Englewood has signed off on a major redevelopment of its urban core.
Monday night, the Denver suburb’s City Council voted 5-2 to terminate a series of ground leases and exchange properties and kickstart construction planning on properties within the 55-acre Englewood CityCenter area along Hampden Avenue.
“This is the area we need to revitalize,” Englewood City Council Member Tena Prange said at the meeting.
Once home to the largest mall west of the Mississippi, the land is now a string of big-box stores, retail strips and parking lots, plus the Englewood Civic Center campus, which holds city offices, courtrooms and parking. The city owns the land but granted a 75-year ground lease in 2000 to Weingarten Realty, which developed the current setup after the mall was demolished in the late 1990s.
In 2018, however, Weingarten lost the property to foreclosure, and the site has slowly deteriorated.
Two local real estate firms, DPC Cos. and Ogilvie Partners, purchased the improvements in late December, promising a mixed-use project that would serve as a “true community center.”
“We’ve cleaned the property up tremendously since we took over last year,” DPC CEO Chris King told BusinessDen.
Monday’s vote established a phased approach framework for future redevelopment by the two firms. It includes termination of the ground leases, which can make financing a new development challenging.
To start, the city will terminate its ground lease on two blocks, giving DPC and Ogilvie ownership. No redevelopment is planned on one of the blocks, which has retailers in place. But changes are planned for the other, which has a two-story retail and office building on it.
King and his team expect to begin engaging with the community soon to create a specific development plan there.
“Our first step is to listen,” he said.
In return, the developers will give the city a largely vacant 42,000-square-foot building next to city hall, where 24 Hour Fitness once operated, as well a retail condo to the north that DPC and Ogilvie bought for $5.2 million.
But the developers have their eyes on the entire site. As they talk about plans with the community, DPC and Ogilvie will start working on how to redevelop Englewood’s city hall site and the adjacent gym. The pair are contractually obligated to spend at least $300,000 on these efforts.
King envisions creating a “community amenity” accessible to the public year round. Right now, a fountain on-site serves that purpose.
“Once it gets cold, it just doesn’t do much anymore,” King said. “Part of our overall planning is to really activate that overall area.”
In the meantime, Englewood will also have a two-year purchase option on a retail building on the southwest corner of the site. That option will disappear when the partnership breaks ground on its developable block.
When that happens, Englewood will terminate the ground lease under the retail building as well as another block to the east where Harbor Freight operates. No immediate redevelopment is slated for the Harbor Freight site because the retailer’s lease includes extensions that could keep it there until 2040.
A timeline on when formal development plans will be presented is uncertain and will depend on community outreach, King said. A hotel and medical office component are contemplated in addition to retail and residential elements, along with beautification and landscaping around Englewood Parkway, which King said he’d make “look like [an] actual parkway.”
Concerns from council members and the public so far have centered around three main issues: density, public safety and the need for for-sale housing.
“My concern is this is putting more and more people into forever rentership. We are not allowing people to buy condos, townhouses, small homes on this property — it is all for rent,” Council Member Kim Wright said at Monday’s meeting.
King said he hasn’t ruled out for-sale housing. And whatever gets developed there, he said, will naturally decrease criminal activity on-site.
“Part of our community outreach is to get them a visible presence in the interim here while we work through this,” he said of the local cops.
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