CliftonLarsonAllen’s new office will be on the 17th floor of the 2001 16th St. building in downtown Denver. (Max Scheinblum/BusinessDen)
An accounting firm is trading in two nickels for a dime.
CliftonLarsonAllen, based in Minneapolis, is closing its offices in Broomfield and Greenwood Village in favor of one in downtown Denver.
The firm plans to open in 21,000 square feet at 2001 16th St. near Union Station in May. Its sublease with dialysis firm DaVita will run another eight years.
“The (Broomfield and Greenwood Village) leases were always kept coterminous … in the event that we wanted to come together,” said Jason Carroll, managing partner for CLA in Colorado. “And coming together, we would have always done downtown. I mean, just geographically.”
“I think it makes a lot of sense being the central business district, being in the heart of Denver.”
CLA has about 200 employees working in the Denver metro area, with some commuting from as far as Boulder and Castle Rock.
“Being in accounting, it’s very much an apprenticeship-type model, right? That you’re around people. That’s how you learn and develop,” Carroll said.
Carroll declined to share costs of the buildout for the 17th-floor space.
The firm looked at other buildings downtown, like the Tabor Center at 1200 17th St., the new tower at 1900 Lawrence St. and office space on Platte Street.
It didn’t look in Cherry Creek, though the Cherry Creek North Business Improvement District is a client of the business, Carroll said. Proximity to Union Station at the 2001 16th St. building was just too good to pass up.
Jason Carroll
The old offices combined for slightly more than 30,000 square feet. Carroll said changing workplace culture means that businesses can get more out of smaller footprints. The company has no formal office attendance policy. Carroll talked to BusinessDen from his home office.
“It’s not like a strict rule that you need to be in ‘X’ many days or ‘Y’ many days. We do think it’s important, though, to be in the office,” he said.
The business, which works with a variety of developers, metro districts and other real estate players, has been in Colorado since 1972, Carroll said. He joined the firm in 1997, when it first opened the Broomfield office. He’s seen the accounting world evolve around him in that time.
“If you’re an old guy like me, you’ve been through Y2K, oh, you know, the world’s going to go to hell in a hand basket-type thing … there’s not going to be audits five years from now because of blockchain. Well, OK, so some of those things were a little anticlimactic, right?” Carroll said.
But “AI is different,” he added. CLA uses artificial intelligence tools such as Microsoft CoPilot and its own “CLA GPT.”
“The people that are coming out of school today have less of an appetite and have less of a level of patience with … tasks that are repetitive, tasks that aren’t challenging intellectually, and aren’t stimulating to them as it relates to feeling like they’re making a difference … and so it gives us an opportunity to reduce that — ultimately, probably eliminate it,” he said
Carroll said that the country has a shortage of accountants, and new tech will help with that labor crunch.
But more importantly than changing technology, the Arvada native said working at CLA has given him a window into the evolution of Denver.
“We do a lot of outsourcing work for metropolitan districts, and those are closely tied to real estate developers … we feel like we’ve had a lot of impact, albeit tangentially, on the development that’s taken place here in Colorado,” he said.
CliftonLarsonAllen’s new office will be on the 17th floor of the 2001 16th St. building in downtown Denver. (Max Scheinblum/BusinessDen)
An accounting firm is trading in two nickels for a dime.
CliftonLarsonAllen, based in Minneapolis, is closing its offices in Broomfield and Greenwood Village in favor of one in downtown Denver.
The firm plans to open in 21,000 square feet at 2001 16th St. near Union Station in May. Its sublease with dialysis firm DaVita will run another eight years.
“The (Broomfield and Greenwood Village) leases were always kept coterminous … in the event that we wanted to come together,” said Jason Carroll, managing partner for CLA in Colorado. “And coming together, we would have always done downtown. I mean, just geographically.”
“I think it makes a lot of sense being the central business district, being in the heart of Denver.”
CLA has about 200 employees working in the Denver metro area, with some commuting from as far as Boulder and Castle Rock.
“Being in accounting, it’s very much an apprenticeship-type model, right? That you’re around people. That’s how you learn and develop,” Carroll said.
Carroll declined to share costs of the buildout for the 17th-floor space.
The firm looked at other buildings downtown, like the Tabor Center at 1200 17th St., the new tower at 1900 Lawrence St. and office space on Platte Street.
It didn’t look in Cherry Creek, though the Cherry Creek North Business Improvement District is a client of the business, Carroll said. Proximity to Union Station at the 2001 16th St. building was just too good to pass up.
Jason Carroll
The old offices combined for slightly more than 30,000 square feet. Carroll said changing workplace culture means that businesses can get more out of smaller footprints. The company has no formal office attendance policy. Carroll talked to BusinessDen from his home office.
“It’s not like a strict rule that you need to be in ‘X’ many days or ‘Y’ many days. We do think it’s important, though, to be in the office,” he said.
The business, which works with a variety of developers, metro districts and other real estate players, has been in Colorado since 1972, Carroll said. He joined the firm in 1997, when it first opened the Broomfield office. He’s seen the accounting world evolve around him in that time.
“If you’re an old guy like me, you’ve been through Y2K, oh, you know, the world’s going to go to hell in a hand basket-type thing … there’s not going to be audits five years from now because of blockchain. Well, OK, so some of those things were a little anticlimactic, right?” Carroll said.
But “AI is different,” he added. CLA uses artificial intelligence tools such as Microsoft CoPilot and its own “CLA GPT.”
“The people that are coming out of school today have less of an appetite and have less of a level of patience with … tasks that are repetitive, tasks that aren’t challenging intellectually, and aren’t stimulating to them as it relates to feeling like they’re making a difference … and so it gives us an opportunity to reduce that — ultimately, probably eliminate it,” he said
Carroll said that the country has a shortage of accountants, and new tech will help with that labor crunch.
But more importantly than changing technology, the Arvada native said working at CLA has given him a window into the evolution of Denver.
“We do a lot of outsourcing work for metropolitan districts, and those are closely tied to real estate developers … we feel like we’ve had a lot of impact, albeit tangentially, on the development that’s taken place here in Colorado,” he said.
