DENVER | Main Development Thread #7

[TakeFive]

Oh Yeah, it won't be long before Denver looks like this

Originally Posted by bulldurhamer

people are leaving colorado in droves at this point. it's going to take a miracle to turn this back around now given these constraints.

the dirty air, the wild fires, the melting snowcaps, and of course the lack of rain makes getting people to move tough. good thing the california escapees haven't caught on just how rough it's going to get. at least some folks are still coming in. you still have a chance to cash out on that colorado home yet!

Image from US National Archives and Records Administration

[wwmiv]

I moved to escape Denver. Reasons, from least to most important:

1. Altitude
2. Air quality
3. Political, policy, and administrative incompetence
4. Rude gay men
5. Maladaptive cultural traits
6. Segregation
7. Violence
8. Homelessness
9. Cost of living
10. Denverites
11. Californians
12. How Denverites treat newcomers

[TakeFive]

Thirty Days to Go

X D2 Apartments - 2200 Arapahoe Street








Images courtesy Studio PBA / X Company

Move in August 15
Leases available from four months to 18 months.

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

Best of Luck, My Friend

Originally Posted by wwmiv

I moved to escape Denver. Reasons, from least to most important:

[Curtis Park]

Originally Posted by MovinOnUp

Sorry - mostly this: "people are leaving colorado in droves at this point. it's going to take a miracle to turn this back around now given these constraints."

... but really the whole post I guess.

That's what I thought. His stuff is usually pretty far out there and hyperbolic.

Originally Posted by wwmiv

I moved to escape Denver. Reasons, from least to most important:

1. Altitude
2. Air quality
3. Political, policy, and administrative incompetence
4. Rude gay men
5. Maladaptive cultural traits
6. Segregation
7. Violence
8. Homelessness
9. Cost of living
10. Denverites
11. Californians
12. How Denverites treat newcomers

Me and my other gay male friends were just talking about how nice it is now with you gone.

[laniroj]

Originally Posted by mojiferous

...It will be hard to maintain growth if the power grid breaks down every time the temperature crests 100...

Water will certainly be a problem in any scenario if we continue without change. Those precious lawns and non-native trees will likely suffer and things like fracking and industrial usage will need a lot of change to stay viable... Now is definitely the time to become a water rights lawyer...

Haha, imagine when we all will supposedly have electric cars at the expense of not having air conditioning!

Lawns, while not helping, are not the problem with water. Cities use, in the most aggressive estimates, 15% of water in the west. With conservation efforts, some western cities now use less water than they did 20 years ago while supporting significantly higher populations - ie Las Vegas. So yeah, we can stop watering lawns as a feel good measure but it won't change a damn thing - kind of like the plastic straw thing.

The problem with water is two-fold. 1) we grow water intensive crops in some of the driest places on earth and 2) we refuse to address it on a national scale and trust me, it's a national problem. Produce from Mexico (facing the same water issues as us) and California literally give us year round produce. If fresh fruit doesn't show up on the conference tables in NYC and DC and on the White House table for daily staff briefings a water pipeline will be approved by Congress with no conditions or EIS requirements, funded and under construction within 6 months.

We used to solve big issues in this country, but now all we do is virtue signal and delay decision making. If the old timers could build a 23 mile tunnel under the continental divide via two separate shafts and only be 10 inches offset when they met in the middle, we can certainly build an above-ground pipeline from the Missouri River to that same tunnel to take the water back over the divide to the rest of the west. It's literally a straight shot on I-70 - the right of way is already there!! Likewise, California could build a pipeline from the Columbia River to Shasta Reservoir and guarantee those fruit trays. BUT WE DON'T, WE CAN'T, THE ENVIRONMENT, ETC (so they say)! I love the environment more than most, but conservation only goes so far and when push comes to shove, I'll put the ability of people to live above other species. If you're a serious water thinker you have to find a way to bring more water to the places which are growing in population and producing valuable/essential agriculture..

Why is this applicable to development? Well, many places across the west are instituting development pauses and moratoriums on account of not being able to procure adequate water for growth. Water is now directly affecting housing affordability, job growth, quality of life, etc.

[laniroj]

To continue the development applicability, the water thing drives me nuts. Our elected officials barrel forward with industry, like the semi conductor boom in Arizona - they somehow find MASSIVE amounts of water for that incredibly water-intensive manufacturing. In the same breath, those elected officials aren't proactive for residential water use and institute moratoriums and turn down residential rezonings as a result. It's a legit recipe for a housing affordability disaster.

