New Tallest Skyscraper for Denver!

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Zephyr
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New Tallest Skyscraper for Denver!

Post by Zephyr »

At 752 feet and 50 stories, this will become Denver's tallest building!

http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/r ... 90,00.html
Five stars high
50-story Four Seasons hotel to tower over 14th Street

By John Rebchook, Rocky Mountain News
November 13, 2004

A 50-story skyscraper housing a five-star Four Seasons hotel and the most expensive condos Denver has ever seen promises to be a dramatic addition to downtown's skyline.

Denver developers Jeff Selby and Michael J. Brenneman, principals of the Hotel Teatro Group, plan the Four Seasons Private Residences on 67,000 square feet of a parking lot at 14th, Arapahoe and Lawrence streets. The land is under contract from the owner, Global Pacific.

Hotel Teatro, with 111 rooms, may be incorporated into the new hotel, or may remain as a stand-alone, boutique hotel. The new building would have at least 120 hotel rooms, but it could have about 180 hotel rooms if the Hotel Teatro isn't renamed as a Four Seasons.

"I guarantee you that at 50 stories, it will be the most expensive single building ever built in Denver," Mayor John Hickenlooper said.

Construction will begin in 2005, and the opening is scheduled for 2007.

It will be tied for the third-tallest building in downtown in terms of floors, with only the 56-story Republic Plaza and the 52-story Qwest Tower at 1801 California St. taller. The Wells Fargo Center also has 50 stories.

In height, when including the building's spire, it will measure nearly 752 feet and be one of the tallest in downtown.

The building will include 281 underground and 166 above-ground parking spaces. In all, it will have 922,000 square feet, with a usable floor area of 695,000 square feet.

Experts say that the completed value of the building would be more than $350 million, making it the most valuable privately owned building ever constructed in the Denver area.

Prices haven't been set, but some experts estimate that the 140 condos could be priced in the neighborhood of $700 per square foot, and hotel room rates at around $300 per night.

"It's great for the city on several levels," Hickenlooper said. "It's a major development downtown with high-rise housing, and more housing is always good. It shows that the (pending) opening of the Colorado Convention Center expansion and the new Hyatt hotel is going to create a significant pulse that will be felt throughout downtown. And to land a major, upscale, state-of-the-art Four Seasons in downtown is part of our diploma in terms of becoming a first-tier city."

Condo prices at upper end

Housing and hotels of this caliber are found in cities such as New York, Chicago, Boston, San Francisco, Miami and Vancouver, British Columbia, Selby said. A similar Four Seasons is moving forward in Seattle.

Brenneman said one of the reasons the group chose Four Seasons as the operator is because it is one of the favorite hotels for guests at the Teatro.

"We hear over and over that they always stay in a Four Seasons when they are visiting a city that has one," Brenneman said.

This will be the only Four Seasons in the metro area, although another is going in Vail, Selby said.

The price hasn't been set for the condo units. Other units in the metro area have sold for more than $600 per square foot.

Selby said the Private Residences condos in the Four Seasons will top other sale prices, which would push them toward $700 per square foot. Units will range in size from 866 square feet to a 7,500-square-foot penthouse that will take the entire 50th floor. The condos will start on the 17th floor, while the hotel rooms will start on the fifth floor. Lower floors will include the lobby, meeting rooms, and a "world-class spa," Selby said.

"We're just thrilled that the Museum Residences (behind the Denver Art Museum) have already sold 50 percent of their units," Selby said. "That is really good news of for us. It shows there's a huge demand for downtown living. And no one has ever had the option of this kind of high-rise living before."

Condo buyers, for an added price, can be pampered.

They'll have access to a private concierge 24 hours a day. They could have their dog walked, their plants watered, or have a massage in their condo from a therapist in the fourth-floor spa, Selby said. A concierge could get them tickets to plays or sporting events or make travel arrangements.

"They could have daily room service or their beds turned down," Selby said.

Part of the appeal of the site is that it is across from the Teatro, he said. The Houston-based Hines Co. previously wanted to build an office building on the land before the office market crashed.

