[prageethSL]

1,000-foot skyscraper deal dead

The deal for an 81-story, 1,000-foot skyscraper proposed to be developed in the heart of downtown Denver is dead, the owner of the land said Thursday afternoon.

Buzz Geller, whose Paradise Land Co. is the owner of the 25,047-square-foot parcel at 1650 17th St., said he has put the land back on the market for $17.5 million.

That is a bit more than New York-based Greenwich Realty Capital had agreed to pay for the parcel, Geller said. A non-disclosure agreement prohibits him from publicly discussing the sales price of the previous deal.

“I’m already looking at three offers,” Geller said. “I’m meeting with another guy in seven minutes who wants to put a hotel on the site.”

One of the prospective buyers is from Chicago, one of them “isn’t from Chicago,” and he isn’t sure where the other is from.He described the plans for a 1,000-foot tower, which would be by far the largest building in the city, as a “pipe dream.” He said he is sure that the ultimate buyer will develop something much smaller on the property. The zoning, however, would allow a 1,000-foot tower on the site.

Michael Ursini, a managing principal of Greenwich Realty Capital, said he doesn’t think the deal for the skyscraper is dead and he expects to still move forward on it. Greenwich’s website calls it Sixfifty17. Last month, Denver-based Davis Partnership Architects and Crown Architecture and Consulting submitted a preliminary site plan development for the proposed 1.1 million-sf building to Denver Community Planning and Development.

He described the plans for a mixed-use development with a hotel, retail and condos as a $540 million building.

“That’s new information to me,” when I told him that Geller said, as far as he was concerned, the deal was dead.

I asked Ursini if the deal does collapse and Geller sells the land to someone else whether he would plan to develop another skyscraper someplace else in downtown? “Of course,” Ursini said. “I love Denver.”