Belleview Station awaiting 2nd Fortune 500 company
Newmont Mining will be joining Western Union in mixeduse development
Two commercial buildings, two Fortune 500 company headquarters.
That’s the scorecard so far for Belleview Station, a 51acre, mixeduse project coming out of the ground around the Belleview Station lightrail stop in south Denver.
With its walkable, urban design, collection of hip restaurants and Denver mailing address, veterans of the south metro real estate market are projecting that Western Union and Newmont Mining won’t be the last big fish the project reels in as it grows.
Western Union is settling into 7½ floors of the One Belleview Station building, 7001 E. Belleview, after leaving a nearby Douglas County business park this year. But Newmont was the toast of the masterplanned neighborhood Thursday as company officials, development partners, real estate brokers and Denver Mayor Michael Hancock gathered to celebrate work getting underway on the 15story office tower that Newmont is set to move into in 2020.
Like Western Union, Newmont isn’t traveling far. Its corporate headquarters today are in the Palazzo Verdi building in Greenwood Village, just 2½ miles south of Belleview Station. But the forthcoming building — named 6900 Layton — will offer things its 10yearold Greenwood Village counterpart doesn’t.
“It gave us a chance to move to a new building and remodel without having to do that in place,” Newmont executive vice president Bill MacGowan said at Thursday’s event. “Really cool amenities and a great site.
“(Being in) the city of Denver was really important to us as well.”
Newmont, the country’s top gold producer, will move 400 to 500 employees into four floors of 6900 Layton, MacGowan said, with an option to take on a fifth floor.
The building — for now a large hole in the ground at the southeast corner of Layton Avenue and South Newport Street — is being developed by Prime West Cos. Prime West developed, sold and keeps an office in One Belleview Station. The 380,000squarefoot Layton building, which is being backed financially by Switzerlandbased Partners Group and built by the Weitz Co., will have plenty of attractive features inside: columnfree floor plates, a fitness facility with a yoga room, bike storage and a westfacing outdoor terrace.
But it might be what’s outside that counts most for the workers who report there.
Gradually developing since 2012 under the guidance of familyowned property owner Front Range Land and Development, Belleview Station now is home to nearly 700 apartments and 80,000 square feet of groundfloor retail space, with a halfdozen more development sites in waiting.
The office buildings and future office sites are grouped on the east side to provide walkingdistance access to light rail. Leasing agents brought in trendy businesses such as Troy Guard taco joint Los Chingones, conveyorbelt sushi stop SushiRama and Denverborn Corvus Coffee Roasters.
That style of development — urbanization of the suburbs, as many real estate conferences refer to it these days — is a selling point for employees, said Ryan Link, a senior vice president with real estate services firm CBRE.
With Colorado’s unemployment rate below 3 percent, it can provide an edge when it comes to hiring.
“Companies and clients of ours are using their real estate to recruit and retain employees,” Link said. “I believe a lot of the excitement around (Belleview Station) is it is creating a very minidowntown.”
Greenwood Village last year considered amending the city comprehensive plan to clear the way for more dense mixeduse development on a 44acre site around its Orchard Station lightrail stop, but city voters rejected that proposal largely because they didn’t want urbanization.
There are other factors that make Belleview Station a draw, said Frederic de Loizaga, Link’s partner in the southeast metro market for CBRE.
CBRE competitor Cushman & Wakefield is handling leasing at 6900 Layton.
The project is new, providing higherquality options than much of the existing office space in the Denver Tech Center/south metro area, de Loizaga said.
South metro rents remain $10 to $15 cheaper per square foot on average than in buildings downtown.
Then there is that Denver mailing address — something Western Union, a company that advertises on the jerseys worn by the NBA’s Denver Nuggets, has made it clear it values.
Will more bigname businesses move out of office parks and into Belleview Station and other denser, urbanstyle developments like it in the future?
“The quick answer is yes,” de Loizaga said. “You’ll see more of it.”