A snowy day over Colfax Avenue near City Park. Nov. 17, 2022.
Kevin J. Beaty/Denverite
Construction on Denver’s first bus rapid transit line will begin on Colfax Avenue next month, after Denver City Council approved an approximately $197 million construction contract Monday with Kraemer North America LLC to build the project.
The first construction phase will stretch from the intersection of Broadway and Colfax, near Civic Center Park, for just more than a mile eastward to Williams Street.
A rendering of a portion of Colfax Avenue after the BRT project is complete from contractor Kraemer, N.A., Inc.Source: Denver City Council
Once finished, around 2027, Colfax Avenue between downtown Denver and Aurora will be transformed from a car-centric commercial corridor to a street betting big on public transit, with the hope that increased ridership will follow.
The project will drop a lane of car traffic to build bus rapid transit—a bus only lane running in the center of the street, with dedicated bus stations throughout the route. The project will also bring widened sidewalks, new trees and improved pedestrian crossings and lighting.
Funding comes from a mix of federal and local money.
The proposed construction timeline from Colfax BRT contractor Kraemer, N.A., Inc.Source: Denver City Council
The plan has been in the works for over a decade.
Now that the groundbreaking is nearing, some city council members worry about the potential effects of the construction on businesses.
The city has $2.8 million set aside in the 2025 budget for businesses struggling due to construction projects, mostly along the 16th Street Mall and Colfax Avenue.
But council member Amanda Sawyer said it’s not enough—she wants an additional $1.1 million.
Sawyer emphasized that the money isn’t just important for supporting local business owners. Thriving local businesses bring in sales tax, which Denver relies on to help run the city more broadly—and which has been softening in the past year.
“This is the one request I am making,” she said Monday. “We are in a tight budget next year, we have to fund these businesses appropriately.”
Sawyer said she has asked the mayor’s office to increase funding for Colfax businesses in the 2025 budget. If that doesn’t happen, she said she plans to bring a budget amendment through city council.
“This is a hill I’m going to die on,” she said. “Stay tuned for more.”
In a statement, Mayor Mike Johnston’s office reiterated that the budget already included millions for business support, and said conversations could continue as the council considers the budget in coming months.
“Mayor Johnston is committed to supporting the local businesses that make Denver so vibrant,” wrote spokesperson Jordan Fuja. “As we continue the budget process, we will work closely with Council and city agencies to ensure these businesses have the support they need to thrive in our city.”
A rendering of a bus station along Colfax Avenue from contractor Kraemer, N.A., Inc.Source: Denver City Council
Construction will wrap up in late 2027.
Here’s the timeline for the project:
Broadway to Williams Street from late 2024 to late 2025
Williams Street to Monroe Street from early 2025 to early 2026
Monroe Street to Niagara Street from late 2025 to late 2026
Yosemite Street to I-225 from late 2025 to late 2026
Niagara Street to Yosemite St. from early 2026 to mid-2027
Los Angeles County officials are said to have scheduled an auction for a 27-acre site atop the Calabasas hills. However, the owner of the site is refusing to budge, occupying the property in protest while accusing local officials of trespassing.
The property, at 27250 Agoura Road, was previously on the market for $29 million. When the listing surfaced on Zillow and other websites in February, Clinton Brown, the owner of the property, claimed that the site had entitlements for a 200-home subdivision. The residential plans, as well as a previous proposal to build a 20-megawatt solar field on the site, were ultimately rejected by the county.
According to Brown, the listing has generated engagement, particularly from home builder Toll Brothers. In a statement, he said that the firm has expressed interest in buying the site for $29 million. The Real Deal has not been able to verify this claim. Toll Brothers did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
A legal dispute has swirled around the property since December 2022. In his initial complaint, Brown claimed that Los Angeles County’s Department of Regional Planning violated his rights under the Fifth Amendment, particularly the Takings Clause, which requires “just compensation” for private property taken for public use. Citing that provision, Brown, who is representing himself in the case, claimed that he is entitled to a $32.4 million payout.
L.A. County’s counsel, on the other hand, cast doubts on the ownership of the site and claimed that no structures should be built there because it is zoned as open space in an ecological area. Since the start of the dispute, Brown has accumulated a succession of fines from the county for orchestrating a “public nuisance.” While the total amount is unclear, he mentioned a total $40,914 in fines from May and July in a court filing.
Proceeds from a county tax auction would pay for the accumulated fines.
In May, Central District Court Judge Karen Stevenson rejected Brown’s claim, recommending a ruling in favor of Los Angeles County officials. “After thoroughly examining the evidence submitted by both sides, the court concludes that plaintiff’s assertions that a constitutional taking occurred do not establish disputed issues of material fact sufficient to preclude summary judgment. Indeed, plaintiff has failed to counter the law and evidence put forth by defendant establishing that no such taking occurred here,” the recommendation stated.
Brown responded by occupying the site in protest and putting up a sign declaring that he was “homeless on his own land.”
“The plaintiff is noticing to the court and the government that he is illegally living on his property in contravention of the government’s position in federal court,” Brown said in a court filing last month.
A Los Angeles County representative declined to comment on what it plans to do about Brown’s protest. Another judge still needs to finalize Stevenson’s recommended summary judgment.
The developer’s intentions are perfectly clear.
“I’m not backing down because I just want to build the housing we need, and the government is not going to stop me from doing that,” he told TRD.
Brown’s brokerage, Atlas, planned to build a residential project on the site called Atlas Hills. The project, described as a “new, vibrant California neighborhood,” featured homes fitted with “the latest in smart home technology,” according to the company’s website. Three-bedroom, two-bath homes in the planned complex were marketed for sale at nearly $1.1 million.
The auction for the site has been scheduled for April 19 to 22 next year, according to a court filing. The county declined to confirm that an auction has been scheduled.
Two studies detailing the pros and cons of closing Burke Lakefront were released on Monday.
