In the grand scheme of Denver’s transformation over the last decade, it’s just a couple blocks. But it’s hard to overlook Platte Street when more than 450,000 square feet of new commercial space has risen there in the past four years alone.
The street, in the Lower Highland neighborhood, hosted its latest grand opening event Thursday when BP unveiled its Lower 48 U.S. headquarters there.
Occupying the top three floors and 160,000-square-feet of the Riverview building, 1700 Platte St., the space features 240 glass-enclosed private offices, a three-story, X-shaped staircase and a 52-foot-long table made from a lighting-felled pine tree, among dozens of eye-popping features. Stantec was the architect for the space.
For BP, it’s what’s outside the counts.
“We wanted our employees to have access to a fantastic work-life balance,” CEO Dave Lawler said. “We’re on, I think, 500 miles of walking and biking trails right here on the Platte River. A lot of employees can walk to work from (Lower Highland) over here.”
The space is a 10-minute walk from the Union Station light rail stop, easily reachable from Interstate 25 and close to dining options like neighborhood classic My Brother’s Bar. The street is also home to a collection of 19th and early 20th century buildings that add some historic authenticity, though some of those have not survived its rebirth.
BP touted a lot of the things real estate pros say has made Platte Street attractive to companies like tech-educator Galvanize (which has a space atop the Nichols Building at 1644 Platte St.) and Xero (an online accounting business that opened its Americas headquarters in the Circa Building at 1615 Platte St. last week).
“Platte Street really is the hottest sub-market that we have in Denver right now,” David Hart, a director with real estate advisory firm Newmark Knight Frank, said. “It’s got a unique energy. I think it’s the fact that there are local retailers, not big national chain types. It’s very walkable. You’ve got not only office users down there but you have residential users who are frequenting the retail.”
Hart is working with Crescent Real Estate on its Platte Fifteen building, a five-story office building with ground floor retail set to open on the corner of Platte and 15th streets next September. The building is just one parcel the company owns in the area. It also holds the Riverpoint Building at 2300 15th St. and a neighboring parking lot. It could develop a 350,000-square-foot campus in the area if the right tenant came along, Hart said.
Crescent started working to cobble together a Platte Street portfolio in 2013, senior vice president Steve Eaton said. WeWork’s lease in The Lab building and other tenant announcements confirmed to company officials the area was worth the effort.
“We view the river as really the best amenity that you can have for an office user,” Eaton said.
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For Charlie Woolley, the growth is a bit surreal. A developer with 25 years of experience, Woolley’s St. Charles Town Co. is based in the Boathouse building at 1850 Platte St. Out the office windows, Woolley has views of the Union Station neighborhood, an area that itself was more or less built over the last decade.
“I was on the committee in 1988 for the downtown area plan,” Woolley recalled. “We looked at all these rail yards we knew were going to be sold, and there were all these pictures of these tall buildings where the rail yards were and I said, ‘Never gonna happen.’ And sure enough, it’s really like this. It’s phenomenal.”
Platte Street isn’t done yet. A few hundred feet from the Boathouse lies a parking lot, one of the last open parcels on the street. The Nichols Partnership, owner/developer of the Nichols Building, is designing a 250,000-square-foot office building there, said Jamie Gard, the Newmark Knight Frank director advising the company on the project.
The street’s transformation from old industrial corridor to mixed-use hotbed is a primer for what’s to come. Revesco Properties CEO Rhys Duggan gave a presentation at a Downtown Denver Partnership forum Thursday covering plans for the 62-acre River Mile project. It could produce 15 million square feet of new development along the South Platte River when it’s done. If things move quickly, the first work there could begin in 2020, Duggan said.
