Brue Baukol Capital Partners was just about ready to renovate a west Denver office building when its architect began to have designs on the space.
EVstudio bought the 41,533-square-foot office building, commonly referred to as the Martischang Building, from Brue Baukol and, before even closing, started working to turn it into the new EVstudio Building.
The long-vacant seven-story building is located at 5335 W. 48th Ave., just off Interstate 70 at Sheridan Boulevard. Brue Baukol had owned it for a year, having bought it at $10.83 per sf with plans for a major renovation.
Dean Dalvit
“We had this plan to move forward, and we had every intention of doing so. We were excited to do it. But when we had an offer on the table that basically allowed us to hit our returns to investors but take all risk off the table, we decided it was something we wanted to move forward with,” said Dan Metzger, senior vice president at Brue Baukol Capital Partners.
The deal came about after EVstudio received an unsolicited offer for, and sold, its building in the Golden Triangle, which it has outgrown.
“That was really the catalyst that pushed us to needing to find a place to relocate,” said EVstudio principal and co-founder Dean Dalvit. As the architect and engineer of record for the project, “We got to know the building pretty well in that process, and we said, ‘It’s a perfect fit for our needs and our ability to grow into it,’” he said.
“Our primary motivation was also to find a location where we could relocate that can really be kind of a blank canvas. As a design firm, we can experiment a little with the building.”
EVstudio paid $1.18 million for the property and also bought the adjacent half-acre that houses the Squeeze Inn bar, which closed several months ago, from Brue Baukol Capital Partners for $598,000. Brue Baukol had acquired the Squeeze Inn site because, although the office building has a second-floor parking deck and ample on-street parking, it felt more on-site parking was warranted. EVstudio agreed. It has a letter of intent with a new operator for the bar and an agreement that allows the two uses to share parking.
According to Dalvit, it was beneficial for tax reasons for Brue Baukol Capital to have owned the office building for 365 days before selling. But EVstudio, which has been leasing back its Golden Triangle space on a month-to-month basis, was eager to get started on the renovation. In their college days, Brue Baikal’s Chad Brue and Dalvit were fraternity brothers, and Brue agreed to allow the work to proceed with some nonrefundable money and a degree of trust the deal would close.
“They were gracious enough to allow us to start full-bore construction several months ago. There’s a treme3ndous deal of trust that started this whole relationship, and it’s been great. They’ve been outstanding to work with, and I would do any deal with them because I trust them implicitly,” said Dalvit.
“It’s truly a value-add property. It needs full mechanical, electrical systems from the ground up, so it’s kind of like starting with a half-constructed construction project,” he said.
Ceiling grids are being removed, and all of the new systems will be highly efficient. “We’re really trying to bring a level of sustainability and greenness to a building that for a long time hasn’t been even remotely green,” said Dalvit, who added there will be Americans with Disabilities Act improvements and a mostly open floor plan.
“One of the things we love most about the building is just its incredible amount of natural light and views that are available to it. There are no other buildings that tall in the area, so even as low as the second floor, you’re looking out at mountains and the nearby lakes – Lakeside Amusement Park is right there, and Willis Case Golf Course.”
EVstudio’s 45 Denver office employees will occupy the third and fourth floors, or about 35 percent of the space, with occupancy targeted for late September. “We’re looking for other tenants that will be synergistic with what we do,” said Dalvit. “We have a couple of folks who have already expressed interest – a roofing company, a building materials company and a surveying firm all are interested in co-locating with us, so we’re excited about that and excited about filling those portions of the building that we don’t need at this time, at least until we grow, with folks that we work with.”
The company has a construction loan that will allow it to complete the interior work, with or without tenants, according to Dalvit. “There are no dollars in that initial construction budget to do any of the exterior, which of course we desperately want to do. We’re architects. We really want to do something outstanding on the outside of the building.
“It’s our job now in the next couple of months to get really creative on how we can possibly save on the interior costs so we can have money to spend on the outside,” said Dalvit, who said the building will evolve over several years as it is leased up and stabilized.
The Augusta Group, which EVstudio has worked with for many years, is the contractor for the project.
Dalvit said his company is “bursting at the seams” in its existing 10,000-sf space.
“This gives us room to grow, but it also gives us other space we never had before – space to build models, experiment with different building materials, things that every architect and engineer wants to do. This building will afford us the ability to really experiment with a lot of things so that it ultimately can improve the kind of design work that we do and the coordination of how we do it,” he said.
“We’re very excited, and we’re excited about the fact that we could bring an old building back to life in a corner of Denver that could use a little love.”