The 450 acres of land that have occupied a large swath of Downtown Cleveland’s lakefront have served several purposes for the past century.
It’s been the host of the Cleveland Municipal Dump, a recipient of the city’s trash and scrap glass and metal. It’s been a Cold War-era Nike Missile site, where anti-aircraft missiles were tested during the 1950s and 1960s.
And, since opened to the public in 1947, that land’s been occupied by its most noted tenant: the Burke Lakefront Airport, which has seen continuous declines in air traffic and increased calls for its closure in recent years.
Mayor Justin Bibb’s administration just released two pivotal studies done for the city on Monday detailing the myriad pros and cons that would come if Burke was closed sometime in the next two decades. Though shuttering the small airstrip would likely cost the city tens of millions in what could be multi-year legal battle, the studies, which are years in the making, seem to present Burke being redeveloped as the better bet.
Especially if, as goes many Clevelanders’ dreams for a neighborhood (or stadium, or Blossom 2.0) on Lake Erie, that development hits the near ideal: an annual economic benefit of $92 million, one of the reports suggested.
The first study, entitled “Valuing Burke Lakefront Airport,” contends some $20 million more than planes still taking off and landing there.
“The closure of Burke would permit investment that would ultimately have greater economic activity,” that report read, “than currently occurring at the airport.”
Such a takeaway has been used by both City Council and the Mayor’s Office as a soft green light for a possible decision to come—to actually go ahead and tell the Federal Aviation Administration, who has the final say, that Burke’s days are numbered.
And transforming it “into a space that better serves our community,” as Bibb wrote in a press release on Monday. These “findings have reinforced my long-held belief that closing Burke is both possible and economically advantageous for Cleveland.”
The same goes for Ward 3 Councilman Kerry McCormack, who has long bemoaned the paltry portion of Lake Erie available as public land, and whose ward occupies Burke’s acreage.
“While there is no doubt that much due diligence will be needed, I believe our residents deserve meaningful access to high quality public space on our lakeshore,” McCormack wrote. “Connecting all of our people to our most precious resources will always be the right thing to do.”
Due diligence may be the lightest way of putting it.
According to both reports, which stretch back to relationships with two separate consultants in 2022, shutting down Burke could entail everything from a mere piece of federal legislation in U.S. Congress to years of legal headaches and a noticeable dent in the city’s General Fund.
Legally speaking, as per the rules of the FAA, the city would have to pay tens of millions in annual maintenance costs—runway repairs, to keeping plane firetrucks running—themselves, as money from the Feds would no longer be available. And, like with Chicago’s own (successful) attempt in 2003 to shut down Meigs Field Airport, a small pile of legal fees. ($500,000 in Chicago’s case.)
But ending Burke’s service could mean greener pastures in the next few decades, especially in tandem with Bedrock’s $2 billion riverfront development, Bibb’s North Coast plan and the Metroparks’ CHEERS project just east of Burke. It’s such pastures—that is, converting Burke into a neighborhood or just park or some combination of the two—that the city could use to prove to the FAA closing the airport down is in the best interest of the city, the state and the country.
One sure upset by the closing of Burke: no more Blue Angels on the lakefront.
It could lead to a 170-acre public park—”among the largest urban parks in Cleveland”—to playing fields, an “indoor sports facility,” a boutique hotel, five to six restaurants and some 12,000 units of housing. That is, as the lore around Burke becomes reality, if developers can build atop years of accumulated river dredge and, in some spots, 30 feet of trash and sediment. (And deal with potential methane gas.)
Yet, an attempt to expand Downtown rather than try and boost Burke—a failing airport that, one report finds, loses on average $1 million a year—wouldn’t make a gargantuan mark in the region’s private and medical air industry as some imagine. The roughly 37,000 Boeing 737s and Airbus 319 jets that carry organs destined for the Cleveland Clinic or visiting NBA players could be assumed by the six nearby airports, if, the report affirms, new hangar space was made available.
“The proximity of other airports and the high percentage of non-airport related businesses at Burke,” one study explains, “are why there is relatively low true loss of economic activity.”
Except for an unavoidable truism if Burke is shut down: the sure end of the Cleveland National Air Show and the Blue Angels’ weekend in September. Burke, both reports conclude, is just too ideal—in location and wiggle room—for the takeoff of those six Navy jets.
Which make for a good metaphor for Bibb’s decision at hand: complicated.
A list of pros and cons that “underscore the need for further detailed study and careful consideration of the site’s conditions,” one report concludes, “before any construction project is undertaken.”
As one of MLB’s top-ranked teams for attendance, the Phillies want to do something about the cramped space inside the New Era team store at Citizens Bank Park. The shop has been so busy in recent years that the Phillies opened up a tented area outside to handle crowds of customers.
This week, the team received approval from the Philadelphia Art Commission to move forward with a plan that will expand the size of the team store. The shop is at the corner of Pattison Avenue and Citizens Bank Way, next to the third base gate. Review and approval by the art commission is required for such renovations because the land is city-owned and leased to the team.
The Phillies’ plan calls for adding more than 3,500 square feet of floor space to the shop. The expansion project will include creating another 3,500 square feet for storage space in the main concourse and on the suite level above the shop. The team hopes to complete the work during the nest two offseasons.
At a meeting with the art commission on Wednesday, team officials said the expansion will utilize part of an existing landscaped area in front of the store. The team also will convert unused space inside the ballpark to make the shop larger. Project renderings show the renovated space would match the current facade of the team store using a similar canopy roof design and pink masonry.
Provided Image/Ewing Cole
The team store renovation would require the removal trees outside the stadium, but the Phillies plan to include other landscaping as part of the redesigned entrance area at the third base gate.
Provided Image/Ewing Cole
Another rendering shows the Phillies’ proposed expansion of the New Era team store at Citizens Bank Park.
