A passenger boards a southbound H line RTD light rail at the Colfax at Auraria station in Denver, Colorado on Oct. 21, 2020. (Eric Lutzens/The Denver Post)
A developer looking to build income-restricted apartments on an Regional Transporation District parking lot will first need to convince the transportation agency that the idea is feasible.
“It’s risky. It’s always risky. We put in quite a bit of money to do the concept plans,” said Amy J. Elizabeth, director of programs and partnerships at development firm Delwest.
Earlier this month, Denver-based Delwest submitted plans proposing three apartment buildings on the parking lot for RTD’s Colorado Station. The 4-acre site is situated on Evans Avenue between I-25 and Colorado Boulevard in Denver’s University Hills neighborhood.
The site is directly south of the Colorado Center office campus, which consists of a pair of 12-story office towers and an additional 13-story one.
The drawings suggest that construction could happen in three phases. The first two involve constructing two 20-story buildings, each with 315 units, connected by a bridge on the seventh floor. They would be restricted to those making between 30 percent and 120 percent of the area median income. A few townhomes would be constructed in front of the structures.
The final phase would be a six-story, income-restricted apartment complex. The 55 units there would be for people making 30 percent to 50 percent of the area median income.
The buildings would have a total of 15,000 square feet of retail space and 23,000 square feet of amenity space. There would be 700 parking spaces on the street and built into the bottom of the three buildings, some of which will be reserved for RTD users.
“I cannot emphasize enough how early we are in this process,” Elizabeth said.
RTD hasn’t solicited development proposals for the lot. But it has a designated process when someone submits an unsolicited proposal, and Delwest is now on step two of eight.
First, Delwest will have to get its proposal approved by RTD as being “technically” feasible. Afterwards, the transportation agency will put out a request for alternative proposals from other developers for the site.
If Delwest makes it through that phase successfully, it’ll enter into an “exclusive negotiation agreement” with RTD.
“Which is basically: we’re going steady. We’re exclusive,” said Chessy Brady, RTD’s manager of Transit-Oriented Development.
That’s the second-to-last step, ironing out timelines and approvals from the city if that hasn’t already been done. The final task is to put together a joint development agreement between the transit agency and Delwest, putting the plan into action.
Delwest is not alone in wanting to build on RTD parking lots, which have experienced far less utilization since the pandemic. In Five Points, local developer Jeff Shanahan is building 62 income-restricted condos at 2907-2915 Welton St. after the agency solicited proposals. Another developer is in an exclusive negotiation agreement for RTD’s parking lot at the Central Park station.
RTD controls over 80 park-and-ride lots throughout the metro area. RTD owns some of them and others are leased or licensed, such as a shared parking lot with a church that uses the space only on Sundays. Before the pandemic, these lots were, on average, 60 percent full.
That number is down to 19 percent as of last year. Five years ago, some lots would be full, but none are that way anymore.
“As a TOD manager, I see that as an opportunity,” Brady said.
But that also has implications for ridership, which Brady acknowledged.
“Ideally, parking utilization remains low but ridership increases,” she said.
For Delwest, this would be their second project in the works in University Hills. The firm also plans to build a 170-unit income-restricted apartment complex on a 1.5-acre site in the 2200 block of South Albion Street.
“We’re really big on education and mixed-use spaces,” Elizabeth said. “At one of our properties, actually a few of them now, we have early-childhood education centers and we have coffee shops which are usually nonprofit-based.”
She said that this East Evans site would likely have something similar.
“We try to always follow community incentives and goals whether it’s the city of Denver or the surrounding neighborhood plan. So for this particular site, it’s a priority to develop around RTD stations right now and that’s all in an effort to increase ridership,” she said.
A passenger boards a southbound H line RTD light rail at the Colfax at Auraria station in Denver, Colorado on Oct. 21, 2020. (Eric Lutzens/The Denver Post)
A developer looking to build income-restricted apartments on an Regional Transporation District parking lot will first need to convince the transportation agency that the idea is feasible.
“It’s risky. It’s always risky. We put in quite a bit of money to do the concept plans,” said Amy J. Elizabeth, director of programs and partnerships at development firm Delwest.
Earlier this month, Denver-based Delwest submitted plans proposing three apartment buildings on the parking lot for RTD’s Colorado Station. The 4-acre site is situated on Evans Avenue between I-25 and Colorado Boulevard in Denver’s University Hills neighborhood.
The site is directly south of the Colorado Center office campus, which consists of a pair of 12-story office towers and an additional 13-story one.
The drawings suggest that construction could happen in three phases. The first two involve constructing two 20-story buildings, each with 315 units, connected by a bridge on the seventh floor. They would be restricted to those making between 30 percent and 120 percent of the area median income. A few townhomes would be constructed in front of the structures.
The final phase would be a six-story, income-restricted apartment complex. The 55 units there would be for people making 30 percent to 50 percent of the area median income.
The buildings would have a total of 15,000 square feet of retail space and 23,000 square feet of amenity space. There would be 700 parking spaces on the street and built into the bottom of the three buildings, some of which will be reserved for RTD users.
“I cannot emphasize enough how early we are in this process,” Elizabeth said.
RTD hasn’t solicited development proposals for the lot. But it has a designated process when someone submits an unsolicited proposal, and Delwest is now on step two of eight.
First, Delwest will have to get its proposal approved by RTD as being “technically” feasible. Afterwards, the transportation agency will put out a request for alternative proposals from other developers for the site.
If Delwest makes it through that phase successfully, it’ll enter into an “exclusive negotiation agreement” with RTD.
“Which is basically: we’re going steady. We’re exclusive,” said Chessy Brady, RTD’s manager of Transit-Oriented Development.
That’s the second-to-last step, ironing out timelines and approvals from the city if that hasn’t already been done. The final task is to put together a joint development agreement between the transit agency and Delwest, putting the plan into action.
Delwest is not alone in wanting to build on RTD parking lots, which have experienced far less utilization since the pandemic. In Five Points, local developer Jeff Shanahan is building 62 income-restricted condos at 2907-2915 Welton St. after the agency solicited proposals. Another developer is in an exclusive negotiation agreement for RTD’s parking lot at the Central Park station.
RTD controls over 80 park-and-ride lots throughout the metro area. RTD owns some of them and others are leased or licensed, such as a shared parking lot with a church that uses the space only on Sundays. Before the pandemic, these lots were, on average, 60 percent full.
That number is down to 19 percent as of last year. Five years ago, some lots would be full, but none are that way anymore.
“As a TOD manager, I see that as an opportunity,” Brady said.
But that also has implications for ridership, which Brady acknowledged.
“Ideally, parking utilization remains low but ridership increases,” she said.
For Delwest, this would be their second project in the works in University Hills. The firm also plans to build a 170-unit income-restricted apartment complex on a 1.5-acre site in the 2200 block of South Albion Street.
“We’re really big on education and mixed-use spaces,” Elizabeth said. “At one of our properties, actually a few of them now, we have early-childhood education centers and we have coffee shops which are usually nonprofit-based.”
She said that this East Evans site would likely have something similar.
“We try to always follow community incentives and goals whether it’s the city of Denver or the surrounding neighborhood plan. So for this particular site, it’s a priority to develop around RTD stations right now and that’s all in an effort to increase ridership,” she said.