Mayor: Let's bring the world's largest semi conductor here! NO, let's bring all of the semi-conductor manufacturers here!

Council: What a great idea, imagine all of the taxes and local spending that will generate! APPROVED!

People: YAY, JOBS! OH WAIT, THERE'S NO LONGER ANY HOUSING I CAN AFFORD...(tail between legs)...I guess I'll move to New Mexico, or Georgia.

rinse and repeat all over the good ole US of A.

[TakeFive]

Originally Posted by laniroj

To continue the development applicability, the water thing drives me nuts. Our elected officials barrel forward with industry, like the semi conductor boom in Arizona - they somehow find MASSIVE amounts of water for that incredibly water-intensive manufacturing. In the same breath, those elected officials aren't proactive for residential water use and institute moratoriums and turn down residential rezonings as a result. It's a legit recipe for a housing affordability disaster.

It's always good to read with a grain of skepticism.

With Conservatives stuff often jumps off the page as being totally crazy stuff. Liberals tend to be more subtle or perhaps 'naïve'? Both like to be intentionally sloppy.

One baseline data point with TSMC is that they use 8 gallons of water per chipset. Not as bad as cotton but yeah, that's a lot of water. All the OMG writers jumped all over that. Here's the problem: $12 billion is a lot of money and as a part of their development TSMC will build a water recycling facility. They anticipate recycling roughly 95% of their water. Big, huge difference there. Intel makes similar claims with their under construction facility in Chandler.


With respect to Denver Water's expansion of Gross Reservoir

Of the additional 77,000 acre-feet added through the expansion, 72,000 acre-feet will be for Denver Water customer use and 5,000 acre-feet will go to an environmental pool, which will provide enhanced stream flow to a 17-mile stretch of South Boulder Creek, as well as additional storage for Boulder and Lafayette.

They anticipate adding water at their expanded Gross Reservoir in 2027.

.....

[TakeFive]

Originally Posted by mojiferous

It's the south and southwest that are going to be in real trouble - in fact insurers and lenders are already making adjustments or leaving (like the recent news out of Florida https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/insuranc...in-latest-blow-to-homeowners/ar-AA1dIVQo)

True Story

Last night I'm listening to my favorite late night talker: The Todd Schnitt Show. He has an afternoon drive-time program in Tampa but the program is syndicated and it's replayed late night down here.

Years ago he decided to build a nice home. In order to get a good flood rating he had to be up 10 feet. He found a hilly area where he accomplished that. He carried a lot of insurance including a big umbrella liability policy so he used AIG. Last year his flood rating was changed from 10 feet to 12 feet. His 1st floor is up 11 feet.

AIG canceled his Homeowners policy and he struggled to replace it. He settled for a triple B rated company. However; to get flood coverage it would cost him $50,000 a year. Ouch; he passed on that but does have the available Federal flood coverage which is not that good.

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

You forgot to mention California. Due to regulated premiums and fire risk Insurers are abandoning the state in droves.

Phoenix is in much better shape than you might think; they started planning for droughts many decades ago. For example Scottsdale waters all of its golf courses with re-claimed water. Phoenix has been storing excess water in underground aquifers for years.

[laniroj]

Originally Posted by TakeFive

It's always good to read with a grain of skepticism.

With Conservatives stuff often jumps off the page as being totally crazy stuff. Liberals tend to be more subtle or perhaps 'naïve'? Both like to be intentionally sloppy.

One baseline data point with TSMC is that they use 8 gallons of water per chipset. Not as bad as cotton but yeah, that's a lot of water. All the OMG writers jumped all over that. Here's the problem: $12 billion is a lot of money and as a part of their development TSMC will build a water recycling facility. They anticipate recycling roughly 95% of their water. Big, huge difference there. Intel makes similar claims with their under construction facility in Chandler....

No skepticism needed. TSMC spending $40 billion in Arizona makes total sense and it should be done...for SO MANY REASONS...you know like national security. What drives me nuts is everyone thinks things can't be done - we need more YES people in positions of power. If this were 100 years ago, our elected leaders would simply take water from flood prone areas and ditch it or pipeline it to the areas that needed water. Up for debate, but basically since the EPA came into being, we've been unable to do big things in this country.