During the team’s presentation to the art commission, the Phillies said they’ll need to remove six trees from the plaza outside the shop and replace them with new landscaping. Team officials said the goal is to make the store more visible by using low-lying plants. Members of the art commission approved the project on condition that the Phillies look for ways to plant more trees and create shaded areas around the shop.
The Phillies told the art commission their philosophy for the ballpark has changed since it opened in 2004. Although Citizens Bank Park was designed to help fans get off the street and into their seats as soon as possible, there has been a growing emphasis on finding ways to engage fans in areas surrounding the ballpark.
On the other side of the third base gate, the Phillies said they created the Pass & Stow pub and installed a wooden pergola with shaded seating to give fans places to relax. Team officials told the art commission they will explore ways they can tweak the design to address the comments they received, although such adjustments are not required.
The Phillies did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the team store expansion.
Planning documents submitted to the city list Ewing Cole as the project architect and Pennoni Associates as the civil engineer.
The New Era team store stocks a mix of jerseys, hats, Phillies-branded souvenirs and other fan apparel. Plans to expand the space come as Citizens Bank Park prepares to host the 2026 MLB All-Star Game, which is expected to bring in fans from around the United States and will have its own line of merchandise.
The Phillies rank third in home attendance this year, averaging 41,398 people per game. Only the Los Angeles Dodgers (48,403) and New York Yankees (41,816) average more fans in their ballparks.
Earlier this year, the Phillies announced they are joining Comcast Spectacor in a long-term development plan to add amenities to the Sports Complex in South Philadelphia. The $2.5 billion master plan calls for new restaurants, stores, fan plazas, a concert venue, a hotel and future residential development.
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It took the real estate market to bring a long-running fight between hard-pressed veterans of military service and upscale Angelenos to a head.
And the market’s current housing crunch and the public health crisis of homelessness has brought the law down on the side of the veterans.
The result came in a decision by U.S. District Judge David Carter, who ruled after a non-jury trial that the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs must build 2,500 or so units of affordable housing for veterans on its West Los Angeles campus, the Los Angeles Times reported.
Carter’s ruling also called out the VA for illegally leasing portions of the property to the University of California-Los Angeles and the Brentwood School, a private academy that has counted scions of some of the city’s wealthiest families among its student body for decades.
Carter chastised the VA for failing in its mission to ensure the 388-acre campus — a prime piece of Los Angeles real estate, wedged between the Brentwood and Westwood districts of the city — to “principally benefit veterans and their families.”
The campus currently has a VA hospital and other facilities on site and the agency has worked to try to develop housing on the site.
The federal judge, who also has heard cases related to various aspects of homelessness in the Southern California region, also lumped the VA into the widening arena of public corruption in Los Angeles.
“Over the past five decades, the West L.A. VA has been infected by bribery, corruption and the influence of the powerful and their lobbyists, and enabled by a major educational institution in excluding veterans’ input about their own lands,” he wrote.
Carter ordered the VA to come up with a viable plan to add 1,800 units of permanent housing to the roughly 1,200 units already in the works at the campus under terms of an earlier legal settlement. He also called for the development of a minimum 750 units of temporary housing in the next 12 to 18 months.
The ruling said that the “court will determine an exit strategy” for the illegitimate leases with UCLA — which has its baseball stadium on the VA campus — and the Brentwood School — after more hearings.
The U.S. Department of Justice, which represented the VA in the trial, declined to comment.
Mark Rosenbaum of Public Counsel, who represented a group of homeless veterans with various disabilities as plaintiffs in the case, said he expects the ruling to reverberate at VA facilities across the U.S.
The 76ers are considering New Jersey as the location to build the team’s new arena after a state agency there sent an incentive-laden pitch to Sixers’ ownership this week enticing them to build on the Delaware River waterfront in Camden.
The letter was sent Tuesday by Tim Sullivan, CEO of the New Jersey Economic Development Authority, to Tad Brown, CEO of Harris Blitzer Sports & Entertainment, which own the 76ers. It broadly details creating a “world-class arena” as part of a larger residential and commercial development in Camden, and sweetening the deal with as much as $800 million in tax credits.
The Sixers have proposed constructing a $1.55 billion arena on East Market Street, and until this letter the team had been singularly focused on building in Center City, at least publicly. Negotiations are ongoing between the team and Philadelphia officials, 76ers spokesperson Molly Mita McEndy said, but, “The reality is we are running out of time to reach an agreement that will allow the 76ers to open our new home in time. … As a result, we must take all potential options seriously, including this one.”
Last week, Mayor Cherelle Parker’s office released the impact studies for the 76ers’ arena proposal on East Market Street, which included details about at least 11 pieces of legislation that would need to be introduced and passed to enable the arena’s construction.
The Sixers have said these enabling bills need to be in place by the end of 2024 to be on track to open the 2031 NBA season at the new arena.
New Jersey’s interest in luring the Sixers to Camden — where the team has its practice facility and offices — became public in July when Gov. Phil Murphy confirmed state officials had discussed alternatives to building in Philadelphia with team owner HBSE. Murphy is among the politicians and state officials cc’d on Sullivan’s NJEDA letter.
NJEDA is an independent state agency that promotes job growth and investment to grow the state’s economy. Sullivan outlined for Brown a vision for a mixed-use development on the 16-acre property that formerly was the Riverfront State Prison, north of the Benjamin Franklin Bridge. The prison was built in the 1980s and closed in 2009.
“Anchored by a world-class arena, we believe that this project will enable development of significant residential, commercial, and retail offerings within the City of Camden,” Sullivan wrote. “We also recognized the importance of incorporating open space and pedestrian-friendly amenities into this potential game-changing development project for our state.”
Those opposed to the arena project in Center City see New Jersey’s offer as ploy the Sixers could use to accelerate their original plans.
“Threats to move are a classic gambit to scare politicians into giving billionaire team owners what they want,” Mohan Seshadri, a member of the Save Chinatown Coalition, said in a statement Tuesday. “We know Mayor Parker won’t be bullied.”
