects in Littleton. The former Lumen Tech site off Mineral Avenue is being converted into apartments, retail and a Costco.

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The national retailer purchased 10.6 acres along 56th Avenue just west of Tower Road for a touch under $7 million last week. It plans to build a 151,000-square-foot store there, BusinessDen previously reported.

A Target spokesperson said no opening date for its Green Valley Ranch store has been set yet. The retailer’s closest existing store is in The Shops at Northfield in Central Park.

The new store will anchor a 150-acre master-planned development, dubbed Link 56, in the blocks between 56th and 60th Avenues along Tower Road.

Illinois-based developer Kensington and British firm IM Properties purchased the development site for nearly $30 million at the end of March, public records show. The deal works out to $5.40 a square foot for the land.

Development plans call for 30 acres of retail along 56th and Tower, with 2,000 residential units filling in the interior of the square-shaped site situated just south of the 61st & Peña Station light rail stop. Kensington and IM will also dedicate 27 acres for parks and open space, connecting the development to the Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge.

Target’s construction will be part of the first phase of development, the two companies announced Monday. That work also includes building 214 apartments across 13 buildings, creating 170 two-story townhomes on 11 acres and dropping in more retail to complement them.

The total price tag on phase one’s work: $235 million, according to the announcement, with construction to begin immediately. Public records show IM and Kensington received a $33 million loan from Chicago-based Wintrust Bank at the end of last month.

One retailer that could be joining Target is Chicago-based hot dog and beef sandwich joint Portillo’s, which BusinessDen previously reported is considering a location at the northwest corner of 57th Avenue and Tower Road.

Another developer has entered the mix, too.

Lasco Development Corp., based in Houston, Texas, purchased a 1.3-acre site adjacent to Target’s for $4.95 million. The site, along 56th, is for a 7-Eleven, public records show.

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The real estate developer — who splits time between Los Angeles and Taos — purchased an entire city block with two office towers on it and plans to convert it to apartments.

“These buildings in Denver represent an opportunity to make good on my thesis that we have all of the square footage we need to build the housing we need,” Luzzatto said.

He paid $3.2 million for 621 and 633 17th St., a source familiar with the deal told BusinessDen. The property record has yet to be recorded.

In 2008, the buildings sold for $112 million. The recent deal is valued at about $3.30 a foot for the office buildings built in 1957 and 1974.

Luzzatto’s plan is to fashion at least 700 apartments out of the existing structures, which total around 970,000 square feet. At a development cost of $150 to $200 million, it will be one of the biggest office to residential conversions west of New York, he said.

The seller in the deal, Denver-based E2M Ventures, bought the property last November. BusinessDen was unable to determine the price. E2M’s founder, Marc Perusse, declined to comment.

“We want it to be a really, really vibrant block. And we want to provide services that benefit both the residents of the building and the CBD at large,” Luzzatto said.

Luzzatto, 37, runs his family’s real estate business, The Luzzatto Co. The firm has a handful of employees and offices in California, Texas and New Mexico. His dad, Marc Luzzatto, started the company in 2007 after decades of investing in real estate. His son called him a “pioneer” of the creative office space, and said his dad turned industrial properties into open concept offices for companies looking to do production and desk work under one roof.

Luzzatto is hoping to get a little bit of everything out of his new office towers.

The first step will be to put retail on the building’s ground floors via partnerships where he will own part of the business.

A coffee shop will take the former Ink Coffee space at 621 17th. The shop sits behind a large courtyard, which Luzzatto anticipates will host live music on weekends and give guests a place to enjoy their latte or pastry outdoors. Inside the building, he is planning to keep about 100,000 square feet of office space.

“Denver feels really good to me,” he said. “It’s a city that was the fastest growing city through the 2010s … I don’t see that growth stopping, I think it’s a really well located city, it’s got a really beautiful natural environment.”

But Denver has faced some growing pains lately, particularly in its downtown office market, which is languishing from a 35 percent office vacancy rate, according to brokerage CBRE. Only one downtown Denver office tower, 1600 Glenarm Place, has been converted into residences, and that was 20 years ago.

To fund this project, Luzzatto will have to perform some real estate artistry, cobbling together disparate funding sources to make the development happen.

“We’re going to look at any and all sources of funding to make the economics work with the understanding that the more diverse the financing sources, the better,” he said. “Our highest goal is to bring achievable rents to these buildings. And so any dollars that we can get outside of private equity will be dollars that will help drive rents down.”

