Shopping Center's $32M Makeover Moves Forward

DENVER-Mayor Wellington E. Webb notes funding is in place for the long-awaited redevelopment of the Dahlia Shopping Center in northeast Denver. A key part of the $32.5-million project will be a 50,000-sf Albertson’s supermarket.

The development team is in final negotiations to locate one there, bringing a grocery store to the neighborhood for the first time in about 30 years.

Webb provided an update and a tour of the city’s Dahlia redevelopment project to US Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell. A longtime supporter of the project, Campbell was crucial in arranging $1.5 million in federal funding for the project.

“The city of Denver and the citizens of Northeast Denver are appreciative to Senator Campbell,” Mayor Webb says. “His support was backed up with a federal financial commitment to the project that he arranged.”

Two shopping centers in Denver’s Northeast Park Hill neighborhood are the focus of a revitalization effort designed to bring much-needed shopping and associated jobs to the neighborhood.

Dahlia Square and the Park Hill shopping center were anchored by two separate grocery stores that left the centers in the early 1970s. Since then, the centers have lost tenants and jobs, and now nearly half of the combined 137,800 sf of available space is vacant.

During the past two years, the city and county of Denver, the Denver Urban Renewal Authority, the development community, the centers’ owners and existing retailers, and the neighborhood have worked to design a comprehensive plan to create more full-time job opportunities, attract a grocery store and preserve existing affordable housing and a health clinic.

Redevelopment of Dahlia Square will involve environmental remediation and demolition of some buildings, moving 94 affordable housing units owned by Hope Communities to a different location on the site, temporary relocation of the residents in those units, and construction of a shopping center on Martin Luther King Boulevard consisting of a grocery store, small retail spaces and 36 new market-rate housing units.

A neighborhood health clinic currently providing needed services to the underserved neighborhood also will be preserved.

Developer and retail investment totaling $19.8 million will be the largest source of financing for the Dahlia Square project. In addition, DURA has pledged $7.5 million in tax increment financing as the repayment source for a US Department of Housing and Urban Development loan.

The city will contribute $3 million and $200,000 will come from the US Environmental Protection Agency for environmental remediation of two gasoline stations.