[mojiferous]

Originally Posted by laniroj

Lawns, while not helping, are not the problem with water. Cities use, in the most aggressive estimates, 15% of water in the west. With conservation efforts, some western cities now use less water than they did 20 years ago while supporting significantly higher populations - ie Las Vegas. So yeah, we can stop watering lawns as a feel good measure but it won't change a damn thing - kind of like the plastic straw thing.

The problem with water is two-fold. 1) we grow water intensive crops in some of the driest places on earth and 2) we refuse to address it on a national scale and trust me, it's a national problem. Produce from Mexico (facing the same water issues as us) and California literally give us year round produce. If fresh fruit doesn't show up on the conference tables in NYC and DC and on the White House table for daily staff briefings a water pipeline will be approved by Congress with no conditions or EIS requirements, funded and under construction within 6 months.

I totally agree, but all the articles pushing that idea that "your lawn isn't the problem and you don't need low-flow toilets because the real issue is all the farms in dry areas" are selling a solution that requires massive systemic change.

Thats because it is only true on very large scales - like state or aquifer/basin levels. Personal usage is actually an issue because local water agencies or districts are limited in capacity and rights. So sure, most of the water usage in Colorado may go to agriculture in a dry climate, but even if you reduce that to 0 it does not magically allow your local water district to pump that water to you. They'll have to acquire the rights AND add infrastructure.

This is why more cities in the west will probably have to follow Las Vegas and mandate water conservation measures and reduce their usage. No matter what happens elsewhere, they still have to buy more water to get more. And the water used for agriculture may be in distant areas that they don't have infrastructure in - unfortunately you can't just say "we have rights for X gallons from the Arkansas but we will just take it from the Platte." It's much, much cheaper and easier to make sure the existing infrastructure and supply can accommodate more people.

And we should not count on a "Manhattan Project for climate change" for this. There is no world where you can engineer and build a massive water delivery system for even one city in less than a decade. Because you need more than just the delivery mechanism, you will also need to build storage and treatment and handle interconnections for the new water. Regulatory speedbumps, like the environmental impact, are way down the process after you've already determined how and where you're building the infrastructure. Acquiring the land alone will take forever.

With sacrifices in process and safety you may be able to speed this up a little. Hoover Dam killed 100 workers but was only finished in only 5 years. However planning began almost a decade before construction started. Even the Chinese took a decade to build Three Gorges Dam.

To bring this back on topic - Denver Water is really great and we're in a much better situation than a lot of other cities in the West. That doesn't mean we should count on a future where we have plenty of water. Or that we should count on a shrinking population because of climate change. What we should be doing is building denser and discouraging lawns and thirsty non-native vegetation. We shouldn't be turning down denser development near transit in the hopes of a new grass-covered dog park. And we shouldn't be letting sprawl destroy actual nature so "highrises" don't block the mountain view from your back yard.

[1000ftDenver]

Originally Posted by wwmiv

I moved to escape Denver. Reasons, from least to most important:

1. Altitude
2. Air quality
3. Political, policy, and administrative incompetence
4. Rude gay men
5. Maladaptive cultural traits
6. Segregation
7. Violence
8. Homelessness
9. Cost of living
10. Denverites
11. Californians
12. How Denverites treat newcomers

See ya.

[gopokes21]

Originally Posted by wwmiv

I moved to escape Denver. Reasons, from least to most important:

1. Altitude
2. Air quality
3. Political, policy, and administrative incompetence
4. Rude gay men
5. Maladaptive cultural traits
6. Segregation
7. Violence
8. Homelessness
9. Cost of living
10. Denverites
11. Californians
12. How Denverites treat newcomers

What a great post lol. So did you also buy a time travel portal and go back to 1930.

I hope you're not in any of the Top 40 largest US cities, or anywhere in Latin America. I also think the situation you describe is typical of anywhere in pandemic-era and post-pandemic America.

Luckily for those of us who stayed (in Denver, or wherever someone safe harbored during the pandemic) we're enjoying significant improvement on crime, political extremism, people are coming and going normally and that's welcomed, and inflation is even way down. Still elevated, but it's leveled off and some leading indicator costs are even coming back down. Homelessness currently feels more like 2019 than 2021 when there was no rule of law. And in Denver, we just elected moderates to Mayor, City Council, and school boards, we've had no wildfires for two years now, and air quality has been among the best in the nation. Hope you didn't move east!

[TakeFive]

The Workforce Housing Movement - (Part One)

POP Denver Exemplifies the Benefits of Prefabricated Building Solutions
July 11, 2023 - Mile High CRE

POP DENVER APARTMENTS - 655 Santa Fe Dr.








