The city of Westminster is partnering with developer Schnitzer West to bring 650,000 square feet of office development to the U.S. Highway 36 corridor in Downtown Westminster.
The first building, which is in design, will include ground-floor retail with six to seven stories of office space above. It is anticipated to comprise about 180,000 square feet and be developed on a speculative basis, although, “That can change if a build-to-suit tenant or leasing activity ramps up over the next six to 18 months,” said John Hall, Westminster economic development director.
Downtown Westminster is a 105-acre development site on the west side of U.S. Highway 36 at the Sheridan Boulevard interchange. It houses Alamo Drafthouse, 600 residential units that are either completed or under construction, and a 125-room Origin Hotel including a Tattered Cover bookstore that is slated for completion in early 2020.
“With the continued growth of companies along the Denver-Boulder corridor, Downtown Westminster is located directly in the path of progress and is an ideal spot to develop Class A office product with the transit-oriented nature of the site and over 100,000 square feet of walkable amenities,” said Doug Zabel, managing investment principal at Schnitzer West.
“The amenity-rich environment plus Class A office product is the perfect formula to meet the needs of today’s growing corporate clients that value the quality of the employee experience, which ultimately leads to higher productivity rates.” “Adding an office user to Downtown Westminster takes it one step closer to a true, sustainable downtown by ensuring a consistent daytime population of employees,” said Westminster Mayor Herb Atchison. “The addition of office will also attract more amenities for workers, including retail, restaurants and service businesses.”
The office buildings will be developed on two sites close to Highway 36. The initial building is likely to get underway in 2021 and take about two years to complete, according to Hall. The second site could accommodate two subsequent buildings of about 225,000 sf each.
Downtown Westminster has the capacity for as much as 4 million sf of office space at build-out. “This is just the beginning in the downtown,” said Hall. “Now that we have key amenities like dining and entertainment in place or opening soon, it’s a major attraction for office,” he said.
“There is, generally speaking, a shortage of large, available office space in the U.S. 36 corridor, and Westminster has been quite successful recently in attracting the corporate headquarters of Ball Corp., which is now under construction, and Maxar Technologies, which was a national competition for which Westminster prevailed. So, we anticipate that trend of corporate users looking at the U.S. 36 corridor as a strong location because of the proximity of talented labor and its location between Denver and Boulder,” Hall commented.
Downtown Westminster is laid out on a 25-block grid and, in addition to a commuter rail station, includes a recently approved underpass connection to the adjacent 500-bus rapid-transit station.