New Jersey has been unable to attract development to the former prison site since the facility closed. The state is hoping that its Aspire program, a tax-incentive system created in 2020, will entice the Sixers. Building on the state-owned land would present the Sixers with chances to obtain two tax credits, each worth up to $400 million, for the arena and supporting infrastructure.
State officials also say they would work with the New Jersey legislature to approve up to $500 million in special-purpose bonds paid for by ticket surcharges, revenue from parking and concessions and fees.
In the letter, Sullivan said the financing would be structured so that New Jersey taxpayers would be “more than paid back for their investment via incremental state, county and local tax revenues.” NJEDA still anticipates the Camden development would be “privately-led” by the Sixers, who have pledged to pay for their proposed arena in Philadelphia.
HSBE also owns the New Jersey Devils, that team’s arena, the Prudential Center in Newark, and the historic Loew’s Theater in Jersey City’s Journal Square. The cost of the redevelopment of the theater has snowballed from the initial estimate of $72 million to about $105 million and raised questions about the city’s financial commitments to the project.
“I am confident that as you identify potential locations for the new home of the 76ers, you will find no better partner than the State of New Jersey and the City of Camden,” Sullivan wrote at the end of his letter. “Choosing Camden as the 76ers’ new home will be the best decision you will ever make.”
Philadelphia City Council returns to session on Thursday and anti-arena activists from the Save Chinatown Coalition rally outside City Hall in the afternoon.
One of the impact studies released last week concluded that as many as half of Chinatown’s small businesses would be negatively impacted by the arena; the proposed site of the area, at Market Street between 10th and 11th streets, currently part of the Fashion District mall, is immediately south of Chinatown.
Another study found that Center City would likely be able to handle the traffic congestion created by an arena, but not without a concerted effort to promote the use of public transportation by fans and a plan to manage parking.
LOWELL — A groundbreaking ceremony was held Aug. 13 to celebrate the start of a new affordable housing development in the Centralville neighborhood. The project, spearheaded by local developers Peter Marlowe and David Degan, is expected to bring much-needed housing to the area.
The event was attended by city officials, including Mayor Dan Rourke and City Manager Tom Golden, as well as community members and project partners.
Marlowe and Degan, both lifelong residents of Centralville, expressed their excitement about giving back to the community where they grew up. They emphasized the importance of providing affordable housing options for families in the area.
The project involves transforming the property purchased from the East End Social Club into a mixed-use development. It will include new apartments and condominiums, as well as a renovated club space. The developers hope to create a vibrant community hub that will benefit residents for years to come.
Funding for the project is provided through a partnership with Lowell Five Bank and the city of Lowell, who provided significant support with U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development financing supporting these affordable housing units. Marlowe thanked numerous individuals and organizations for their contributions to the project, including city officials, engineers, architects, and financial partners.
Marlowe and Degan’s latest project marks another step in the ongoing revitalization of Centralville. With its completion, the neighborhood will be significantly transformed, offering a brighter future for new and current residents of the city of Lowell.
For months, bulldozers have been digging up the ground around the old Denver Post printing plant in Globeville. That’s the massive rectangular building just west of I-25 and south of I-70 covered in graffiti.
Soon, the area will be known as Fox Park, a neighborhood in the works on a former superfund site between Sunnyside and Globeville.
While the printing plant’s been shuttered for years, the building’s become what may be local street artists’ best unsanctioned canvas. And the 41 acres around the plan, dubbed Fox Island because of how poorly connected it is to the rest of the city, have been a yawning gap in a growing city.
Developers, despite being so eager to gobble up acreage and turn it into housing elsewhere in Denver, steered clear of Fox Island for years, even as more than 500,000 drivers a day passed the site.
Why? The land’s been a toxic dump.
It was once the site of the Argo smelter from an era when Denver processed heavy metals. The land was declared a superfund site — a hazardous place — by the Environmental Protection Agency in 1999.
Over the years, neighbors in Globeville have suffered from cancer. The neighborhood is still considered one of the most polluted in the country.
While much of Denver boomed, Globeville has been a home for working-class families with deep roots in the area. The soil’s toxicity has staved off most development and served as a deadly buffer to gentrification.
On Wednesday morning, developers, federal and city politicians, architects and others gathered at the site to celebrate the end of a massive environmental cleanup that will allow the development to come.
Mayor Mike Johnston (right to left), Rep. Diana DeGette and Fox Park managing partner Jose Carredano look at plans on the Globeville development site. Aug. 28, 2024.Kevin J. Beaty/Denverite
Here are six things we learned at that celebration.
City Council has been eying the land — and its possibilities — for years.
Back in 2012, then-City Councilmember Judy Montero brought her then-aide Amanda Sandoval to the outskirts of the land and asked what she could imagine there. The two spent an hour dreaming up possibilities of what Globeville, one of the most polluted neighborhoods in the country, could enjoy on the site.
Urban forests, affordable housing, a grocery store and space for arts and culture all topped their list.
More than a decade later, Sandoval, now City Council president, is celebrating a new future on the plot of land: the creation of Fox Park. And much of what she hoped for is coming.
A World Trade Center will bring offices, retail, restaurants and more. And that’s just a taste of what the $4 billion investment will bring.
Denver needs housing, and the project will provide that: 3,469 units — including hundreds that will be designated as affordable.
The city will get a new Virgin Hotel, and Mayor Mike Johnston expects Sir. Richard Branson will fly through town to celebrate.
Anschutz Entertainment Group, the dominant live music promoter in Denver, will be opening a 2,500-seat venue on the site.
There will be a 24,000-square-foot grocery store, a much-needed institution in a food desert.