“Above all else — that is our mission.”

One of those key sources will be the $570 million in funding the Downtown Denver Authority will be able to dish out to projects like Luzzatto’s. Downtown voters approved a measure last November to unlock funding for residential conversions and other downtown development projects. Luzzatto registered for the agency’s funds and will submit an official application by July.

Another wrinkle: the developer doesn’t actually own all of the land he just bought; some of it is tied to ground leases. Working around that will be critical to the project, he said.

“We can go as fast as the city can go as far as approvals and permits. Our hope is that the city will recognize the value of this project and will help move it along so that we can start building,” Luzzatto said.

Luzzatto has tapped New York City architecture firm HLW to draw up the plans.

“We’re already started on architectural [work], and we’ve engaged with some local people to work with us on the DDA process which we’re starting on as well,” he said.

Luzzatto said he’s been scouring the Mountain West and Southwest for an office to residential conversion. About six months ago, he settled on Denver as the location. The 621 and 633 buildings were the first call he made in town.

“These buildings came up in the fall and I pursued them basically the day they went online. We were the first call on these buildings,” Luzzatto said.

The buildings have the right column spacing, window lines and cores that lend themselves well to a conversion, he added. Both properties will be almost totally vacant once the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment departs from the premises later this year.

“I think it was a reason we ended up at the price we did and on the terms we did,” Luzzatto said.

While this will be Luzzatto’s biggest development to-date, he’s no stranger to high-profile projects. He helped develop Sweetgreen’s headquarters in Los Angeles and built the University of Southern California’s Ellison Institute for Transformative Medicine, funded by billionaire Larry Ellison.

Currently, Luzzatto is working through a 450,000-square-foot redevelopment of a 12-building office park in Austin, Texas. He also briefly ran for mayor of Los Angeles in 2022 on a platform of reducing housing regulations and converting commercial space into new houses.

“We need to stop thinking of commercial buildings as office or retail or residential or hospitality,” Luzzatto said. “We sort of need to scrap the idea of all these different categories … and look at what is the highest and best use for this building.”

“I think in most cases — it will be housing.”

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“Hopefully, second time will be a little bit more of a charm,” Spearman said.

The 41-year-old plans to open a bookstore with “soul and substance” at 1700 Humboldt St. in City Park West. He and a partner bought the 9,000-square-foot building for $2.9 million this week, records show.

Spearman and fellow Denver native David Back led an investor group that bought Tattered Cover in December 2020, describing it as a business devastated by the pandemic. Spearman served as CEO until April 2023, when he stepped down amid an unsuccessful run for the Denver school board. Prior to that, he briefly ran for mayor.

The bookstore chain opened locations in Colorado Springs and Westminster under Spearman’s tenure, but neither lasted more than two years. The business lost over $650,000 in the first nine months of 2023, ultimately filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy that October. It sold last summer to Barnes & Noble for $1.8 million.

“Tattered Cover losing its independent status was disappointing to a lot of people, including me,” he said.

Spearman wants to open his new bookstore, dubbed Denver Book Society, by spring 2026. He said it will take about 3,500 square feet of the former Humboldt Kitchen + Bar restaurant, which closed two years ago after a decade on the corner.

He is considering turning the restaurant’s former kitchen into a smaller, approximately 2,000-square-foot eatery.

The 9,000-square-foot property is also home to White Pie pizzeria and Mexican joint Dos Santos. Both have several years left on their leases. The property was sold by Steve Kursh, an individual from New York who bought the building for $3.8 million in March 2019. He did not respond to a request for comment.

Kursh was represented by Dorit Fischer and Hayden Hirschfeld of NAI Shames Makovsky. Spearman’s broker was Tyler Bray of Cushman & Wakefield.

Before settling on 17th and Humboldt, Spearman was looking a little further east at Continuum’s 9th + CO development. He considered leasing space in the 26-acre mixed-use development at 9th Avenue and Colorado Boulevard, but said the developer’s recapitalization of the property put those plans on ice.

Spearman wasn’t discouraged. To be a truly independent bookstore, he figured he’d have to own his own real estate, too.

Fortunately, there was a familiar place out there for him. The 1700 Humboldt was once home to Strings, a restaurant that operated in City Park West for 27 years before closing in 2013.

“I think it’s a super awesome location. Growing up in Denver, whenever I could get someone to pay for my meal, I would take them to Strings,” Spearman said.