"I think this is the '100 percent' location downtown," Selby said, because of its proximity to lower downtown, Larimer Square, Writer Square, the Denver Performing Arts complex, the convention center, Coors Field, the Pepsi Center and the 16th Street Mall.

Selby and Brenneman have hired Bryan Woolley of Maverick Real Estate Corp. in Vancouver to market the condos.

"When we did the first building in Vancouver six or seven years ago, people said we were crazy and they'd never sell," Woolley said. "We sold 80 percent of the first units before it opened and started a second phase. Since then, probably 15 or 16 high-rises have been built in downtown Vancouver. I expect the same thing will happen in Denver."

Call to the well-heeled

Early next year, Woolley will be launching a "Founders Program," in which he will contact about 40 targeted, well-heeled people who could be potential buyers. After that, he will kick off a broad marketing campaign.

John Huggins, economic development director for Denver, noted that with the Four Seasons, there is close to $1 billion in construction under way or planned along the formerly forlorn stretch of 14th Street.

"I think what the Four Seasons shows is that our public investment is spurring private investment, which was always the plan," Huggins said. "If you look back when we did the Denver Dry renovation 14 years ago, it was almost 100 percent public. I'm very pleased that they think the market is strong enough that they are planning the Four Seasons without a public subsidy."

In the first nine months of the year, the downtown hotel market's average occupancy rate was 65.5 percent and the average nightly room rate was $113.50, said John Montgomery, president of Horwath Horizon Hospitality Consulting/Montgomery & Associates. It's virtually flat from the same period last year, he said.

Montgomery said that for the Four Seasons to make financial sense, it needs room rates "well in excess of $200 per night," or double the current average rate.

Downtown, for the most part, never sustains occupancy rates above 65 percent for long, Montgomery said.

"The one missing thing in our market is that rates have been depressed, although they're coming back," Montgomery said. "Hotels that were getting $150 per night before 9/11 might be getting $130 today."

But it is reasonable that the Four Seasons could command rates in the high $200s, or even $300 per night or more by its opening in 2007, he said.

Although it would compete with all of the other first-class hotels in the market, as well as the new J.W. Marriott in Cherry Creek, Montgomery said by raising the price bar the Four Seasons would be doing other hotels a favor.

"I think they would love it if they were setting a rate in excess of $200 and if they were at $300, they'd like it even better," Montgomery said. "That's because the other hotels could snuggle their rates just below that."

One thing Montgomery really likes about the hotel is its size.

"Some people have come to us and have talked about doing a 500-room Ritz Carlton," Montgomery said. "That's just a lot of rooms in that price point versus a project like this that is well within the range of what the high-end market could support."

Not counting the 1,100-room Hyatt hotel being built next to the convention center, there are 5,500 hotel rooms downtown, Montgomery said.

Janus, Marsico have interest

Doug Jones, an investor in the new J.W. Marriott, said his hotel would compete to some degree with the Four Seasons, "but for the most part, downtown and Cherry Creek are two distinct markets."

"They'll be testing new territory for Denver," Jones said.

Toronto-based Four Seasons would operate the hotel but would not be an owner. The company manages 63 hotels in 28 countries, with more than 20 new hotels on the drawing board.

Selby said that his group has arranged financing, primarily through a European bank that he declined to identify.

Selby said that given the price of the condos, the group likely will pay a fee to the city, rather than offer 10 percent of them as "affordable," which is required under Denver's inclusionary housing ordinance. The developers of the Museum Residences, also are "opting out" of the ordinance and expect to pay the city more than $500,000 to do so.

The second-largest owner of Four Seasons stock is Denver-based Marsico Capital Management, and the third-largest owner is Janus, also based in Denver. Tom Marsico declined to speak about the Denver Four Seasons, proposed to be built about three blocks from his office.

This month, Four Seasons reported in the third quarter that its domestic occupancy rates improved by 160 basis points to 70.9 percent, and average daily revenues per available room rose by 8.3 percent.

"At the high end of the lodging market, Four Seasons is more vulnerable than its rivals to downturns in the global economy," analyst Nathan Slaughter of The Motley Fool wrote in a recent report. "With travel on the rebound, however, the company is primed to capitalize on a stronger pricing environment."