Images courtesy POP Denver/Wells Mountain States

Location plays a crucial role in real estate and POP Denver Apartments boasts one of the finest spots, situated at the intersection of 6th and Santa Fe within Denver’s vibrant Santa Fe Arts District. Supporting the vibrant aesthetics of the Art District, the southeast corner of the building will feature a mural by Atlanta-based artist Greg Mike that is four stories tall and covers 3,000 square feet

"The benefits of prefabrication for multifamily design"

Developing a fast-to-market residential condo demands meticulous attention to detail and increased efficiency. Prefabrication offers multiple benefits for multifamily projects, such as quality, speed of construction, and long-term durability.

Note: For now all units are rentals.

[TakeFive]

The Workforce Housing Movement - (Part Two)

Does mhays know "Pinnacle Partners" is from Seattle?

Pinnacle Partners and Mortenson Development Announce Plans for Opportunity Zone Project
October 26, 2022 - Mile High CRE

Revival on Platte - 2506 W. Colfax Ave

Opportunity Zone real estate investment management firm Pinnacle Partners, in partnership with Mortenson Development, is planning to develop a new multifamily housing development located at 2506 W. Colfax Avenue in Denver. Pinnacle Partners is investing 100 percent of the limited partner equity, and Mortenson Development is serving as the developer for the project. KEPHART is the architect.

The complex will be prefabricated by Mortenson Development and include a mix of studio, one-bedroom and two-bedroom units.

“I have been combing the market for Opportunity Zone sites, and this location is perhaps one of the strongest Opportunity Zone sites in the country,” said Jill Homan, managing director for Pinnacle Partners Opportunity Zone Fund VIII. “We are excited to partner with a best-in-class developer in Mortenson to realize the vision of this project.”

Interesting tidbit:

This project is one of the only two fee-simple sites in the Stadium District Master Plan and has been fully capitalized through Opportunity Zone funds.

This project broke ground mid-April - Somebody here had previously mentioned this in passing

[TakeFive]

The Workforce Housing Movement - (Part Three)

Meaningless factoid

We're all familiar with Greystar's activity in the downtown area in recent years. Latest developer rankings of apartments has Alliance Res (Phoenix) grabbing the #1 spot while Greystar comes in 2nd and Mill Creek 3rd.

Greystar Creates Brand Targeting US Shortage of Workforce Rental Housing
May 30, 2023 By Richard Lawson - CoStar News

One of the largest U.S. apartment owners and managers launched a brand aimed at addressing the nation's shortage of workforce housing that will include modular construction to keep costs down.

Greystar, based in Charleston, South Carolina, said Ltd. by Greystar will provide newly built housing for workers such as teachers, first responders and nurses who typically can't afford to rent such apartments. The brand relies heavily on incorporating technology that accelerated during the pandemic to reduce operating costs at properties, allowing for lower rents.

Greystar Rolls Out Workforce Housing Brand With Capped Rent Growth Model
May 31, 2023 By Dees Stribling, Bisnow National

Greystar Real Estate Partners has launched a new brand of workforce housing, Ltd. By Greystar, which the company characterizes as “attainable [for] key populations affected by the lack of rental housing in the United States.”

The Charleston, South Carolina-based developer, which also has interests in logistics and life sciences assets, says that rents at its Ltd. By Greystar developments won't increase annually more than the consumer price index or 3%, whichever is greater. As of April, the annualized increase in the CPI was 4.9%.

My primary reason for posting this is that when Greystar makes a move like this people notice.

Greystar's first development under the brand is Ltd. Med Center, which is leasing up now in Houston near the Texas Medical Center, the world's largest medical center district. Average asking rents on Greystar’s new Houston property under the Ltd. brand are $1,043 per month, about $800 a month below the average for new apartments, according to CoStar data.

Cookies and Cream?

Leasing has been strong, according to Brandon Chinn, senior director of innovation at Greystar. The company’s marketing plan went beyond the digital campaigns that are common for most new apartments now leasing up.

“We went and dropped off cookies and gift baskets at schools and the medical center to get the word out,” Chinn told CoStar News.

My secondary reason for posting this is I knew laniroj would be interested (although who knows with him from day to day? )

[bulldurhamer]

Originally Posted by gopokes21

What a great post lol. So did you also buy a time travel portal and go back to 1930.