Spearman has one partner on the deal, Rich Garvin, a philanthropist from San Francisco. Garvin came to Denver during the pandemic and currently serves on the board of Opera Colorado and as the athletics committee chair at the Denver Athletic Club.

The two had made a bid to maintain control of Tattered Cover once it entered bankruptcy in 2023, Spearman said. He’s been working as a consultant to school districts and nonprofits since.

At Denver Book Society, the plan is to become a community hub, with events and programming complementing the literature inside. It’ll stand out, he said, by what it stocks.

“Books that you can easily find on Amazon, you can find on Amazon,” he said. “You come into our store and have a best-in-class staff opportunity that recommends a book that you wouldn’t have found otherwise.”

Could that have been done when he ran Tattered Cover? Spearman said he’s learned from his first run as a bookseller.

“I think a combination of its history, the pandemic and me being a first-time bookstore owner made that incredibly challenging, but in my role I saw the potential of what or how a bookstore could really impact the community and we plan to do just that.”

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The founder of 3rd Shot Pickleball has taken over an old grocery store in Wheat Ridge, and a discount homegoods shop in Nevada. And earlier this month, he inked a lease for a 43,000-square-foot former furniture store in Sheridan.

“It’s the preferred type of real estate,” Kahn said.

The pickleball aficionado plans to turn the space just south of the intersection of Santa Fe Drive and Hampden Avenue into a “flagship” location for 3rd Shot. It will be the company’s sixth spot, and have more courts than the first five.

“There’s challenges with real estate … You got to have the right ceiling height, the right column spacing, the right parking and the right zoning,” Kahn said. “All of those things are critical and they’re not necessarily easy to find a building that has all of those characteristics.”

“And the [new] building has all the right characteristics.”

Kahn, who plans to open in the fall, expects to spend over $2 million to turn the old Conn’s furniture store at 3950 Riverpoint Pkwy. into a pickleball destination. There will be 16 courts, four of which will be professional-sized.

He also plans to install a mezzanine inside that will add extra viewing and lounge space.

“No other club in Colorado has that,” Kahn said.

This will be the 3rd Shot’s third Colorado location. Kahn opened his first space in Longmont in November 2023. In addition to there, Wheat Ridge and Nevada, he also operates in Indiana. A second spot in that state will open next month.

“When we heard that Conn’s locations were becoming available, we looked at the ones in Colorado and this one is located in a great area where we’re not close to any of our competitors,” Kahn said.

The space, right next to a Costco, will also have a full bar, pro shop and a couple of private rooms that can be reserved for events and parties.

“It will have the nicest acoustics of any of our clubs,” he said.

That, Kahn said, will be due to the $250,000 he’s spending to coat the building’s 26-foot ceilings with “acoustic foam,” which will help dampen the noise of the notoriously loud sport. Another expensive line-item: $12,000 Laykold surfacing for each of the courts, which is the same material that tennis pros play on at the U.S. Open.

Kahn’s high-dollar buildouts have paid off thus far, though. 3rd Shot has almost 1,500 members who each pay $68 monthly. His Wheat Ridge location raked in more than $1.8 million in its first full year in 2024.

“All the clubs are profitable,” he said.

Kahn, who previously ran a tennis club in Lakewood for 20 years, calls 3rd Shot a “semi-private” club. Non-members can come in and use the facilities, but there’s discounts and benefits to being a member. A member pays $6 per person for doubles to use the court for an hour, while a non-member pays $10.

Unlike some other pickleball operators, 3rd Shot doesn’t use a franchise model. Kahn and his partners instead pick an operator in each market, who gets an ownership stake in their particular spot.

Kahn also has a mishmash of other investors and partners. The main group consists of him, Oskar Blues Brewing Co. founder Dale Katechis and Kahn’s longtime friends Wayne Williamson and David Bailey. But at the new location, he’s brought in Rick Witsken, co-founder of the National Pickleball League, as an investor. Kahn called him “one of the most decorated” pickleball players.

As he gears up to open his new Sheridan location, along with a suburban Indianapolis spot in mid-April, Kahn is still hunting for more spaces for his business to expand, in Colorado and beyond.

“We have one in mind that I can’t disclose yet,” Kahn said of his Colorado location plans. “But we’re actively pursuing.”

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American Lore by Parker Thomas is set to open by this fall in a 1,200-square-foot space at 3965 Tennyson St. The half neighborhood bar, half hat-making shop also will have split ownership.

