(Thanks for the magnified image Ken!)
The One Lincoln Park high-rise, at the corner of 20th and Lincoln streets downtown, will be a 31-story building that will include 184 condominium units, some costing as much as $3 million. The building's contemporary design features a facade full of glass and metal.
Condos shoot for the sky
Luxury high-rise to add 184 units to downtown mix
By John Rebchook, Rocky Mountain News
July 23, 2005
A developer has unveiled plans for a luxury, 31-story high-rise condominium tower that would be among the tallest buildings constructed in downtown Denver in the past 20 years.
The $140 million One Lincoln Park, with 184 units, some priced at more than $3 million, is being developed by Erik Osborn. His partners include Doug Moreland, one of the largest automobile dealers in the area, and radio sports talk personality Tom Manoogian, who is best known as "Lou From Littleton."
Osborn, who among other things his co-developed the Diamond Lofts near Coors Field, is planning the tower on a parking lot bordered by 20th Avenue and Welton, Lincoln and 20th streets. It is just east of the 43-story 1999 Broadway office high-rise, which opened in 1985.
Construction is scheduled to begin before year-end on the building.
Several other downtown high-rises are in the works. The Hyatt hotel at the convention center, set to open in December, is 37 stories. A planned Four Seasons hotel at 14th and Lawrence streets, with at least 120 luxury condominiums, would be 50 stories.
One Lincoln Park is expected to help breathe life into a part of downtown that is checkered by large surface parking lots and nondescript buildings.
"This would make a great connection to downtown and the uptown and Curtis Park neighborhoods," said Kate Peterson, housing program manager for the Downtown Denver Partnership. "It continues the ongoing efforts to make Denver more of a 24-hour community. I think it is exciting."
Osborn said he and his partners believe Denver is ready to join larger cities with a building of this size, stature and design.
"My partners and I approached this deal with one thing in mind - build a building reminiscent of the very innovative design and high amenity buildings found in cities like Chicago, Manhattan, Vancouver and Miami," Osborn said.
"We think that Denver is ready to have real downtown, urban homes like in those other cities. We traveled to all of those places and drug our architect with us. This building will be sort of a collage, the 'best of' the buildings that we saw. We intend to make this a marquee building."
The building is being designed by Denver-based Buchanan Yonushewski Group, which has been involved in numerous urban buildings in Denver.
"This building will look different than anything else that exists downtown," said Brad Buchanan, a principal of BYG. "It is contemporary, it is urban, it is cosmopolitan. It will have a lot of metal and a lot of glass."
Condominium prices will start at slightly less than $350 per square foot, which is less than other new developments either on the drawing board, such as the Four Seasons, or Daniel Liebeskind's Museum Residences under construction next to the Denver Art Museum.
"We'll have all of the amenities and quality of the Four Seasons, but because of the Four Seasons name, they'll demand a higher price," Osborn said.
Jeff Selby, the co-developer of the proposed Four Seasons, which would have 120 to 180 high-end condominiums, was thrilled to learn about One Lincoln Park.
"It confirms our strong belief that there is a lot of residential interest in downtown," Selby said Friday. "The more housing downtown, the better. It helps make downtown a more vital and exciting place."
He said One Lincoln Park won't compete with the Four Seasons.
"Because of our hotel component, we have entirely different amenities," Selby said. "And our locations are dramatically different. There's a huge difference between being between Lawrence and Arapahoe and close to the 16th Street Mall, than to be at 20th and Welton. We're across from the DCPA (Denver Center for the Performing Arts), close to the 16th Street Mall and all of the restaurants in LoDo."
Amenities at One Lincoln Park, Osborn said, will include a 24-hour doorman, a valet, a state-of-the-art fitness center that will include a private Pilates studio, an "owner's club" with guest suites, an outdoor infinity edge pool, and 12,000 square feet of retail on the ground floor. Each unit will have a large deck.
One Lincoln Park also will include five levels of parking, with 250 parking spaces in the parking structure and 50 underground.
Residential units, priced from the $250,000s, will start on the sixth floor.
The site will also be served by two light-rail lines.
"You basically have light rail right outside your door," Osborn said. "You won't have to own a car, if you don't want to."
"This is going to be one of the first, true mixed-use transit-oriented developments in the Central Business District," Buchanan added.
So far, Osborn said, interest has come from empty nesters who live in big homes in the suburbs, young professionals working downtown and business people in their 40s and 50s. It's being marketed by Angela Osborn (Osborn's wife) and Julie Gelfond, both of Coldwell Banker Devonshire.
Car dealer Moreland said this will be his first major real estate development, although he plans to team up with Osborn and Manoogian to develop a "small enclave" of homes in Cherry Creek North.
He noted that he has a daughter who lives in a loft in Lower Downtown, so he's familiar with downtown living.
"My partners and I saw this type of living lacking in this town," Moreland said about One Lincoln Park. "We're ready for the type of building you can find in Chicago, Boston, New York, San Francisco."
Moreland plans to have a unit for himself but also keep his suburban home.
"I've got four kids, and only one of them is living here, but they all want to come back," Moreland said. "I have a 23-year-old son who is working at one of our stores down in Arizona, but when he comes back, I know this is the kind of place he'd want to live."
Asked if he would give One Lincoln Park buyers a discount on a car, he laughed and said: "You bet. Maybe I should include one with every unit. Who knows?"
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