Rep. Diana DeGette speaks at a press conference at the Fox Park development site in Globeville. Aug. 28, 2024.Kevin J. Beaty/Denverite
Connections will be built between Sunnyside and Fox Park, including new bike and pedestrian trails, as well as a park built above underground parking.
The Denver Post printing plant will be preserved and reused as a cultural space.
The Denver Botanic Gardens will create a tree canopy and replace the soil with native grasses to combat the heat island effect.
And more than 14 acres of the land will become parks, open spaces and public plazas for Denverites to enjoy.
Outside developers say they’ve become insiders as they’ve built the park.
The company developing the project is Vita Fox North LP — a collaboration between the Indianapolis company Pure Development and the Mexico City company Interland.
Jose Carredano, managing partner for Fox Park, says his company has met with neighbors more than 40 times. The goal: Get locals on board. Through those meetings, neighbors and the developer have formed a community benefits agreement.
Globeville neighbors have had a chance to exercise their civic engagement skills in recent decades. They’ve pushed to have a say in changes to their community: the massive I-70 reconstruction, the redo of the National Western Center and now this.
The Fox Park development site in Globeville. Aug. 28, 2024.Kevin J. Beaty/Denverite
“We have a real community that supports us, a real community that wants to grow with us, and that’s how we understood it, and we were able to be part of that community with them,” Carredano said. “Our community benefits agreement was something that was so easy to do because all we did was sit down, talk to them, understand them, and draw a plan together.”
Councilmember Sandoval said she’s been moved by the passion Globeville residents brought to Council hearings over rezoning. Despite some City Council members raising concerns about affordable housing and the amount of density on the site, neighbors showed up. They had their voices heard. And Sandoval ultimately trusted the developers enough to lend her support to the redevelopment.
“We are totally and forever in debt with how Denver has received us,” Carredano said. “We are investors and developers that weren’t from Denver and saw Denver as a great opportunity. We understood that Denver is only going to be a better city and should grow. But it can only happen with partnerships.”
Federal and local politicians touted the speed of the environmental cleanup.
KC Becker, the administrator for the EPA’s Mountains and Plains Region, described how working with the developers sped up the process at a pace the federal and state governments could not have achieved alone.
“Today’s event marks a successful and unique public-private partnership to bring contaminated lands back to beneficial use,” she said. “They will be delivering millions of square feet in new commercial space and thousands of mixed-income residential units as well as additional community benefits and opportunities for Globeville.”
The developers dedicated $20 million to the cleanup of the site.
“Sometimes government agencies take a long time,” U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette said. “And so when we have these partnerships, it really helps speed things along.”
Mayor Mike Johnston sees the project as the meeting of the Old West with the New West.
“I think this project is a story of historic collaboration at historic speed with historic results,” Johnston said.
He views Fox Park as a bridge from the Old West to the New West.
“This was a site where, a hundred years ago, the people who came to Colorado looking for opportunity were mining things out of the ground,” he said. “Now we have a whole new generation of entrepreneurs who are looking for the things that we can build by mining things out of our heads, by finding out what the big ideas and big opportunities are that make growth possible for everybody.”
Some Globeville residents still have questions about the long-term effects of the project.
Julisa Bezjak, a 20-year-old Globeville resident who works as a barista at nearby Prodigy Coffeehouse, served coffee and croissants to the politicians and developers at the celebration.
She lives with her parents in the neighborhood and has longstanding family ties to the community.
What the bigwigs talked about excited her. But Bezjak has also seen her neighborhood change fast, and she’s skeptical.
“Denver as a city has already become way more populated,” she said. “So I’m kind of nervous to see if the housing that’s being put here is gonna be for the residents of Denver already, or if it’s gonna be targeted in bringing in people from out of the state to move to Colorado.”
Julisa Bezjak stands on the Fox Park development site in Globeville, after a press conference with developers and local officials. Aug. 28, 2024.Kyle Harris/Denverite
She has big hopes for the promise of a grocery store and alternatives to 7-11 and McDonald’s, chains. Those, she says, are the main sources of food for her community.
And having recently learned Globeville has been called the most polluted neighborhood in the country, she’s grateful for cleaner soil.
Still, she worries about an increase in car traffic through her neighborhood and rising housing costs. Will her longtime neighbors be priced out even faster than they already are?
Bezjak, who drove to the event in her Honda Civic, was shocked to see so many Teslas. The people getting out wore suits. She felt underdressed.
She’s never spent time with developers and business leaders, and she enjoyed listening in on them talking about the future of her community.
“I’m just kind of excited to see where this goes, in general,” Bezjak said. “I’m not sure if I’ll always live in Globeville, but I know my parents or my grandparents are probably going to be there for the next 20 years, so I’ll definitely be able to keep up with what’s going on here. And even if I’m not directly affected, I’ll be able to witness it.”
A century-old orange grove in Tarzana appears on its way to becoming the site of luxury homes, a transformation that would mark the end of commercial citrus farming in the San Fernando Valley, where the crop was once a mainstay.
At 14 acres, Bothwell Ranch represents less than one-thousandth of what once was, before the orchards and ranches of the Valley gave way to vast tracts of housing and commercial buildings to serve residents. Citrus production amid the multimillion-dollar homes is far from viable, and the parcel of land is now owned by a developer who intends to fill most of it with houses.
Los Angeles city planning officials held a public hearing Wednesday to collect comments before deciding whether to give the owners the green light to build 21 two-story homes while preserving a third of the site on Oakdale Avenue as a publicly owned orange grove managed by the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority for educational purposes.
City officials are still gathering information about the planned development, but Henry Chu, the city zoning administrator for the project, said Wednesday that he is inclined to approve it within a few weeks.
While hard to imagine today, Los Angeles was the top agricultural county in the nation for most of the first half of the 20th century, according to Rachel Surls, co-author of “From Cows to Concrete: The Rise and Fall of Farming in Los Angeles.” Citrus crops were as integral to that success as they were to the branding and selling of Southern California as a bucolic, desirable place to live.
