Tales along the property trail
Who doesn't love a good story, especially a family story? (That's a rhetorical question)
Remember this one?
Four years after completion, a RiNo office building is still empty
July 22, 2024 by Thomas Gounley -- BusinessDen
Rev360
3600 Brighton Blvd.
![](https://tff-amd.imgix.net/img/project-thumbs/REV360_Hero3_Thumbnail.jpg)
Image courtesy Anderson Mason Dale Architects
Thomas Gounley provided the
backstory via the Denver Post
December 2, 2021
Quote:
Ed Haselden never wanted to develop a spec office building.When he and his partners broke ground on Rev360 at 3600 Brighton Blvd. in the spring of 2019, they already had a marquee tenant planning to move in. WeWork had committed to taking two of the building’s five floors.
But the coworking company underwent something of an implosion in its first attempt to go public in late 2019. That meant Rev360, completed in July 2020, was sitting vacant. “Our objective was never to own a 100 percent spec building,” Haselden told BusinessDen Tuesday. “It was really putting us in a situation where that’s not what we do.” ... Haselden and his development partners — Keystone Equities, Rob Cohen and Tributary Real Estate — sold Rev360 to San Francisco-based Shorenstein Properties...
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I recalled reading about this at the time.
Shorenstein is a name I had become familiar with. So what else have they done in Denver?
Quote:
Shorenstein is also partnering with Denver-based Nichols Partnership to develop the five-story One Platte office building at 1701 Platte St., which will be completed next year.
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Not sure how this project has gone?
Then my brain flashed
Wasn't Shorenstein also the owner of that mess of a luxury apartment project in DUS that had all kinds of plumbing problems. Yup, they sure were: originally called The Grand, they sued the builder and moved all the remaining tenants out. I never knew how all that worked out but apparently it's all fixed up and is now called
Jasper Towers and offering up to 8 weeks free to lease a unit.
Originally, going back many years
Shorenstein was more of a staid or conservative investor. They had previously "owned Denver City Center downtown, selling the two office towers for $400 million in early 2020."
More recently I came across this:
Shorenstein Under Duress With Troubled Debt Approaching $1B
June 13, 2024 Sasha Jones, New York City Bisnow
Quote:
Shorenstein Properties has been a fixture in the skylines of cities across the country for decades. But now, some of the office towers that created the Shorenstein family's legacy are beset by problems.
Last week, Shorenstein was forced to surrender ownership of Capella Tower to lender Metropolitan Life Insurance after failing to find a suitable buyer for the second-tallest tower in downtown Minneapolis. That building is just the tip of the iceberg. The San Francisco-based firm has another $822M in defaulted or at-risk debt tied to large office properties from coast to coast, according to a Bisnow analysis of the Morningstar Credit securitized loan database.
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So what's the background story for the Shorenstein family.
Walter Shorenstein (via Wikipedia)
Quote:
Walter H. Shorenstein (February 15, 1915 – June 24, 2010)[1] was an American billionaire real estate developer and investor. His company, Shorenstein Properties, owned 130 buildings totaling at least 28,000,000 square feet (2,600,000 m2) of office space at the time of his death.[2]
He at one point owned 25% of the commercial office space in the City of San Francisco, including the iconic Bank of America Building.
Career
Upon his discharge from the Air Force, Shorenstein moved to San Francisco with savings of $1,000. In 1993, Shorenstein helped an investor group purchase the San Francisco Giants baseball team thus preventing the franchise from moving to Florida.
Family
In 1945, Shorenstein married Phyllis Finley of Wellington, Kansas. She met her husband while working as a volunteer ambulance driver at Travis Air Force Base, where Shorenstein was stationed during World War II
Awards and honors (2 examples)
1997: Democratic National Committee’s Lifetime Achievement Award
2013: Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) establishes the Walter Shorenstein Fellowship in Media and Democracy
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