The Four Seasons tower will change downtown's skyline.

The building takes architectural cues from historic buildings in downtown, as well as landmarks such as the Chrysler Building in New York City, according to the design architect, John Carney.

Carney practiced for years in Denver but has lived in Jackson Hole, Wyo., for the past dozen years.

"This will be a classic skyscraper," said Carney in a phone interview from New York City, where he was meeting with members of the Rockefeller family to discuss the design of a building on the 1,000-acre JY dude ranch in Jackson Hole that the family is donating to the federal government.

"I'm looking at the Chrysler Building right now - it's all lit up and beautiful," Carney said. "I love these romantic old buildings.

"As far as my general inspiration for the Four Seasons, you know we have great history across the street with the existing Teatro. We felt we had to acknowledge and pay homage to historic buildings downtown. But we also were definitely inspired by the romantic, early '20s movements that led to the building of the Chrysler and these other elegant, tall, thin buildings."

Building likely to be landmark

Selby noted that the hotel site was home to the historic Central Bank building, which was razed in 1989 and replaced by the parking lot. The demolition of the building became a rallying point for preservationists and resulted in the City Council making it more difficult to tear down historic buildings downtown.

"If we still had the Central Bank building, we would have incorporated it into the Four Seasons," Selby said.

As it is, he said, the new building "will become an instant landmark," which he said will provide views like no other condo or hotel development in Denver. He noted that the nearby Brooks Tower has 42 stories.

Carney is working on the Four Seasons with Dallas-based HKS Inc., which has designed structures for more than $27 billion in buildings. One of HKS' clients - Chicago's Park Tower - is very similar to the Four Seasons, Selby said. That is a 67-story, 840,000-square-foot building.

The interior designer is Toronto-based Yabu Pushelberg, whose clients have included the Four Seasons Hotel in Tokyo, the Saks Fifth Avenue flagship store in New York City, Bergdorf Goodman, Tiffany & Co., and the redesign of the Neiman Marcus in Las Vegas.

When Selby and Brenneman began working on the building more than two years ago, it was going to have 65 stories and more than 200 condos, Carney said. But potential equity partners suggested that they scale it back.

Carney noted that there's room on the site to build a second phase on top of the planned three-story, 166-space parking garage near Lawrence and 14th streets.

Selby said a second building could be built on the parking garage, but they're only focusing on the first building.

"We're not giving any thought to a second building right now."

Looking up

• For information on other downtown skyscrapers-those on the books, proposed and gathering dust-check out:denverskyscrapers.com. The nonprofit site, started in 1998, is runby Matthew Faruolo.
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Last edited by Zephyr on Sat Nov 13, 2004 3:29 pm, edited 1 time in total.
projectman
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Post by projectman »

That'll be a nice addition. It does remind me of the Chrysler building or even the Empire State building.
Will
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Post by Will »

This is great news for Denver. It shows that the skyscraper is not dead as many have beleived due to 9-11-01.
Go west young man.
almighty_tuna
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Post by almighty_tuna »

That's great for Denver! I remember reading the old denverskyscrapers.com and they would be so glum about new skyscraper projects. They must be very excited about this- it is a very impressive building.
StreetsOfOmaha
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Post by StreetsOfOmaha »

Good for Denver. They really need a new "non-box" skysraper.
"The right to have access to every building in the city by private motorcar in an age when everyone possesses such a vehicle is actually the right to destroy the city."
Lewis Mumford, The Highway and the City, 1963
edsas
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Post by edsas »

Congrats, Denver.

Does the spire make it Denver's new tallest or will the roof line be Denver's highest as well?
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Zephyr
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Post by Zephyr »

Thanks, guys. I am really looking forward to seeing this go up, and since it is a block from the university, I can check on the progress almost everyday.

The spire will make it the tallest building - the top of the 50th floor will be 665 feet.
j4nu
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Post by j4nu »

That is a nice looking buildign and it really complements the skyline. Gives it a nice balance I think.
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