“The Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, different citrus marketers and organizations such as Sunkist oranges were very much a part of basically making Los Angeles look like this golden, almost tropical, agricultural paradise where people could come and get a whole new start,” Surls explained. “That positioning of Los Angeles as a place where citrus grew was really, really key to the growth of Los Angeles.”
With history in mind, City Councilman Bob Blumenfield announced in 2022 that after years of negotiations a deal had been reached between the site’s new owners, Borstein Enterprises, and the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority to preserve a third of it.
“While I wish there was a way to save the entire Bothwell Ranch, with this partnership we can save a large amount of it to be run by one of the best land preservation organizations in the country,” Blumenfield said.
The Bothwell Ranch gets its name from Lindley Bothwell, who purchased the farmland in 1926 after earning a degree in agriculture from Oregon State University, Blumenfield said. At the time, the citrus orchard was about 6 years old and totaled 100 acres. The Bothwell family sold off pieces of the land over the years but maintained a farming operation for decades until Ann Bothwell died in 2016. The ranch survived even as other ranches were driven out by rising land value during the housing boom after World War II.
It is now likely to be replaced by a development called Oakdale Estates. The owners have said they intend for the houses to include environmentally sustainable features such as “cool” roofs that reduce heat reflection into the atmosphere and a new street with a system that captures and filters rainwater before reusing it to irrigate landscaping that will include some citrus trees.
Two rows of citrus trees are expected to line Oakdale Avenue on the west side of the site as a homage to the land’s past, according to plans for the development. Designs for the residences call for modern farmhouses and Spanish architecture, meant to embrace the heritage of the San Fernando Valley.
Abelardo Hernandez, left, and Al Trujillo trim orange trees at Bothwell Ranch in the San Fernando Valley on Aug. 27, 1998.
(Frank Wiese / Los Angeles Times)
A critic of the project, Jeff Bornstein, said at Wednesday’s city meeting that the development should be reduced in scope to preserve more of the orchard.
“We have very little that marks our heritage of the past in the west San Fernando Valley,” he said. “We need to save a lot more of these” trees.
The citrus trees planted in the 1980s are past their prime fruit-bearing years and suffer from the effects of under-watering, a representative for the developer said.
When seen in aerial photographs, the ranch looks like a lush green anachronism — plucked from the agrarian past and neatly but nonsensically deposited into a suburban jewel box of red roofs and turquoise pools and tennis courts.
“We’re overrun,” as the late Bothwell matriarch told a reporter in 1998 with a sigh. “But you can’t stand in the middle of Ventura Boulevard and say, ‘Stop!’”
Times staff writer Julia Wick contributed to this report.
Prices for prime residential land continue an upward trend in central Orange County, approaching $8 million per acre at one of the market’s key master-planned developments.
The price update came in the latest quarterly earnings call of publicly traded FivePoint Holdings, the Orange County Business Journal reported. The Irvine-based master planner of the Great Park Neighborhoods took in $96.1 million on the sale of 105 homesites on 12.3 acres of land to a single builder there last quarter. That works out to $7.8 million per acre.
FivePoint said the sale, which came to $900,000 per homesite, provided a 70 percent profit margin. The company did not identify the buyer.
FivePoint CEO Dan Hedigan attributed the healthy price and margin to improving market conditions as well as a greater leeway for other developers and builders to pursue their own designs on new construction.
“We’ve begun allowing builders to design the home programs in our communities, (and) this change has contributed towards the higher land residual values for us,” Hedigan said on the call.
Hedigan said the second quarter laid the groundwork for a big pending sale in addition to the done deal.
The ongoing momentum on land sales in Irvine builds as FivePoint hits another hurdle in a long line of stumbling blocks at another development site envisioned for a master-planned community. The challenge came at its Hunter’s Point Shipyard property, planned as a redevelopment of an old U.S. Navy shipyard.
The U.S. Navy recently said recent soil samplings uncovered a couple of small items that were radioactive on the Hunter’s Point site, which is currently undergoing environmental remediation. The discovery likely means an 18-month delay on the current timeline for the project, which has been pushed back a number of times over the years and now looks to be on hold until 2027 at the earliest.
It’s good the Capistrano swallows don’t shift their schedule as much as the developers of River Street Marketplace.
The 60,000-square-foot retail hub and food hall — situated just down the street from the San Juan Capistrano Mission famous for the little birds that return to nest in its Spanish colonial arches every spring — has again delayed its debut. It’s the third time the date has been moved back, the Orange County Register reports.
Developer Dan Almquist attributed the delays — the opening was first set for January and then July — to a prolonged and heavy rainy season. Plans now call for Almquist Developers to open the center sometime in September, though no specific date is set.
The project at 31801 Paseo Adelanto got approvals for construction in 2019. It has taken shape with contemporary architecture and a central open area next to the Los Rios Historic District, another tourist draw in the South Orange County city.
The prospects of the new shopping center promise to boost for San Juan Capistrano based on the lift similar projects by Almquist have given other cities in Southern California. Almquist led the development of Rodeo 39 Public Market in Stanton in Central Orange County, the Uptown Commons in Long Beach and the New Haven Marketplace in the Inland Empire city of Ontario.
The River Street Marketplace stands to further enhance San Juan Capistrano’s reputation as a favorite of foodies. It has a roster of tenants for its opening, ranging from Paraná Empanadas to new brands such as the Fermentation Farm and 70-year-old McConnell’s Ice Cream.
Retailers with slots leased at the center reflect the surf-meets-cow country feel of San Juan Capistrano, with bootmaker Tecovas and Hobie Surf shop among the non-food tenants lined up.
Developers in California might want to pencil out some new long-term projections based on the state’s latest outlook for water supplies.
A recent report by the California Department of Water Resources — which oversees the various reservoirs, canals and other engineering works that shift water around the state under the name of the State Water Project — points to the possibility of a 23 percent reduction in its supply over the next 20 years, the Los Angeles Times reports.
