Sustainability Park nears its end
Eight townhomes and 91 condos are planned at the two-block property at 25th and Lawrence.
Popular summer festival The Big Wonderful will kick off its third season next weekend at Sustainability Park at 26th and Lawrence, but the land won’t be available for fun and festivities much longer.
Denver-based Curtis Park Group has purchased the two-block Sustainability Park property from Denver Housing Authority and will begin construction this summer on a multiphase, for-sale residential development with an affordable housing component.
The first phase of S*Park will feature 91 condominiums and eight townhomes on the southernmost block at 25th and Lawrence, said Clem Rinehart, owner of TreeHouse Brokerage and Development, the exclusive broker on the project.
Condos will start in the high $200,000s for a studio and go up from there. The largest units are three bedrooms. Townhomes will be three- to four-stories and feature private yards and rooftop terraces.
One last Big Wonderful event at Sustainability Park is scheduled for June 11 , organizers said Friday.
Groundbreaking on the development likely will happen in June, Rinehart said, with sales launching in July.
At the heart of the 2500 block of Lawrence will be a private 19,500-square-foot internal park for residents. Developers also plan to build a greenhouse and urban garden/farm on site and partner with a local farming group to operate it, Rinehart said.
Prior to the redevelopment, the block housed a trio of urban farms.
“We’ve always been very passionate about continuing to keep the use and the atmosphere on the site and expand it, rather than take it away,” Rinehart said.
An income-restricted affordable-housing compo-
nent will be required under the terms of the land sale by DHA.
The Denver Office of Economic Development is in negotiations with Curtis Park Group on the details of the affordablehousing plan for the project, a city spokesman said.
In a December 2015 agreement filed with the Denver County clerk, Curtis Park Group committed to build at least 18 affordable units for buyers qualifying at 80 to 115 percent or below of area median income.
“We are working with the city and making sure we’re contributing to the affordable housing program and meeting all the city’s requirements,” Rinehart said.
S*Park’s second phase, on the 2600 block of Law- rence, likely will be similar to the first, he said.
Under Denver’s Inclusionary Housing Ordinance, all new for-sale housing developments of 30 or more units are required to set aside 10 percent of units for incomequalified buyers.
Compliance also can be achieved by working with the city to devise an alternative plan to provide units or by making a cashin-lieu payment, equivalent of up to 70 percent of the affordable sales price per unit.
DHA real estate development director Ryan Tobin said covenants will require S*Park’s affordable units to be built and to be built on site.
As far as the number of units, Tobin said that because DHA isn’t in the business of developing for-sale housing, it defers to the inclusionary housing provisions laid out by the city.
The housing authority had owned the property since the 1950s.
An obsolete housing project there was demolished in the 1990s and property land-banked with the intent to sell it to a private for-sale housing developer.
Curtis Park Group, which shares an address with Denver-based Westfield Co., paid DHA $7 million for a total of three parcels — the 2500 block, the 2600 block and a corner lot at 27th and Arapahoe, according to the housing authority.
“This (announcement) is a culmination of a steadfast commitment by the developer to do this with the neighborhood and the housing authority,” Tobin said. “Now they’re rounding the corner to create an amazing project that will have significant impact on the Curtis Park neighborhood.”