DENVER | Main Development Thread #7

[rds70]

Originally Posted by TakeFive

DOWNTOWNS: How BIG are they?


For starters, Denver's downtown is reported to have 28.3 million square feet of office space.

• Downtown Seattle is reported to have 50.7 million square feet of office space
• Downtown Portland is reported to have 44 million square feet
• Minneapolis--St Paul is reported to have 128 million square feet
• Minneapolis is reported to have 51.7 million square feet
• Austin is reported to have 15 million square feet
• Dallas is reported to have 33 million square feet
• Fort Worth is reported to have 36 million square feet
• Houston is reported to have 44 million square feet

Where did you get these numbers? They do not match anything I have seen.

Let’s look at the CBRE numbers:

Downtown Denver has 34 million (including RiNo) - 34% vacant

Downtown Seattle has 55 million sf (including all the surrounding districts, Lake Union, etc) - 35% vacant
Downtown Portland has 27 million sf - 39% vacant
Downtown Minneapolis has 27 million sf (the entire Minneapolis-SP metro has only 77 million sf) - 26% vacant
Downtown Austin has 15 million sf (with 1.7 million under construction) - 34% vacant
Downtown Dallas has 40 million sf (including Uptown) - 27% vacant
Downtown Ft Worth has 7 million sf - 14% vacant
Downtown Houston has 42 million sf - 30% vacant

Why not include downtown Phoenix - 15 million sf - 31% vacant

So Denver has a slightly above average vacancy, based on your list.

[TakeFive]

Thanks for your input

Originally Posted by rds70

Where did you get these numbers? They do not match anything I have seen.

The focus of my question and interest was Denver's CBD and vacancy was not of interest or concern.

The only thing I could think to do to keep it simple was to do a Google search. My search was "total office space in downtown Dubuque" etc. Sometimes I did a "-vacancy" to find what I wanted as Google had a tendency to provide other answers like "for lease" or "vacancy" instead of what I wanted.

My searches provided what I was looking for and the provider varied from city to city but usually from one of the major brokers. For my interests if I got a number I didn't pay attention to who was providing it. With respect to Denver (now that I've checked) the "number" was provided by the tenant rep "Premises." They do break out numbers for downtown, LoDo and RiNo. But again My interest was with the CBD.

Originally Posted by rds70

Why not include downtown Phoenix - 15 million sf - 31% vacant

In thinking of "urban downtowns" Phoenix didn't come to mind so I didn't bother. But out of curiosity I ran my question and CommercialCafe comes up with 8 million square feet and honestly this feels closer to reality. If I had to guess CBRE may have included the Biltmore/East Camelback corridor which is not al all downtown.

The most desired office space in the urban area down here would be Scottsdale (Blvd), Tempe, and the Biltmore area and NOT downtown Phoenix.

Note: I did guess that depending on what city I searched that definitions of the CBD or "downtown" could vary but I didn't want to spend weeks figuring out who was talking about what and where so I just went with what I got when I googled.

[laniroj]

Originally Posted by mhays

Can you expand on that idea? Do you mean a full enclosed lid with park on top?

If the neighboring megadevelopments were built with the "high line" in mind, it could be a great amenity vs a few smaller crossings.

Without those things, or early in the buildout, it might not get much use. People don't go up 30' without good reason. The cost would be in the hundreds of millions at minimum.

Do the megadevelopments plan to connect a street or two across the rail lines? Would this mean pedestrian intersections at the high line level?

It wouldn't need to be enclosed, necessarily and yeah, it wouldn't get much use early until buildout but Cities don't (or at least shouldn't) think short term. I thought I remembered 7th and 9th crossing the tracks.

It's 3,000 feet from pepsi center to the mile high light rail stop. I can't see how a pedestrian viaduct could cost hundreds of millions. CDOTs I70 expansion with the park cap cost about $100 mil per mile. This would be FAR less than that and only 3,000 feet max plus it'd be 150' wide not 250' wide like the central 70 covered park. It's a park though and it would be a huge tourist draw with a chair lift...then people can stop asking for a gondola between downtown and cherry creek!

[mhays]

I really have no idea about cost.

But building over an active rail line would be difficult, if even feasible if the heavy-rail side is controlled by a commercial railroad, as their whims can take precedence. I'd assume at least some very tight windows to perform any work in their ROW until safely covered, like stoppages anytime a train is nearby. (It's BNSF in my area...they're notorious for this.)

An all-new freeway tunnel next to a detour sounds easy compared to covering an existing roadway or railway.

For another comparison, a study about covering about 10 acres of I-5 in Downtown Seattle concluded that it would cost something like $1 billion to go the cheapest route. Or $3 billion if the lid had to support buildings on the edges. This seems all very unlikely to happen.

My region also builds a lot of freeway lids. Generally they're small...and even then they require a lot of short freeway closures.