DENVER | Main Development Thread #7

[SirLucasTheGreat]

The East Colfax BRT is so frustrating. I won't pretend to fully appreciate all of the complicating factors that serve to delay this project and inflate its cost. However, there's no reason why a 5 mile BRT should take a decade and cost more than a quarter of a billion dollars. It is absurd, unacceptable, and fundamentally undermines my trust in the government to deliver even conservative infrastructure projects. This is where China is absolutely killing us.

[wong21fr]

Originally Posted by bunt_q

One of the challenges transit agencies are facing is that electrification tends to significantly increase overall operating costs, fleet sizes, etc. Charging isn't fast enough yet to not have to grow fleet sizes, to say nothing of the facility needs for both the charging infrastructure and the charging storage capacity. The federal programs are going to be great for places where this is already mandated, so any free money helps agencies that are already struggling to comply (see: California). But for many, the switch isn't likely to make sense after just a single infusion of dollars, absent some other force pushing them in that direction.

What's the increase in operating costs being driven by? I see the capital expenditure increase in having to replace the fleet, add charging infrastructure, don't see storage as an add unless these transit agencies are trying to go DG. O&M offsets would be decreased fuel and maintenance (unless you're saying that ProTerra buses are unreliable POS's which I wouldn't be surprised by given the state of the commercial fleet electrification companies).

[TakeFive]

Electric buses for mass transit seen as cost effective
October 17, 2019 By Peter Maloney - American Public Power Association

Maintenance costs for the electric buses was $0.55 per mile compared with $1.53 for the diesel fleet.

And while electric buses are still more expensive that fossil fueled buses, electric buses can provide cost savings over the long run. An average diesel transit bus costs around $500,000, compared with $750,000 for an electric bus...

Over its lifetime, however, an electric bus could save $400,000 in fuel expenses and $125,000 in averted maintenance costs, according to figures from bus manufacturer New Flyer that were cited in the report.

Also consider that this report (2019) was prior to gas costs going up.

The average price for diesel fuel in 2020 in Denver was a little over $1.50/gallon. Today's average price for diesel in Denver is ~$4.85/gallon. Not sure why but that is up from $3.50 a month ago. Put that through your tailpipe and breath in deeply.

Originally Posted by wong21fr

What's the increase in operating costs being driven by? I see the capital expenditure increase in having to replace the fleet, add charging infrastructure, don't see storage as an add unless these transit agencies are trying to go DG. O&M offsets would be decreased fuel and maintenance (unless you're saying that ProTerra buses are unreliable POS's which I wouldn't be surprised by given the state of the commercial fleet electrification companies).

Virtually all the manufacturers are now making these including New Flyer (quoted above) which RTD has bought a boatload of buses from but AFAIK Proterra have been the most reliable and roadworthy.

[TakeFive]

Two key points to consider

While I've read the rumors, I haven't yet seen the final 'rules' in the transit portion of the Infrastructure Bill but:

1) I believe FTA funding will be available to cover a higher percentage of project costs. In this regard they may be able to kick the East Colfax Connector BRT from the "New Starts" program where funding is limited into a new pot that would cover most of the cost. If so, Denver/RTD is ideally positioned due to all the work that has already been done.

2) If the "electrification" pot covers a substantial (or even all of) the bus and recharging equipment costs then the decision is a No-brainer.

[bunt_q]

Originally Posted by wong21fr

What's the increase in operating costs being driven by? I see the capital expenditure increase in having to replace the fleet, add charging infrastructure, don't see storage as an add unless these transit agencies are trying to go DG. O&M offsets would be decreased fuel and maintenance (unless you're saying that ProTerra buses are unreliable POS's which I wouldn't be surprised by given the state of the commercial fleet electrification companies).

Keeping in mind the tech is getting better - currently, you can only assume 150 miles or so on a single charge (less in the winter with heating). And about three hours to charge. (Proterra has pilots that do better on both counts, but they are not the norm yet.)

So if you figure you're driving the Route 76 - to leave the bus barn and go to Littleton starting your day at 5:24am - you go back and forth 5 times, and you are calling it a day. At about 1:30 in the afternoon. You can go back to the barn and get on the charger - but you can't charge the whole fleet in the same 3 hour window to get them back out for the evening peak. So you need a second bus to do what could be done by a single bus before.

Over-simplifying, but that's the general idea. (It's why Bustang will really struggle - you need charges and standby buses all over the place at those distances.) Shorter urban routes, obviously, it's somewhat easier.

[wong21fr]

Originally Posted by bunt_q

Keeping in mind the tech is getting better - currently, you can only assume 150 miles or so on a single charge (less in the winter with heating). And about three hours to charge. (Proterra has pilots that do better on both counts, but they are not the norm yet.) .

