In Denver’s Golden Triangle neighborhood one nugget of prime real estate has gone largely untouched for more than four decades as museums, apartment towers and hotels have grown up around it.
Finally, after years of speculation of what it will be and when, the future of the historic Evans School building at 1115 Acoma St. is beginning to take shape. Its potential new owners think its tardy bell could ring again as soon as 2021. Only this time it would be ushering visitors of all ages into restaurants and event spaces instead of sending grade-school kids scurrying for their homerooms.
“It’s an amazing piece of property. It’s really beautifully intact. For it to have sat largely vacant for 40 years in unusual,” Denver developer Joe Vostrejs said Monday as he strode the halls of the 1904 schoolhouse. “Because of the condition, we’ll be able to move pretty rapidly.”
Vostrejs and his partners with City Street Investors are teaming up with father-son team Jerry and Fred Glick from Denver’s Columbia Group to buy the property in a three-way deal that includes apartment developer Lennar Multifamily Communities.
The building is owned by Dick Eber’s family. Dick and his brother Alan bought it from Denver Public Schools in 1974, two years after the district shut down the building and deemed it “excess property.” For years, speculation has swirled about what would become of it stately three-story structure adorned in red brick masonry.
A story that ran in The Denver Post in September 2000 noted “neighbors, developers and historic preservationists say the Ebers’ wait-and-see approach to developing the school is robbing the community of a valuable asset.” BusinessDen reported earlier this year that Washington-based Holland Partner Group hoped to buy the building but the deal fell through.
Under the proposed deal in the works now, Rob Eber, Dick’s son, would sell the school and three adjacent parking lots to Lennar. The company, already at work on a 17-story apartment project just a few blocks south on Acoma, isn’t saying exactly what it plans to do with the parking lots but confirmed an agreement to buy Eber’s portfolio is moving forward. Once that deal is done, Lennar will sell the Evans School to the City Streets-Columbia team.
The amount of money that would change hand in the transaction is being kept under wraps but Vostrejs said his group plans to “spend more money redeveloping it than we will buying it.”
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The roughly 48,000-square-foot building is licensed to operate as office space. Last year, it served as the headquarters for Democrat Cary Kennedy’s gubernatorial campaign. This year, John Walsh is running his Democratic campaign for U.S. Senate out of the building. That arrangement ends in November, Rob Eber said.
Eber joined Vostrejs, fellow City Streets partner Rod Wagner and Jerry Glick on a walkthrough of the schoolhouse Monday afternoon. He said his dad, now in the later stages of dementia, loved the building and poured countless hours into keeping it up and restoring it over the years. When asked why the family is selling now after more than four decades, Eber instead focused on the future.
“It’s more about the excitement and the fun around what it is going to be,” he said.
On Monday’s tour, Vostrejs, Wagner and Glick gushed about the condition of the building, which was made a city landmark in 2001. All three have seen other old buildings that have not been looked after or been put through reuse projects that left them in need of additional rehab.
Bits of history are everywhere inside the Evans building, from a stockpile of stamped tin ceiling panels in the basement to sections of slate chalkboards and rows of vintage supply cabinets stored in an upstairs classroom.
The building’s twin boilers are gone, but the original doors still hang outside the old coal room, providing the kind of turn-of-the-century cred restoration specialists dream about. In an on-site woodshop, a contractor has been restoring each of the buildings’ wood-framed windows by hand. The building’s distinctive cupola, now patinaed, remains intact over its main entrance.
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“They did a great job,” Glick said. “What it is is largely what it was.”
Walking around the school and the grassy yard that surrounds it, the partners’ eyes light up when they discuss what could be. There is a second story auditorium primed for small-scale stage performances, talks and community events. The front grass would be an ideal spot for outdoor dining.
“We just need loungers, a waiter and a bartender,” Wagner joked Monday as he stood out on large west-facing rooftop space accessible from the third floor. “Let’s get this food and beverage going.”
They see the Evans building becoming a center of activity in Golden Triangle akin to South Gaylord Street in Washington Park or Union Station in LoDo.
The partners will not be bringing new life to the building without guidance. They plan to convene community focus groups with area residents, business owners and representatives the Denver Art Museum and other nearby institutions in the coming weeks to discuss what those people want and need in their neighborhood.
City Street Investors led development and tenant recruitment for Union Station’s great hall and still manages its own bars and restaurant there. In that case, community input sessions led the project in a completely different direction. The company even hired a new design team afterward, Wagner said.
One thing is for sure, Vostrejs said: “We want it to be open to the public. It’s going to be used in a way that is additive to the neighborhood.”
