The parking lot had been owned by the seller for decades. (Matt Geiger/BusinessDen)
Bahman Shafa is buying again.
“Development right now has a lot of risk attached to it, with interest rates being high … Right now is just a good time to invest in solid cash flowing assets for me,” said Shafa, the founder of Focus Property Group.
The company bought a 5,374-square-foot parking lot at 2001 Larimer St. late last month for $1.5 million, public records show, its first real estate purchase since February 2020.
The parking lot deal was worth $279 a foot. Focus Property Group financed the purchase with a $1.1 million loan from Missouri-based Central Trust Bank.
The seller was 2001 Larimer LLC, managed by Gertrude Brunschwig. It has been a family asset for decades, said Solomon Stark, broker with NAI Shames Makovsky who represented the seller.
Shafa has also been investing in parking lots since the turn of the century. While he owns all sorts of properties around town, his favorite has always been the humble asphalt lot.
“If you’re in a location that caters to office, to night life, to concerts or events, you have multiple drivers of income,” he said.
Bahman Shafa
Shafa’s real estate career began in 1987, selling Broncos merchandise out of a push cart on the 16th Street Mall. That was the same year as Elway’s “The Drive,” which landed the team in the Super Bowl.
That introduced Shafa to the “special event merchandising” business, which would take him from push cart to storefront. The profits went into a 1991 real estate purchase: an industrial property at 601 W. 29th, right behind Coors Field, which was constructed four years later.
“When they built Coors Field, I discovered the demand for parking around (it),” Shafa said.
Today, Focus Property Group owns a wide variety of properties around town. It has a staff of 50, and developed four self-storage facilities, such as the one in RiNo along Delgany Street that’s visible from the Park Avenue bridge. It built a senior-living facility in Denver’s Hilltop neighborhood and owns two office buildings in RiNo, along with the real estate for brewery Ratio Beerworks and tapas spot the Barcelona Wine Bar.
It lost one of its office holdings, the Triad Office complex at 5660-5680 Greenwood Plaza Blvd., to foreclosure in late 2023. It was the last real estate purchase it made before the Larimer Street lot.
Meanwhile, plans for a downtown hotel at the corner of 14th and Stout Streets are “on hold,” Shafa said.
“Construction costs have increased, interest rates have increased, group and business travel has not come back the way it was before COVID, so the demand for a corporate business convention center hotel is soft right now.”
Correction: The square footage of the lot and the date when the seller purchased it has been been corrected.
The parking lot had been owned by the seller for decades. (Matt Geiger/BusinessDen)
Bahman Shafa is buying again.
“Development right now has a lot of risk attached to it, with interest rates being high … Right now is just a good time to invest in solid cash flowing assets for me,” said Shafa, the founder of Focus Property Group.
The company bought a 5,374-square-foot parking lot at 2001 Larimer St. late last month for $1.5 million, public records show, its first real estate purchase since February 2020.
The parking lot deal was worth $279 a foot. Focus Property Group financed the purchase with a $1.1 million loan from Missouri-based Central Trust Bank.
The seller was 2001 Larimer LLC, managed by Gertrude Brunschwig. It has been a family asset for decades, said Solomon Stark, broker with NAI Shames Makovsky who represented the seller.
Shafa has also been investing in parking lots since the turn of the century. While he owns all sorts of properties around town, his favorite has always been the humble asphalt lot.
“If you’re in a location that caters to office, to night life, to concerts or events, you have multiple drivers of income,” he said.
Bahman Shafa
Shafa’s real estate career began in 1987, selling Broncos merchandise out of a push cart on the 16th Street Mall. That was the same year as Elway’s “The Drive,” which landed the team in the Super Bowl.
That introduced Shafa to the “special event merchandising” business, which would take him from push cart to storefront. The profits went into a 1991 real estate purchase: an industrial property at 601 W. 29th, right behind Coors Field, which was constructed four years later.
“When they built Coors Field, I discovered the demand for parking around (it),” Shafa said.
Today, Focus Property Group owns a wide variety of properties around town. It has a staff of 50, and developed four self-storage facilities, such as the one in RiNo along Delgany Street that’s visible from the Park Avenue bridge. It built a senior-living facility in Denver’s Hilltop neighborhood and owns two office buildings in RiNo, along with the real estate for brewery Ratio Beerworks and tapas spot the Barcelona Wine Bar.
It lost one of its office holdings, the Triad Office complex at 5660-5680 Greenwood Plaza Blvd., to foreclosure in late 2023. It was the last real estate purchase it made before the Larimer Street lot.
Meanwhile, plans for a downtown hotel at the corner of 14th and Stout Streets are “on hold,” Shafa said.
“Construction costs have increased, interest rates have increased, group and business travel has not come back the way it was before COVID, so the demand for a corporate business convention center hotel is soft right now.”
Correction: The square footage of the lot and the date when the seller purchased it has been been corrected.
