Seminary Site Sold to Townhouse Developers

Denver architect David Owen Tryba and Denver developer Don MacKenzie, formerly of Greystar Real Estate Partners, are also on the team. MacKenzie now is principal of his own development company, the Mackenzie House.

When completed, the seminary site will have 45 two- and three-story townhouses on the exterior, 305 condominium units in six buildings from five to 14 stories, a 20,000-sf clubhouse that likely will have an indoor/outdoor pool, and a new retail concept called Savoir Fare, an European-style gourmet carryout and restaurant. About 40,000 sf of the 60,000-sf center will be devoted to Savoir Fare, which also includes a cooking school, and a library for cooking and gardening books, as well as a specialty food gift store. The balance of the space will include a spa and high-end service retail. It will all be under one roof and Forstmann is looking to open several Savoire Fares across the country.

There also will be 5,000-sf of offices, which will be occupied by Forstmann, who has developed more than $1 billion in projects, mostly on the East Coast, over more than 30 years. "We're submitting a PUD for the property, which is in the southeast boundary of Englewood," Tryba tells GlobeSt.com.

MacKenzie adds that across Hamden the luxury Temple Buell estate in Cherry Hills Village has single-family homes with an average price of $1.7 million. "But that's not maintenance-free living," MacKenzie says. "I think there's a lot of pent-up demand for maintenance-free living.

"Units will likely be priced from about $300,000 to north of $1 million," he adds. "But the truth is, we'll probably have very few at $300,000 and very few at $2 million."

He says while the prices of the new units haven't been set yet, they will likely set a record on a price per sf for a development of this size. There are a couple of smaller development in Cherry Creek and the Central Platte Valley that are on the market for more than $400 per sf, which may be more expensive than at the former seminary, he says. The average size of the townhouses will be about 3,300 sf and the average size of a condo will be about 2,200 sf. The townhouses will have two or three stories.

The median home price in Englewood is $143,500, according to HUD statistics. The new development calls for no affordable housing. Instead, the gated community is seen as a haven for empty-nesters who own huge homes in nearby Cherry Hills and Greenwood Village and want to stay in the area, but downsize.

The seminary is moving southwest to a larger site in Littleton. "There are no historic buildings and none of them will be saved," Tryba tells GlobeSt.com. "They were all built in the 1960s and the 1970s."