Got it. You’re talking full system replacement now vs incremental as technology matures.

[bunt_q]

Originally Posted by wong21fr

Got it. You’re talking full system replacement now vs incremental as technology matures.

Well, chunky, if not full. The IIJA funding foodfight isn't going to wait for technology to mature.

[TakeFive]

I can see the concerns on Bustang routes given they travel so many miles - and on their mountain routes.

I did some checking and it seems early versions of Proterra had some issues, the biggest being getting replacement parts.

So far as I can tell Park City is happy with the Proterra heavy duty Catalyst buses. Both Breckenridge and Summit County are using Proterra buses for shuttle service which is very different from the demands needed by Bustang I'd assume.

[TakeFive]

Last Remaining Large Development Site in LoHi Sells for $10M
March 29, 2022 By Mile High CRE

Carmel Partners... has purchased one of the last remaining large development sites in the Denver Highlands neighborhood for $10 million. The 50,318-square-foot land assemblage ... is zoned for 5-story mixed-use development.

Images courtesy Capstone Land Team

[TakeFive]

245 New Residences Open at Legacy at Fitz in Aurora
March 30, 2022 - Mile High CRE


Image courtesy Legacy Partners

Legacy Partners ... today announced the opening of the second and final phase of Legacy at Fitz, a 363-residence apartment community located in Aurora, across the street from Fitzsimons Medical Center.

Phase I of Legacy at Fitz, located at 1363 N. Victor Street, opened in May 2021 and consisted of a five-story building with 109 residences and two townhome buildings with a total of nine three-bedroom units. Phase II includes the opening of 245 new residences.

There's a lot of new projects we don't 'really' cover but do end up adding to the overall inventory of living units. This project is interesting for a few reasons.

“Legacy at Fitz is one of the most unique new apartment communities in Aurora,” said R. Lane Cutter, senior managing director at Legacy. “We designed it to appeal to a wide range of residents — from affordability-seeking Denverites to those who work and live around the Anschutz Medical School area. The community has been filling up quickly since we opened the first phase and we expect leasing efforts to dramatically increase with the opening of these new residences and the diverse amenity areas.”

The project architect was Davis Partnership and Griffin Capital Private Equity was their 'equity' partner.

[TakeFive]

$90 million Denver Tech Center multifamily project planned amid low demand for office space
Mar 17, 2022 By Kate Tracy – Reporter , Denver Business Journal

Three real estate groups are teaming up to potentially build a seven-story residential building next to an existing office building in the Denver Tech Center. Principal Real Estate Investors, Miller Global Properties and the Opus Group have submitted a concept plan and a zoning lot amendment for 4600 S. Syracuse St. to build a seven-story, 252-unit apartment building with a pool and fitness amenities.

Currently on the 10.1-acre site is a 13-story, 304,000-square-foot building, a parking garage and plenty of surface parking. Plans show the new residential building will be built on the existing surface parking along East Union Avenue and South Ulster Street. The existing office and parking structure will remain as they are, as the concept plan proposes new construction only.

Supply and Demand has changed the landscape.

“There’s becoming a really high demand for multifamily residential in the Denver Tech Center space,” Nickerson said. “For people that don’t necessarily want to be downtown but they don’t want to be suburban either, the Denver Tech Center is in-between…it essentially provides more options for the people that would like to live in this area.”

[gopokes21]

Originally Posted by DenverInfill

Thanks, honorary Denver-thread member mhays for your always-insightful comments! Something needs to give because our one-size-fits-all transit agency covering an area of 1000+ square miles with a board elected from geographic districts just isn't working.

This x 1000

Queue up the chain of responses saying "Do you know how transit governance even works" and "I know more than you..."

Clearly how it works now isn't working, and hard to argue with someone who says "I know more than than you" because they probably do.

Originally Posted by bunt_q

Buses have been working for Cap Hill for decades. And Cap Hill is effectively a zero growth area. I am not sure that is where I think we should be putting our transit dollars, versus in areas that can (or least, will) still accommodate the next generation of growth in Denver.