The brains behind the bar operation are Spencer Fronk and Andrew Palmquist, co-founders of Number 38, a RiNo bar and restaurant with a sprawling outdoor patio and stage for live music.

The face behind the hats will be Parker Orms, a third-generation hat-maker with his own shop in Cherry Creek, Hats by Parker Thomas.

“American Lore bar is going to do more of that watering hole,” Fronk said. “Late at night, I can come with a date, have a nice cocktail, have a beer, hang out, go to dinner on Tennyson, and come back and really lean into that sort of more late-night neighborhood haunt.”

The bar’s hat operations will take place in a separate area in the back of the store, operating during traditional retail hours. But it will be an integral part of the concept.

“When you walk in, it’s like the start of your hat story,” Orms said. “You walk in, choose your color, brim length, do all that, and by the end of it, you have your hat, sit and chill at the bar, which I’m hoping it’s just kind of like this revolving door of: You’re walking in, and people that have their hats are like, ‘OK, you’re up.’”

The trio always had its sights set on the northwest part of the Denver area. They looked at Olde Town Arvada and kept the search pretty “Highlandsy,” Palmquist said. But when this space on Tennyson became available, the decision to go in there was pretty easy.

“The demographics of the area fit a little bit more of that higher-end product that we’re looking to deliver,” Palmquist said.

JLL brokers Lily Armstrong, Jeff Feldman and Sam Zaitz worked the deal for the building’s landlord, Asana Partners. The Charlotte, North Carolina-based landlord has numerous holdings on Tennyson, and recently leased the next-door units to a perfume shop and bao bun spot.

Build-out costs are estimated at $100,000, according to public records.

It will cost about $300 for the full, custom-hat experience, Orms said. But Fronk and Palmquist emphasized that the beer would be cheap.

Orms, 33, grew up in Denver and played football for the University of Colorado Buffaloes. He’d visit his family in Texas, shooting guns and riding horses; his dad and grandfather helped run a hat shop there for decades.

When he took off his helmet for the final time, he replaced it with a hat.

“[I] went to the Stock Show, worked with my dad and grandpa, started shaping hats and designing my own styles right away,” he said.

The Stock Show is also how Orms met Fronk and Palmquist, who have been friends for years. The hat-maker is one of the many vendors and musicians that Number 38 hosts during its annual “Bison Days” lineup that runs concurrently with the show.

Orms said he has designed hats for country star Reba McEntire, Nuggets player Aaron Gordon and Broncos quarterback Bo Nix.

“I’ve done events on a cruise ship to Alaska, and I’ve done an event in Florida, New York — all over,” he said.

The hatter opened his own hat shop at 257 Fillmore St. in the fall of 2023. Last year, Orms raked in nearly $1 million in sales. He’s opening another Cherry Creek boutique with his fiancee, Janelle, called Hat and Hem at Third Avenue and Fillmore Street.

Fronk and Palmquist, meanwhile, are also working on another location of their own.

Their plans for a second Number 38 in Littleton have been approved by the city, and the two are working on getting a building permit to begin construction, city spokesman David Gilbert said via email. Littleton awarded the business a “shareback” deal last year for the new location that would allow it to keep up to $400,000 in sales tax revenue.

The duo also had an out-of-state location, Number 15, in Louisville, Kentucky. That spot closed a few months ago. Fronk and Palmquist, who own the building, said it’s been leased to another operator.

“A local brewery took over the building, and then now [we] started to focus on just hyper-local projects,” Fronk said.

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Douglas County signed a 15-year lease for the entire 82,000-square-foot building at 11045 Lansing Circle in the Meridian International Business Center last October.

Roughly 175 employees will ultimately work from the building, which is in an unincorporated part of the county. Move-ins began in late 2024 and will continue through June.

“Typically, our preference is to buy, but based on availability, we went with a lease route to buy in the future,” said Tim Hallmark, the county director of facilities, fleet and emergency support services.

The deal was one of the largest local office leases in the fourth quarter of 2024. Douglas County will pay $23.50 per square foot in base rent annually starting out — or $107,000 a month, according to the lease agreement obtained by BusinessDen through a public records request. That amount will increase 3% annually.

The county also will be responsible for building expenses that add $8.45 per square foot at the start.

In the fourth and fifth years of the lease, the county will have the option to buy the building for a price based either on an outside appraisal or at least 10% of the building’s “capitalization rate as determined by the then-current base rent,” according to the document.

The landlord, Healthpeak Properties, Inc., is paying for the county’s build-out on-site, Hallmark said.