The government project is a major source of water, accounting for the needs of about half the residential, commercial and agricultural development and operations throughout the state. Other sources ranging from local wells to imports from out of state also figure into the overall mix.
The Department of Water Resources’ analysis considered various scenarios and projected a cut in supplies of between 13 and 23 percent. Climate change was the chief factor, and the agency pointed to the outlook as reason to bolster the system.
“The SWP was designed for the climate of the 20th century,” Deputy Director John Yarbrough told the Times. “It’s going to need continued investment to get it in a place where it’s really able to function with the hydrology of the future.”
Gov. Gavin Newsom two years ago called on Californians to plan for an estimated 10 percent decrease in the state’s water supply by 2040. State officials have worked on a $20 billion plan for a 45-mile water tunnel as a second route to transport supplies from the Sacramento River into the aqueducts of the State Water Project.
That plan has taken shape against a backdrop of Californians making substantial reductions in water usage in recent years, with new technologies and consumer consciousness lending a hand.
The trend has some critics of the state’s hopes of big-ticket water infrastructure projects, saying putting a fraction of the funds toward continued conservation might be a better idea.
“That same money would be far better spent on efficiency improvements, ecosystem restoration, strategies to capture stormwater in Central Valley aquifers in wet years, and wastewater treatment and reuse,” Peter Gleick, cofounder of the Pacific Institute, a think tank focused on water, told the Times.
The truth is that little remains architecturally on the 130-year-old buildings worth salvaging, and that was the case even before the Wyman Historic District was designated in 1993 to save a neighborhood full of stately mansions of historic value. Like bulky monsters constructed in an ad-hoc manner from bits and pieces, storefronts had been added to the homes in 1938 to capitalize on the bustling commercial area on Colfax. The boxy additions are poorly executed.
And even before the current owners – Pando Holdings — purchased the buildings at Franklin and Colfax in 2017, they were in decline.
Sadly saving the old buildings by blocking their demolition until someone comes along with the desire, financial means and ability to structurally restore them is not the best way to protect the Wyman Historic District.
Signs of fire damage are apparent from the back of the vacant building at 1600 East Colfax Avenue in Denver on July 17, 2024. (Photo by Zachary Spindler-Krage/The Denver Post)
In March a fire rendered the homes unsound and the owner wants to abandon his already approved plans to preserve both houses as part of a mixed-use development with a seven-story residential building on the large parking lots behind the homes.
Denver’s Landmark Preservation Commission rejected the demolition permit requested by Pando Holdings and developer Kiely Wilson.
But allowing the buildings to sit structurally damaged, vacant and badly burned for an indeterminate amount of time is doing more damage to Wyman than their demolition.
The fire was possibly started by people using the empty buildings for shelter – although the Denver Fire Department has not been able to determine a cause yet. The remaining structures are unsound and a safety hazard to anyone else who might try to enter the fenced-off area, whether that’s homeless individuals or Denver teens looking for a fun graffiti pallet.
Demolition seems to be the best path forward.
That is not to say that we don’t sympathize with the Preservation Commission’s consternation over the turn of events.
A plan was in place to save the buildings, and if they are demolished there is less ability to ensure that the developer will build something compatible with the historic district. The commission has more teeth when it comes to preserving a historic building and can even order repairs on buildings so homeowners don’t intentionally allow a historic structure to decay beyond the point of salvage so they can demolish it. Do we suspect that Pando Holdings is guilty of such a nefarious practice? If there was evidence of wrongdoing, no one has named it.
Even with demolition, the commission still has review power over plans for new development in historic districts, even on non-conforming structures and on vacant lots. The goal is to make sure that a new build does not “adversely affect the character-defining features of the overall historic district.”
That’s still a pretty high bar for any new plans at the five-point intersection of East Colfax, Park Avenue, and Franklin Street.
Barring revelations of a plot to avoid preserving the buildings via neglect, we think the commission must recognize that the fire dramatically altered the feasibility of plans to save the homes and storefronts on East Colfax.
Pando Holdings and Wilson surely must recognize that their reputation is on the line if they replace the buildings with anything that isn’t a net gain for the community in terms of aesthetically pleasing, historic façades on East Colfax.
The Community Planning Board approved the rezoning of roughly 70 acres of land and sent the project to the full City Council.
What’s included in the massive development plan for the Ball Arena parking lots?
That includes roughly 55 acres of parking lots that would be turned into around 6,000 units of new housing. Of those, 1,080 would be income-restricted.
There would also be new hotels, office space and entertainment venues surrounding Ball Arena. The area would become a 24/7 live-work-play district.
Five bridges would connect the project to the rest of the city. Residents would enjoy 10 acres of open space, more than 10 miles of new bike lanes, a recreation center, a childcare center and more.
Buildings could be built up to 12 stories in some sections of the development. Depending on how much affordable housing the developer committed to creating, they could go infinitely higher.
The property would connect multiple central Denver neighborhoods: the Auraria Campus, Jefferson Park, Union Station, Sun Valley, LoDo and La Alma/Lincoln Park.
If built, the development would join one of several slated to reinvent the Downtown Denver skyline.
The projects, together, would more than double the population of downtown and signal a dense future for some of the few undeveloped city center lots.
So far Kroenke Sports and Entertainment has secured broad community support for the project. But it’s not guaranteed.
Multiple residents testified in favor of the rezoning. Most had one condition: Kroenke must first negotiate a community benefits agreement with surrounding neighborhoods.
Representatives from Sun Valley, the Lower Downtown Neighborhood Association, the Denver Streets Partnership, La Alma Lincoln Park, the University of Colorado Denver, and Metropolitan State University are among the groups with representatives on the Ball Arena Community Benefits Agreement Committee (BACBAC). That’s the group negotiating the community benefits agreement.
