Being a native and having been back in Denver after the Navy for well over 10 years now, its hard to believe how much the Denver skyline has changed since I was younger. I remember coming downtown when I was in elementary school for field trips to the museums, the mint, and the zoo to name a few. Every time I was on the bus ride across 6th Avenue I would look wide-eyed as I saw the sky scrapers that seemed to fill the downtown skyline. My favorite was always the cash register building.
After leaving home for the Navy and traveling the world to the likes of Singapore, Hong Kong, Sydney, and local cities like L.A and of course N.Y.C I started to realize Denver left a lot to the imagination with regards to the skyline of our growing city. But now in just a few short years the skyline has started to transform into more of one that belongs to a metropolitan city. Denver is now an urban bustling hip city. Full of nightlife, theatre, great restaurants, and recently the beginning of great architecture. With Libeskind’s fingerprint now firmly in place with his beautifully designed Art Museum and Residences, Denver is well on it’s way.
If you have seen the Riverfront Park progress by East-West Partners on any drive to Coors Field or in your daily adventures downtown, you know that they are making a beautiful transformation on the downtown skyline. The most recent addition to downtown’s skyline was the Glasshouse development. The plans of East West will transform all of the area between Union Station to Riverfront Park. With construction set to begin in 2008, only time will tell before Denver looks like a completely different and much more vibrant city.
Other planned high rises will change the appearance of our great city. Those are mainly planned along the 14th Street corridor that will change over the next few years. The likes of 1401 Lawrence, The Four Seasons Private Residences, and The Spire are all planned and or under way. Developer Randy Nichols hit a speed bump with The Spire when a German lender yanked the $160 million in financing because of uncertainty in the international market.
Though things aren’t roses and peaches, as some question if there will be enough interested buyers in the downtown high rise living, or if the later projects will find it hard to sell out and fill. Not too mention with the price points of many of these homes going beyond the mark of a conforming loan currently at $417,000 there may be cause for concern about the ability of the builders to find and secure attractive long term financing for their buyers. This off the heels that even those with great credit, incomes, and assets paying for the credit crunch of those sub-prime lenders gone bad.
My brother and I go back and forth with discussions on the positive impact this will make on Denver. Where he sees Denver losing its appeal, I see an urban city in blossom!
What do you think? Email me with your story or questions about financing on any of these projects [email protected]
~Ray
