Crawford Starts to Sell Jack Kerouac Lofts

Units are priced from about $180,000, making them the most affordable new construction in the Central Platte Valley, says Crawford, chairwoman of Urban Neighborhoods. Units will range from 750 to 1,800 sf. So far, the most expensive units are priced at $400,000.

Crawford saved the historic Larimer Square from the wrecking ball in the late 1960s, about a decade after Kerouac's On the Road was published. Kerouac vividly described many landmarks that are now blocks from his namesake lofts.

Indeed, when Kerouac roamed Denver with his friend and Denver native Neal Cassady, Larimer Street was the heart of Denver's bowery, instead of the trendy retail and restaurant center it is today.

It's unclear whether Kerouac would have ever stood on the exact site at 3100 Huron St. where the lofts will be built, although he most likely stopped at nearby haunts, such as My Brother's Bar, where he and Cassady were believed to have stopped in for a beer or 30.

Crawford says she expects to sell enough units by November to begin construction. It will take 11 to 12 months to complete construction, says Jack Crawford, her son and president of Urban Neighborhoods. He says that the Jack Kerouac Lofts will exhibit many of the features buyers expect from a historic warehouse converted into a loft.

"The simple truth is that although LoDo still has a few relatively pristine industrial sites for loft-type projects, Denver has never had the inventory of historic buildings that provide the inexhaustible resources one finds in cities such as St. Louis or Minneapolis," Jack Crawford says. "That means that a firm such as ours that specializes in urban redevelopment must increasingly offer new construction that provides the same features that our buyers like about genuine historic buildings. And even with the many advantages new construction offers over restoration, we must adopt some novel ways of expressing that amalgam to our potential market."