A distinctive Class AA office building with large outdoor terraces and “unbelievable” northwesterly views is coming to Cherry Creek North.
Elevation Development Group just broke ground on the building at 260 N. Josephine with three full-floor tenants lined up.
“Denver is not an easy preleasing town. We were able to get significant preleasing just because of the overall location, the design and the way the building sat on the site,” said Brent Farber, Elevation Development Group co-founder and principal.
The 70,000-square-foot building, prominently situated at the corner of North Josephine and East Third Avenue, steps up from two to six stories, creating office floor plates that range from 16,000 on the second floor to 5,000 sf on top.
“It gives us a tremendous amount of flexibility to cater to all tenant sizes and gives them the opportunity to have a full floor. It’s been very desirable,” said Farber.
Floors 3 through 5 are preleased. Lario Oil & Gas Co., currently in Lower Downtown Denver, will occupy the fourth floor, which is about 11,600 sf and has an approximately 2,400-sf private terrace spanning the entire north side of the building.
Newmark Knight Frank Managing Director Andrew Blaustein, who represented the tenant with NKF brokers Matt Davidson and Josh Pons, said the size of Lario’s footprint won’t change significantly with the move. The decision to relocate “was really driven by the unique opportunity to be in a new building in Cherry Creek North.”
Lario currently has outdoor space that it shares with other office as well as apartment tenants. At Josephine, “It’s their own private space. It’s really going to be a treat to have that,” Blaustein said.
Conversations with additional prospective office tenants are underway, according to Farber.
The building’s design was dictated in large part by zoning. Cherry Creek North’s zoning discourages “monolithic” buildings and encourages development that allows sunlight to penetrate spaces.
First-floor retail spaces will wrap around the corner of Third and Josephine in keeping with the character of the shopping district. The building also will have three levels of below-grade parking.
Open Studio’s Architecture designed 260 N. Josephine. “We’re really excited about the end product,” said Farber.
The building will be delivered in third-quarter 2019. GE Johnson is the contractor.
Elevation Development Group acquired the development site, where Shaver-Ramsey formerly was located, more than two years ago and evaluated various uses. “We still felt that there was a lot of demand for office in Cherry Creek,” said Farber, who added that was borne out “pretty quickly” as the company began putting the project together.
“People want to go to nice buildings. This building jumped off the pages to a lot of tenants,” he said.
“There’s been tremendous rate growth in Denver and especially in the Cherry Creek North district. So, we’re getting really, really solid rents, and it’s based on the quality of the product. As long as you’re delivering a quality product, I think tenants will pay to be there.”
