Family living in urban setting
A first- of- its- kind apartment development for Denver’s booming River North neighborhood has begun welcoming its first residents.
Tran and Josh Wills were among the first to arrive, their family of six already settled into their newhome, a 1,500- square- foot, two- story townhome with four bedrooms and a glass garage door that connects the living roomto a patio and spacious shared front lawn.
“The spaces definitely look small. Whenwe looked at them, wewere like holy ... ,” Josh Wills said.
“But once we got everything set up, it’s perfect,” he said.
The 48- unit Freight Residences were designed and developed with tenants just like the Wills family inmind — young families with children who want to stay in the city, but need more and different space than the typical millennial urban dweller.
“For families, housing is really nonexistent,” Tran Wills said. “A decent threeor four- bedroom house that’s well updated — I’m not saying fancy or anything like that, but just having a washer and dryer and a dishwasher — we need that. All families need that. Ifwe had to go to the laundromat, I would lose it.”
Father- and- son developers Mickey and Kyle Zeppelin are behind the Freight project, the latest addition to the trailblazing Taxi campus near Brighton Boulevard along the South Platte River.
Freight Residences includes a mix of one-, two-, three- and four- bedroom units, ranging in size from 600 to 1,500 square feet. Every unit has an operable glass garage door, with all but the one- bedroom units split between two levels.
Monthly rents range from $ 1,400 for one- bedrooms to $ 2,500 for two-, three- and four- bedroom units, Kyle Zeppelin said.
“There’s a lot of people who don’t want to have to move to the suburbs and sign up for some big com--
mute to be able to have a functional situation,” Zeppelin said. “They want to have things that are bikeable, walkable, a community of like- minded people around them, some amenities that are more than you can have in a single- family home.”
Freight Residences was designed from the ground up to better appeal to families, architect Stephen Dynia said.
Gone are the long, dark hallways of typical apartment complexes — a third of the units have their own ground- floor entrances and span the width of the building.
The only corridor in the entire four- story building has full glass windows on either end and provides access from the third floor to smaller one- and two- story units. The two- story units on the upper floors have east and west exposures in the main living area.
“If you go up an elevator and access your unit from a typical hallway and have light and air only from one side, you certainly are in a realm of apartment living,” Dynia said. “This gives it a more residential sensibility.”
The units’ smallest bedrooms are designed to be flexible — they can be a nursery, home office, oversized closet or full- fledged bedroom depending on the needs of the resident, he said. Doors can be closed, too, to separate a sleeping baby from activity downstairs.
“It’s really stacked townhouses as opposed to just trying to put two, three, four bedrooms in and scattering them around,” Mickey Zeppelin said. “You have an upstairs and a downstairs.”
“You can’t just mix college kidswho keep different hours and are on a different schedule with somebody who is raising kids,” Kyle Zeppelin said. “You have floor plans that are suited for thosedemographics and that generation of people.”
With leasing underway, the Zeppelins are already looking toward their next project.
Plans are in the works to purchase the former Ready Mixed Concrete plant immediately to the north of the Taxi campus, bringing the total acreage to 28, Kyle Zeppelin said
Future development will likely include amix of commercial and residential uses, with a continued emphasis on urban families and creative individuals.
“We’re proving the model out with Freight Residences, but it’s likely we’ll continue to build on that niche,” Kyle Zeppelin said. “There’s enough precedent in this area and some really good examples in other places for how it could work and continue to add density.”
For theWills family, renting just makes more sense financially and for their lifestyle. They’ve never really considered moving to the suburbs, either, Josh and TranWills said.
The entrepreneurs own a number of Denver businesses, including BaseCoat, a nontoxic nail salon in LowerHighland; and Super Ordinary, a gallery and retail store inside The Source in RiNo. JoshWills also cofounded design studioConsume& Create.
“We both grew up in the burbs, inThornton. We just don’t need that much space,” JoshWills said. “The convenience, being able to go out and get something to eat or grab coffee and being closer to work, driving less, has always appealed to us.”
In the move to Freight Residences, they ended up losing about 400 square feet but gained a fourth bedroom and more functional outdoor space, not to mentionTaxi’s community amenities, such as a pool, fitness center and soon- to- be- built makerspace.
Previously, they lived in a rental house off 25th and Lawrence streets in RiNo, but the rapidly changing area didn’t really work for their family anymore.
Their children range from 5 to 17 years old and go to school in Denver’s Congress Park neighborhood.
“We’ve got a family of six. Finding a three- or fourbedroom spot is challenging,” Josh Wills said. “The spots over in Curtis Park or Whittier that are that large are either extremely expensive or they’re really run down, or you have to go downintoCongress Park or Cherry Creek, and that’s insane. We couldn’t even afford to live there.”
“When this opportunity came up, itwas a no- brainer for us,” TranWills said.