I hope you're not in any of the Top 40 largest US cities, or anywhere in Latin America. I also think the situation you describe is typical of anywhere in pandemic-era and post-pandemic America.

Luckily for those of us who stayed (in Denver, or wherever someone safe harbored during the pandemic) we're enjoying significant improvement on crime, political extremism, people are coming and going normally and that's welcomed, and inflation is even way down. Still elevated, but it's leveled off and some leading indicator costs are even coming back down. Homelessness currently feels more like 2019 than 2021 when there was no rule of law. And in Denver, we just elected moderates to Mayor, City Council, and school boards, we've had no wildfires for two years now, and air quality has been among the best in the nation. Hope you didn't move east!

What kind of crack are you smoking? There are twice as many — around as there were four years ago but the difference being now that we go out of our way to avoid punishment for young gangsters now. Property crime and — are at all time highs. Aurora may as well be flint michigan now. You can't send your kids to the best public school in town with them seeing someone get murdered

Denver was named the worst place to raise a family and i see it whenever a baby is born. The parents are pushed out. Denver is like vietnam with the gunfire, but there’s really nothing good countering that.

The water crisis absolutely will impact everything going forward negatively as well. And of course now Colorado doesn’t dominate the weed market? The state’s weed revenue is crashing and the same people who came for the freedom can now have their freedom in other places.

Denver is not attractive to outsiders and people aren’t moving here like they were. With work from home not going away, prices and taxes endlessly rising, a state legislature that keep making it harder and harder to put violent teenagers away, and elementary schools closing by the dozen, where is the appeal?

Nobody here ever mentions other things like how bad the grocery store and drug store situations are but they are absolutely awful. Shopping in a clean and not overcrowded place actually having stuff on the shelves is actually possible in other places. Not denver. The quality of life is really low here compared to most places.

Denver is done

[mojiferous]

Originally Posted by bulldurhamer

What kind of crack are you smoking?

BLAH BLAH BLAH

Denver is done

What is your point? What has your goal been since you joined this board? This is ostensibly a development/urbanization/architecture/tall building forum - do you actually care about any of those things or just want to yell about how much despise and fear the city? Because if you do hate Denver so much, why continue to come back? I don't recall a single instance where you were even somewhat positively interested about anything posted here and if you were trying to troll us into abandoning this place you have failed.

Personally, the most frustrating thing for me is that you and many of the other recent people who have joined the forum have so many complaints and not a single tiny hint of a solution. You hate crime and dense development and now apparently dislike Denver and all the people who live here. wwmiv hated it enough to create a list of enemies. But none of you actually have ideas or plans to change things. You just list off the way things are wrong and offer nothing else.

And maybe that is the point - you know our mods are not strict and have let this fly for a long time. I'm sure a lot of them are operating in the spirit of free discourse - that you have the right to speak your mind and say what you want to say even if it strays into trollish behavior. And by constantly being right on the edge of acceptable and trollish you may be able to do three things to an urbanist forum:
1. Sow discord.
2. Be annoying enough to cause people to leave.
3. Cause enough digression and off-topic discussion to derail pro-growth organizing and discussion (have you noticed all of these trolls haaaate new construction and density? remember our old trolls who were banned for things like loving Pueblo too much?)

And I would argue that this is exactly what is happening here. We were at one point all getting together and involved in things like Denver YIMBY. There were disagreements about height and massing and the colors of buildings, but it didn't feel like we were constantly dealing with little rants about whether the Denver gay community disliked someone and why that means the entire city should be destroyed.

I vote for more aggressive management here - ban the trolls like Bullhamburger here who spent most of his posts insulting people. They are not contributing to anything here.

To be honest, we need less of whatever this is and more people like Take 5 - I may disagree with his data analysis and his opinion on the suburbs, but at least he keeps most of his posts relevant and has opinions about solutions and causes of issues. He posts often and debates his views without insulting everyone and everything.

[MovinOnUp]

Originally Posted by bulldurhamer

Denver is done

Honest question - where do you live? None of this has been my family's experience and we're IN Denver - been here since I was born.

You have a flair for the dramatic, so if that's your objective - mission accomplished.

[bunt_q]

I remember the good ol' days when I was the biggest — here. But nobody can say I don't at least try and be constructive on city-ish things.

[wong21fr]

Originally Posted by bulldurhamer

Denver is like vietnam with the gunfire, but there’s really nothing good countering that.

Just like —' Saigon, eh, slick?