Construction Boom Topping $1B, Changing Skyline

DENVER-More than a dozen new buildings, either under construction or on the drawing board, are planned in Downtown. Together, the buildings will have a completed value of more than $1.5 billion. The buildings include high-rise hotels, some hotel-condo towers, residential skyscrapers, build-to-suit offices, and public buildings. Not surprisingly, there are no major office spec buildings planned, other than some relatively small condo-office buildings.

George Thorn, principal of Mile High Development and a long-time local developer, says that because most of the buildings are being constructed along the edge of the CBD, Denver’s skyline will change. If they were in the core of Downtown, much larger buildings that were constructed in Downtown Denver in the 1980s would hide them, Thorn tells GlobeSt.com. These latest high rises are the first to be built in Downtown since 1999 Broadway opened in 1985.

Thorn notes to GlobeSt.com that the last building boom Downtown in the early and mid-1980s, primarily by Canadian developers, largely brought spec office buildings downtown. That building boom was predicated on oil reaching $60 or more per barrel, something that didn’t occur for another 20 years. When the energy prices collapsed in the 1980s, Downtown’s office demand dried up for years, and was extremely overbuilt. Now, Downtown’s office market is the healthiest of all the submarkets, but buildings still don’t command the rents that would justify new spec office construction.

A partial list of the buildings under way or planned, include: