The Lantern aims to cast new light

Boarded-up building to be redone, with historic touches kept

A fire-damaged building in northwest Denver’s popular Tennyson Street retail district that has sat vacant and boarded up for more than five years will get a new lease on life as The Lantern on Tennyson.

RUE, a Dallas real estate company known for its work with specialty retailers, purchased the property at 3985 Tennyson St. last November. Until a fire struck in November 2016, the location had hosted Green Door Furniture, a thrift store.

While it might have been easier to just scrape the damaged building and start over with a multistory, mixed-use apartment building similar to others going up in the area, RUE will not go that route, said Jeremy Zidell, the firm’s founder and managing partner.

“We have every right to develop something that could be a commodity project,” Zidell said. “But if you look at our company, it is more in our DNA to do an unexpected repositioning of that building.”

RUE focuses most of its attention on helping niche retail clients — think Yardbird, Equinox, Harimari — find spaces in signature buildings. But on occasion, when it finds the right opportunity in the right market, it will create those spaces, something it plans to do on Tennyson Street.

Zidell said RUE will remodel the interior, adding additional windows, while preserving as much of the facade as possible, including the distinctive sign that once advertised the Grimsley Furniture Co. RUE wants to create a mix of nostalgia and modernity while preserving most of the original building.

Rather than popping the top to boost space, the design by Florida architectural firm Storyn crowns the building with a distinctive wood trellis or “lantern.” That feature makes the roof usable for outdoor dining and nearly doubles the leasable space to about 8,000 square feet. Given the available views and proximity to Chavez Park, Zidell predicts the location could become a goto rooftop dining destination in

Denver.

“We want to develop something that will be an olive branch to the neighborhood, connecting the quality of the retail to the quality of the residential,” he said.

Although new construction would cost less, Zidell expects a restoration and repurposing will be better received in the Berkeley Regis neighborhood, which had led Denver for demolitions, often done to make way for higher-density residential projects.

“The fact they are retaining a substantial part of a historic

build and repurposing it is a good thing,” said Tom Simmons, secretary of Historic Berkeley Regis, a neighborhood group focused on historic research and preservation.

Denver businesswoman Nannie Clay constructed the southern portion of the building in 1908 to house a grocery store. Besides being an entrepreneur, she also was an early automobile enthusiast and organized coast-to-coast driving tours, Simmons said. A neighboring business, the Grimsley Furniture Company, eventually expanded into the space.

Tennyson Street served as a streetcar corridor and many of the retail establishments that sprung up between 38th Avenue and 46th Avenue served local residents.

But over time, the corridor lost more functional businesses like Tennyson Hardware and gained more residences, Simmons said.

“There are only so many Lululemons or yoga places that a neighborhood can absorb,” he said. “It is nice to have a mix of businesses that bring utility and variety.”

Bill Killam, chairman of the zoning and planning committee at Berkeley Regis United Neighbors, said not losing that key corner to accommodate another multistory apartment building is by itself a big plus for the area.

“Having more retail is a good thing. It looks like they are trying to develop a rooftop restaurant and we welcome another fine dining restaurant to the neighborhood,” he said.

Nor should residents worry that RUE will lead a charge to make Tennyson into the next Cherry Creek North, Zidell said, adding the tenants sought for the space will have concepts that are “polished but approachable.”

RUE plans to deliver the refurbished building to its future tenants in the first quarter of 2023, with an opening slated for the third quarter, he said.