Rocky Mountain News: June 25, 2005

New units by City Park plan to sell classic view

By John Rebchook

Talk about rooms with a view.

Opus Northwest and Boulder-based Income Properties Specialists will break ground late this year on the first phase of a $150 million high-rise community at the edge of City Park.

The Pinnacle at City Park South is by far the largest component of a $225 million development taking shape on the Mercy hospital site between 16th and 17th avenues and St. Paul and Fillmore streets.

The development also includes about 120 townhome-style units by Lafayette-based Wonderland Homes and 250 luxury apartment units by Denver-based Allied Realty Services.

The views from the 27-story Pinnacle at City Park South will be similar to the classic photograph of Denver that shows City Park, the downtown skyline and the mountains.

"It's the Chamber of Commerce photo," said Scott Menefee, a senior director at Opus, which has developed more than 5 million square feet in the Denver area. "We make no bones about it. We are selling views."

Menefee said the company plans to begin pre-sales on July 16.

Menefee said that he once was showing a lender a view from the top of the old hospital, which closed in 1995 and has been razed.

"I couldn't get him off the roof," Menefee said. "He told me, 'You have to give me this deal. This is a view that nobody else is going to have.' "

Architect Brad Buchanan, whose company put together the master plan for the site and is co-designing the high-rises with Opus, agreed.

"Imagine that view from 200 feet in the air," said Buchanan, principal of the Buchanan -Yonushewski Group.

The high-rise in the first phase will have 27 stories and 144 units. Units will range in size from 940 square feet to 2,269 square feet. The building features a two-story lobby.

Units will be priced from the mid-$200,000s to more than $1 million. There will be two penthouses on the top floor that will be "considerably north of $1 million," Menefee said.

Floors one through 19 will have 9-foot ceilings, and the upper floors will have 10-foot ceilings.

The first phase also will include 479 parking spaces and 18 townhomes, called ParkHomes, which will range in size from 1,719 square feet to 2,209 square feet. They will be priced from about $475,000 to $600,000.

The second phase will be a 22-story high-rise with 122 units.

Menefee said the Pinnacle will include an athletic club with a large media room and an outdoor swimming pool. It even will have a wine tasting room, he said.

City Councilwoman Elbra Wedgeworth praised the Pinnacle as well as the other developments already under construction at the site, which will include affordable housing.

"The developer went to more than 50 neighborhood meetings over a two- or three-year period," Wedgeworth said. "They decided not to have a retail component, so it wouldn't compete with businesses on Colfax, which was very thoughtful. Basically, this development is a balance between the people who live in nearby single-family homes and those who will live in the high-rises. They've really kept in mind the whole integrity of the neighborhood throughout the process."

Tom Rutter of the South City Park Neighborhood Association said people in the area weren't exactly thrilled when they first learned of the development two or three years ago. The high-rises were particularly troublesome.

"I won't say people were exactly up in arms, but they were understandably concerned about the prospect of another 700 people coming to the neighborhood, the traffic it would cause and the construction noise and disruption," Rutter said.

But he said most of the neighborhood was won over by the original developers, a group headed by Rick Wells, as well as Opus.

"Everyone has acted in really good faith," Rutter said. "I think most people have gone from being pretty wary to thinking this is pretty exciting."

John Shaw, who heads Opus Northwest's Denver office, said Opus, a privately based company in Minneapolis, has made a big push in recent years to develop more multifamily properties.

"We wanted a really special development for our first venture in Denver, and we found it with City Park," Shaw said. "We're lucky. We picked a really unique spot that everybody seems to like."

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