Historic Emily Griffith school ready for conversion to hotel and retail

The historic Emily Griffith school campus in downtown Denver is set to become a hotel with a parking deck and retail and office space near the Colorado Convention Center.

The Denver City Council on Monday night voted its approval of a redevelopment plan that will preserve the older buildings on the campus. The developer, Stonebridge Companies, bought the site from Denver Public Schools for about $25 million in 2016 and will build the project.

The project is expected to cost $97 million. The Denver Urban Renewal Authority will provide tax reimbursements worth nearly $22 million over about 25 years and the developer will seek about $10 million of state and federal historic tax credits.

In justifying the incentives, DURA pointed to the environmental hazards and historical protections that Stonebridge would have to navigate.

DURA argued that the project would eliminate blight, encourage density and “(m)ore effectively use underdeveloped land.” It’s a similar deal to the $6.3 million arrangement that produced Denver’s flagship REI store.

Annie Levinsky, executive director of Historic Denver, said the plans honored the site’s historic architecture. “They’ve embraced the historic designation that now protects the site,” she said.

The hotel will be created by rehabilitating a historic building near Welton Street, while a larger building on Glenarm Place will become a 120spot parking deck and buildings on the north side will become 37,500 square feet of retail and office space.

Councilman Rafael Espinoza said the project should honor the site’s history as a school that was meant to serve and boost all of Denver’s residents. “It’s not enough for me to just preserve the building, but there’s a legacy, the culture, (for) that entire block,” he said.

Tracy Huggins, director of DURA, said the project would look to provide economic opportunity through the jobs it creates. Tommy Nigro, a vice president for Stonebridge, said providing economic opportunities was a “central value” for the company and that it would try to honor Griffith’s legacy.

“Almost every single person has a family member, or some story about an individual who gained their education there,” he said.

Early work on the site will start within months, he said.