The Douglas County Health Department will consolidate two facilities in Lone Tree and Castle Rock into the second floor of the three-story building. The former office space will be occupied by other county employees.

The first-floor user is still being determined, though Hallmark said he anticipates it will be the county Department of Human Services, which administers welfare and social services to residents.

The building’s third occupant, Colorado’s 23rd Judicial District, is what really drove the real estate search.

“The initial search was driven for the judicial district. You do not need to be a citizen of Douglas County to require judicial services in Douglas County, and talking with our judicial partners, a vast majority of their clientele … come from the north in general,” Hallmark said.

“[The location is] for the citizens we serve, not for the staff,” he added.

The judicial district is the newest in Colorado and came into existence in January — the state’s first new judicial district since the early ’60s. It was split off from a shared district with Arapahoe County, prompted by the rapidly growing population in the south metro area.

The district’s probationary services will be housed in the newly leased space, along with its diversion program, which provides an alternative to the traditional court process for those charged with certain crimes. It has two offices in Castle Rock but needs additional space to support the district’s work, Hallmark said.

Because of this use, Hallmark was looking for buildings far away from residential areas and in mostly or totally vacant properties that would prevent the county from being a “bad neighbor.” Simultaneously, he wanted to be close to public transit, to help facilitate the flow of people into the office space. Those two constraints limited his search to 66 properties, 12 of which were in Arapahoe County.

“There’s a lot of sensitivity to judicial programing,” Hallmark said.

Jeff Brandon of NavPoint Real Estate Group represented the county in the deal.

Hallmark said he’s not interested in any more office deals in the near future.

“We are set with our office needs currently,” he said.

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“My concern is that we just have a density of services that isn’t tenable. It doesn’t work already, and they’re talking about adding footprint,” said Ryan Cox, who lives nearby.

The St. Francis Center’s shelter at 2323 Curtis St. provides showers, mail and social services for roughly 500 homeless people daily.

On Feb. 18, the nonprofit bought an 8,000-square-foot office building down the street at 2347 Curtis St. for $2.56 million, according to public records.

CEO Nancy Burke told BusinessDen last month that SFC was interested in buying nearby property and pursuing a redevelopment in the future. SFC had been leasing part of the building since November 2023.

But the transaction came as a surprise to nearby residents, who have expressed concern about conditions on the block, which saw 140 crimes reported there last year.

For more than a year, residents had been negotiating with SFC in hopes of reaching a “good neighbor agreement,” in which the nonprofit would commit to certain security and cleanliness measures. The most recent draft included a clause that SFC “not expand their physical footprint within this immediate area without engaging in conversation” with the Curtis Park registered neighborhood organization.

Part of the problem, neighbors say, is that they don’t feel SFC is forthright about its activities. They point in part to the acquisition of 2347 Curtis St.

“They’ve been less than forthcoming about where they are and what their plans are,” Cox said.

A recording of a Feb. 5 community meeting obtained by BusinessDen shows neighbors and a city mediator asked Burke about the 2347 Curtis building three different times before she mentioned the organization was under contract.

First, mediator Steve Charbonneau asked if Burke had an update on her plans for the building.

“I do not have an update on the building purchase,” she said.

Moments later, one of the neighbors interjected, asking instead if Burke could share the “current status” of purchase negotiations.

“We are in a discussion with the owners to purchase this building,” she replied.

Much later in the meeting, another resident asked point-blank if the nonprofit was under contract to buy the building.

“Yes,” is all Burke said.

Burke told BusinessDen on Jan. 14 that SFC was not under contract at the time. But Jim Culhane, who along with Jawaid Bazyar previously owned the property, said Monday that SFC went under contract Dec. 16.

Burke declined to comment on the transaction. After BusinessDen informed her of the recording of the Feb. 5 meeting, she emailed neighbors to say its release was “definitely outside of any good neighbor processes I have seen.”

“We have determined that we are unable to continue participation in these meetings but remain open to individual contacts and concerns,” Burke wrote Feb. 28.

Councilman Darrell Watson, who represents the area, has said he supports SFC adding housing, but not expanding its services in Curtis Park. He said he also learned SFC was under contract at the Feb. 5 meeting, and added that he spoke with Burke privately after.

“I shared that with Nancy that communication would have been helpful if that came out earlier,” he said.

Bazyar and Culhane bought the quarter-acre 2347 Curtis property for $675,000 in 2011, public records show.