Do you understand how transit governance works in Denver, and why we keep drawing distinctions at the City/County line? (You pulled Austin in - again, more regional tax base.) RTD is a trainwreck and Fastracks was largely a waste, I do not think you'll get much disagreement here. Nobody here is loudly advocating for finishing the B-line - but it is an albatross around the neck of our regional transit agency that cannot be ignored. It's actually really difficult (read: impossible) to take a regional agency with a Board spread over an area bigger than some states, and focus that tax base into Denver-centric transit. And it is a much, much harder discussion when you have to do it with the City alone. You are conflating apples and oranges and trying to make a point that I think most of us already agree with. But most of us have also been having this conversation for 20 years, and are more interested in having it if there is some notion of 'how can this be implemented' as part of the conversation. Does that conversation including 'settling' for what we can afford? Obviously, that is the real world. It doesn't mean that sort of incrementalism can't have value, and materially improve transportation (and arguably by extension, land use) in our City. (Note I did not say region. The City vs. region dynamics are real and can't be ignored here. I can't speak to how that compares to similar regional dynamics in Seattle, but I don't live in Seattle - I know the problem set we are dealing with here. Although, it wasn't all that long ago that we mocked Sound Transit as a joke agency that hadn't accomplished anything, and RTD was the golden child. In a lot of ways, they had the luxury of learning from our mistakes.)

You think many of us haven't studied, at length - with professional resources brought to bear - how to implement transit on the exact corridor you're talking about - Downtown to Cherry Creek to Colorado? We have. If it was easy, it would be done. But the balance of cost, ridership potential, and political will, is a tough equation to balance.

I guess to summarize - most of us are not disagreeing with you. We just know more about it than you, and it's really damn difficult to do.

Edit: Agree 100% with bobg's post.

https://www.psychiatry.org/psychiatrists/practice/dsm

[TakeFive]

Horse Pucky

Rent prices may drop ‘significantly’ in Denver soon
Mar 30, 2022 by: Kevin Torres - KDVR

DENVER (KDVR) — The fact is, rent prices have been climbing like crazy throughout the pandemic. But according to analysts over at RentCafe and Yardi Matrix, a massive number of new apartments are coming on board in the Mile High City in the coming months that will help stabilize rent prices.

Their data shows in the Denver metro area alone, towards the end of the second quarter, beginning of the third quarter, somewhere around 10,000 new units will be coming on board.

Somebody over at Yardi Matrix needs to put down the Hookah Pipe. Is it possible he saw the 245 unit project above and added a zero? Is it possible there's 3,000 triplexes under construction that I'm not aware of?

For sure I wouldn't know of every project but my projection is for a modest number of new units finishing through the 3rd quarter with the numbers rising over the following 18 months given the number of more recent, often larger starts.

Anybody else out there, Bueller, know where these 10,000 new units are?

[DenverInfill]

According to our DenverInfill tracker, there are currently 10,500 units in some stage of development (concept plan through under construction) in just the River North and Golden Triangle districts alone.

[mhays]

CoStar lists 20,178 apartments (just rentals) underway in the Denver metro. They list quarterly deliveries for 2022 of 1,586, 3,714, 3,071, and 3,140 in that order. Their 2023 deliveries top out over 2,900 for two quarters then start to drop based on underway work and expected trends. Vacancies are in the mid-6 range and slowly rising.

The biggest current jobs they list are 2535 E 40th (700), Ridgegate Station (504), Novel Rino (483), The Plaza Fitzsimmons (461), Vario 2900 Brighton (459), Lincoln Station (425), Evans West (420), X Denver (410), Residences at RiNo (397), and MICA RiNo (397).

[mhays]

Their big 2022 starts are Plaza Fitzsimmons, Vario Brighton, Lincoln Station, Evans West, Fox Iron Works (385), Arista Broomfield (325), 3309 Central Park (307), 696 Sherman (305), and 3650 Uinta (301)

[bunt_q]

Originally Posted by gopokes21

Clearly how it works now isn't working, and hard to argue with someone who says "I know more than than you" because they probably do.

I never defended transit governance or funding in the Denver metro. I merely meant that if you’re going to scream for subways like a high schooler screams for anarchy, it might be worth taking the time to understand the challenges in your proposed “solution.”

[TakeFive]

I can work with this

Originally Posted by DenverInfill

According to our DenverInfill tracker, there are currently 10,500 units in some stage of development (concept plan through under construction) in just the River North and Golden Triangle districts alone.

Let's say everything gets built including those that haven't yet broken ground, that's probably a 3 year window. But we'll be more optimistic and say 2 years and one month (makes the math easy).

Assuming we're an assembly line those 10,500 units over 25 months is 420 units per month. Then I got to musing... and guessed that you and Ryan have a final update about every other month. To check myself I went and checked. I found the Fitzgerald two days ago and prior to that the (mostly) finished Rye SoBo. Those two projects total 567 units over the 1st quarter or 189 units per month. This would suggest that my 3 year window which would be 291 units per month may be more accurate.

So I'll go with 300 units per month and somehow believe twice that many units is completed in the rest of the metro area (every month); sounds realistic, maybe, but I would have no idea where they are. In any case that would total 900 units per month or 2,700 units per quarter.

