On some hilly, former ranch land along Colorado 72, Clifton Oertli found something beyond rare in the Denver area these days: A beer desert. That’s right: A place not already served by a resident brewery or, as is the case in many urban neighborhoods, breweries.
Well, it was a beer desert until Oertli and the team with Centennial-based Resolute Brewing Co. opened their second location, a taproom and barrel-aging cellar at 18148 W. 92nd Lane, Suite 100 in May. Now folks living in Arvada’s long-planned, now fast-growing Candelas community have a place to wet their whistles without taking a Lyft or Uber to Olde Town, Golden or elsewhere, and maybe try some exclusive barrel-aged beers to boot.
“It already feels like it’s been a lot longer than it has because it feels like a community taproom or pub,” Oertli said. “We’ve already developed a great set of regulars. We have a couple that drives a golf cart to the taproom.”
Resolute was the first tenant in the Candelas Point retail center, a two-building strip situated at the intersection of Colorado 72 and Candelas Parkway, the main arterial drag that passes through the 1,500-acre mixed-use development. The taproom wasn’t alone for long. West Arvada Orthodontics opened this summer. Bluegrass Bourbon & Coffee Lounge, an Olde Town Arvada favorite, is expected to open a location on the easternmost end of the center by the end of the year, according to CBRE, the real estate firm leading tenant recruitment and leasing for the commercial nodes of Candelas.
Counting Resolute and the orthodontics office, 10 businesses are on track to open in Candelas by the end of 2020. That includes an Anytime Fitness location in Candelas Point, a Wendy’s under construction now near the King Soopers at Candelas Parkway and Indiana Street, a medical clinic, a day care, and two banks.
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One of the major attractions for retailers signing leases now is what Oertli noticed when scouting the area, according to Jim Lee, a retail specialist with CBRE that has been working with the Candelas team for years.
“It’s a combination of high incomes and low competition,” said Lee.
The wave or forthcoming storefronts has city officials excited. After getting a sorely needed King Soopers in 2018, Candelas and nearby western Arvada neighborhoods are finally seeing service-oriented businesses that have been lacking in the area as it has grown by thousands of rooftops.
“It’s incredibly important for a number of reasons. One is personal identity,” Ryan Stachelski, Arvada’s director of community and economic development, said Wednesday. “If you need to drive four or five miles to get the King Soopers or a restaurant that begins to feel less local for you.”
Stachelski described commercial development that brings sought-after businesses and services to the community as a key part of the “placemaking” city leaders are hoping to foster in western Arvada. Beyond Candelas — roughly 1,100 completed homes and rising, by Stachelski’s estimation — the King Soopers and businesses in Candelas Point serve people living in other Arvada enclaves like Leyden Rock, Whisper Creek and the Village of Five Parks. Other commercial projects on the east side of Indiana are in the city’s pipeline now, Stachelski said.
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The Resolute taproom has attracted customers from west of Colorado 93 in Coal Creek Canyon, says Brandon Dooling, a partner in Candelas Point LLC, a company working with longtime property owner Charles McKay’s Church Ranch Cos. on the commercial components of Candelas.
“These are the types of businesses the community is looking for and the services that they need,” Dooling said of the expanding roster of commercial tenants. “Resolute and Bluegrass, they’re established with great followings. They’re going to be successful right off the bat.”
The next area of focus, according to Dooling: “We’re looking to add places to sit down, places to eat.”
People living in the western Arvada received some unwelcome news this summer when a soil sample taken along the the eastern side of Rocky Flats, the former nuclear weapons facility turned wildlife refuge just north of Candelas, was found to contain elevated levels of plutonium. Dozens of samples tested since have turned up much lower results, considered safe by federal standards.
The legacy of Rocky Flats hasn’t come up in leasing discussions, according to Lee. The Resolute team feels comfortable that the cleanup efforts that have occurred at Rocky Flats since the weapons plant closed in the early 1990s were successful, Oertli said.
“We don’t consider ourselves experts in plutonium or nuclear triggers or whatever it was, We’re beer experts,” he said. “The feds were brought in to clean the place up and we have to trust that they did that.”