Bazyar, who declined to comment on the sale, previously voiced frustration with activity on the block. In 2019, Denver fined him for refusing to clean human feces left on his property; he told Fox31 that homeless people were defecating there nearly every day. In 2022, he told the local CBS affiliate he felt “under siege” on a “lawless” block.

Public records show Bazyar and Culhane are providing $2.06 million in seller financing on the deal.

In January, Burke told BusinessDen that she’s exploring paring down the existing day shelter model in Curtis Park. Instead, she’s interested in building housing on the block for the homeless, with services on-site to support them. She thinks this plan will decrease the number of homeless people in the immediate area.

“What if we served less people?” Burke said in January. “What if we did housing, which, by nature, would change what happens here? What if it was less people, doing something with these pretty dilapidated buildings?”

Cox and other neighbors say they support housing, but don’t fully trust that SFC would close the day shelter on the block.

“My concern has always been that they continue the services they have now and/or expand them, plus several hundred units, potentially, of housing on top of that,” he said.

The 2347 office building is separated from the day shelter by one single-family home, which the nonprofit doesn’t own. Documents SFC submitted to Denver in 2023 stated that the homeowner had expressed a desire to sell.

Cox said he feels “strung along” by the whole ordeal and hopes SFC will be scrutinized if and when it seeks to redevelop the block.

“I think it’s going to come down to City Council and HOST — they hold the purse strings,” Cox said, referring to Denver’s Department of Housing Stability.

The City Council approves contracts for homeless shelters and services in town. It granted SFC nearly $1.2 million for its Curtis Park shelter operations last week. The organization, which also has operations outside Curtis Park, had a budget of $9.7 million last year, much of which comes from Denver contracts.

“These service providers, they are businesses now, and there’s a lot of money up for grabs,” Cox said.

This story originally published on BusinessDen.

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“It was for sure more interesting than some of the real estate sales I’ve had,” said Malnati, who works for local shop Kentwood Real Estate.

Late last month, Denver-based Elkco Properties purchased 369-375 S. Pearl St. in West Wash Park for $1.5 million from Malnati’s client, Alland Properties LLC.

The deal works out to $296 a square foot for a 1,600-square-foot house and the vacant 3,400-square-foot retail building next door, which has two units.

“We just plan on fixing them up and renting them,” Elkco CEO Stephen Elken told BusinessDen.

But there’s more to the story than a simple real estate play.

Seller Alland Properties, managed by Andy and Estela Koncsik, purchased the real estate for $450,000 in 2006, public records show. Andy ran a dry cleaning business in one of the retail spaces, and the couple once operated a Mexican restaurant in its other storefront.

But that establishment lasted only a few years, replaced by Finley’s Pub in 2012. Over a decade later, the two were forced to sell the property as part of divorce proceedings, with Malnati appointed by the court to sell it. He put it on the market in August.

The dry cleaner shut down around Labor Day as part of the deal. By late September, Malnati had Elkco under contract.

But the other retail tenant, Finley’s Pub, threatened to throw a wrench in those plans. It filed for bankruptcy, with the broker and his clients finding out only through a Facebook post announcing the bar would soon close.

“We went from receiving some income to no income,” Malanti said. “But the buyer was able to be resilient and find a way to purchase the property.”

That involved the sellers putting up $80,000 in escrow for roof repairs and fixing up the property. The dry cleaning space barely had operable HVAC, having used the dry cleaning equipment to heat the store, he said.

“During the last couple of snowstorms, you can’t see daylight, but there’s a hole in there that’s leaking,” Malnati said of the building’s roof.

It was still a deal that made sense for Elkco, which has its offices six blocks down the road along Logan Street, just before it crosses Interstate 25.

“It’s difficult in today’s market to finance real estate, period. It’s also more difficult to finance vacant real estate. … [The buyer] is incredibly well capitalized and has a great relationship with their bank, and they come with a great amount of trust in the community,” Malnati said.

Elkco, founded in 1985, manages more than 2,000 apartment units and about 1.5 million square feet of retail and mixed-use commercial real estate throughout Colorado, Wyoming, Michigan, Iowa, Nebraska and Missouri, according to its website.

Malnati, too, is well versed in mixed-use real estate, working on both residential and commercial properties. He said the court appointed him as the broker in this sale because of his background in both product types.

“I like to joke that I’m bilingual,” Malnati said. “I like to speak residential and commercial.”

This story was originally published on BusinessDen.

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