Giving Yardi TWO FULL months the average says we should see 1,800 new units. Perhaps another two projects squeezes into that window for a total of 2,500 units. Now that I could believe is possible; not sure it happens.

-------------------------

Originally Posted by mhays

CoStar lists 20,178 apartments (just rentals) underway in the Denver metro. They list quarterly deliveries for 2022 of 1,586, 3,714, 3,071, and 3,140 in that order. Their 2023 deliveries top out over 2,900 for two quarters then start to drop based on underway work and expected trends. Vacancies are in the mid-6 range and slowly rising.

So supposedly closer to 3,000 per quarter. Actually calculating the given numbers for 2nd and 3rd quarters comes out to 1,130 per month or 2,261 for two months which is right in between my calculated 1,800 average and the 2,500 I generously allowed could happen. Now we just need to imagine another 7,500 units somehow appearing out of the Mile High thin air.

Footnote: Nuggets lost tonight but it was a great game in front of an enthusiastic full house.

[TakeFive]

I'm still sleuthing

The Citizen
I knew this project was close. LMC's new 373 unit project in the Golden Triangle is indeed now leasing units. I'll call this a 2nd quarter project as only a few units are currently available but more units will be released through April, May and June.

The Fitzgerald
Despite Ryan's always excellent Final Update there are as yet no units available nor any release dates for availability. I'll assume units start leasing sometime within the 2nd quarter.

Arvada Co
Milender White broke ground on 100 new affordable units June of last year.
High Street Residential & CBRE Investment were to break ground last October on 252 units at Olde Town Arvada.

Parker Co
I found one subsidized project - South Range Crossing - that released a Vimeo in March showing many buildings with completed exteriors while other are are in progress. It's a 204 unit project with reportedly a June opening.

Aurora Co
In addition to the newly opened project posted above there's a couple of recently started projects with a long long way to go.

Lakewood Co
ZOCALO is converting an office building into 218 income restricted apartments which may be starting to lease units.

Englewood Co
A 119 unit project by Alpine Investments may have broken ground after receiving financing in January.

Northglenn Co
I recall posting about Karl's Farm by Southern Land Co. They broke ground on 385 units June of last year.

So far I've found nothing in Centennial or Commerce City (except a 180 unit HUD project in some phase of construction) or Littleton. I haven't yet bothered with Boulder County.

Originally Posted by mhays

The biggest current jobs they list are 2535 E 40th (700), Ridgegate Station (504), Novel Rino (483), The Plaza Fitzsimmons (461), Vario 2900 Brighton (459), Lincoln Station (425), Evans West (420), X Denver (410), Residences at RiNo (397), and MICA RiNo (397).

Familiar with most of these. AFAIK, none are close to be completed.

The Plaza Fitzsimons never came to fruition but the site was bought by the same group building One River North as they announced construction had started in January for a 370 project.

With respect to Lincoln Station, Century Communities just broke ground this March on a 425 unit project with projected completion in 2024.

With respect to Ridgegate Station the update is that Regency Partners closed on the land site July of last year and did start construction (540 units). It was reported in January of 2021 that Regency had broken ground on 240 units at Sky Ridge Station with a 'suggested' completion fall of this year but those suggestions are typically way off. No signs yet of any pending units being rented.

[TakeFive]

Have I ever mentioned how much I Love Infrastructure Investments
It's like buying a house or building an apartment project. It's a 30-year investment as apposed to money that merely goes down a rabbit hole.

Denver’s getting the cash it’s been asking for
Mar. 30, 2022 By Kevin Beaty/Denverite

Last year, Mayor Hancock and a whole bunch of his supporters made a show on the banks of the South Platte River about a symbolic document. His “Memorandum of Understanding” didn’t really do anything, but it was meant to show the federal government that Denver was ready and eager to accept $350 million to pay for sweeping renovations of the South Platte River and Harvard and Weir gulches.

On Tuesday, the White House announced Denver is getting that cash.

I could say a lot of nice things about Joe Biden but for now this is quite enough.

The White House’s website says the money comes from “President Biden’s bipartisan infrastructure law to strengthen port and waterway supply chains and climate resilience,” which allocated a total of $2.7 billion across the nation. The Denver project is listed as one of four “key projects” that stretch from Pennsylvania to California.

I know about the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. I know about the buckets of money for the Great Lakes. But who knew about the critical piece of infrastructure that is the So Platte River?

It helps to know how to twist the knife.

Though the project will enable more development around Confluence Park, it will also help protect westside neighborhoods that are at risk of flooding. Last year, Denver City Council member Jamie Torres told us she supported Hancock’s bid for funding specifically to help residents in those areas.

The White House’s statement specifically states the money is meant to “serve disadvantaged communities surrounding the area.”

Props to Mayor Hancock and the City of Denver