Both Kroenke’s representatives and community members say they’re committed to negotiating a community benefits agreement.
Ball Arena. Aug. 11, 2022.Kevin J. Beaty/Denverite
Simon Tafoya, who sits on BACBAC, said the committee and Kroenke have made “significant progress.” Currently, the agreement ensures income-restricted housing for people making between 30 percent and 100 percent of the area median income.
Kroenke plans to create family-friendly units with at least three bedrooms each. The developer will create space for job training programs, pedestrian and bike infrastructure, childcare facilities and space for community art.
Negotiations are ongoing.
Tafoya said the committee would like to see a higher percentage of affordable rental units and more diverse housing options. He’d also like to see the affordable housing units built in the first of three phases of the project so they aren’t lost in the shuffle.
He’d like more guarantees of apprenticeship programs and stipends.
“It is vital to ensure small local businesses have opportunities to reduced rents and technical assistance,” he said.
The committee has concerns that the energy infrastructure of the new project doesn’t hurt the surrounding neighborhoods.
They’d also like Kroenke to provide housing and scholarship funds for Indigenous students and descendants of residents displaced by the Auraria campus.
What’s next?
The Planning Board’s decision puts the plan on track to be heard by City Council.
Council will also review whether to lift view-plain restrictions and create a metropolitan district, a special local tax.
The Ball Arena parking lot development will likely hit the South Platte River Committee on August 14.
Denverites will have a chance to weigh in at a City Council public hearing currently slated for Sept. 16.
Core Development Group wants to demolish a 12-story office building in Santa Ana to make way for a 162-unit apartment complex.
An LLC tied to the Los Angeles-based firm, run by Philip Rahimzadeh, has proposed razing the Wells Fargo Building to build apartments at 2700 North Main Street, according to the city of Santa Ana planning records. The Orange County Business Journal reported the plans earlier.
Core bought the 120,600-square-foot Wells Fargo building in January for $18.6 million, or $154 per square foot. It was 48 percent leased. The seller was PRES Companies, based in Irvine, which paid 9.3 percent more for the property in 2016.
The Wells Fargo Building, built in 1968 and revamped in 2000, is now 70 leased to such tenants as Wells Fargo, SpineZone and Sun West Mortgage.
The developer plans to tear it down and replace it with an apartment complex to be called Arthouse on Main, which would contain 162 apartments across an unspecified number of floors above 5,000-square-feet of ground floor shops and restaurants.
The project, designed by Los Angeles-based SODA, would have a 7,000-square-foot rooftop deck. It’s unclear whether the complex would include any affordable units,
A cost estimate and timeline for construction on the 4.5-acre site was undisclosed. A rendering for the future complex was unavailable.
In 2017, PRES envisioned redeveloping the Wells Fargo Building property with a 247-unit complex dubbed 27 Hundred, but the project stalled.
Values for office properties across OC have fallen by half since a pandemic shift to remote work. Some landlords are replacing them with homes or warehouses.
Office vacancy across the O.C. was 14.3 percent in the first quarter, “virtually unchanged” from the previous period, according to CBRE Group. Vacancies have ticked up since early 2020, when it was just above 10 percent.
In February, Philip Rahimzadeh bought a 45-unit complex in Miami’s Coconut Grove for $11 million, with plans to renovate the building and raise rents.
— Dana Bartholomew
Read more
Owner-users snap up office deals for discount prices in OC
J+R Group proposes office-to-home conversion in Irvine
Kearny switches plans with office-industrial conversion in Santa Ana
The city of Cleveland will be lining the McCafferty Center, a health clinic on Lorain Avenue, up for conversion into affordable housing in the next two years.
Lorain Avenue has had its share of promise in the past year or so.
In April, RTA announced funding for a bus rapid transit line study for the Ohio City/North Olmsted corridor.
And last week a second update to the Lorain Midway, a two-mile cycle track that would extend from West 65th to the Hope Memorial Bridge, was unveiled to the public, plans lush with comfy tree lines and protected pathways. It would provide the street with a much-needed makeover, one that pairs nicely with zoning updates to emphasize transit-oriented development across the city.
Plans that have now made their way to the McCafferty Center Building off West 42nd and Lorain, a clinic controlled by the Cleveland Department of Public Health. Instead of offering Covid shots and STI tests and other low-cost care, the almost two-acre site, the building on which is underutilized, will be soon lined up for the development of affordable housing.
Which is okay with Department of Public Health chief Dave Margolius.
While McCafferty has for years been a rock in the neighborhood for reproductive health services and vaccines, Margolius said he “also recognizes that housing has a tremendous impact on health.”
“[We] are pleased be part of a process to create more opportunities for affordable housing,” he added in a press release, “in a neighborhood that needs it.”
Ohio City’s Strategic Plan in 2019 suggested the neighborhood could use at least 600 more units of housing, “including the approval of” some 60 units of affordable housing. Most of the recent additions to that stock have covered more of the need for the former rather than the latter.
Redoing, as the city says, a “largely-underutilized” block corner with a 53-year-old building that’s only a quarter occupied is a no-brainer route towards achieving those elusive affordable housing goals. For seniors. For those who can’t afford four-figure rents. For those who need to stay in the neighborhood. Ground floor uses could include spaces for non-profits and social service agencies.
Adding affordable housing stock has Councilman Kerry McCormack’s intention for years: the chance to give older Clevelanders and lower-income folks a chance to stay in Ohio City as the neighborhood changes and property values climb.
“As we move forward, I am excited about the future of this site continuing to serve a public purpose by providing affordable housing and social services to the neighborhood,” McCormack said via a press release. “I appreciate the hard work of city staff and look forward to future community engagement to ensure this is the best project possible.” (He did respond to a call Wednesday.)
McCafferty’s new future pairs nicely with the street’s probable conversion into the Lorain Midway.
A mentality that denizens of Ohio City might agree with.
Though there’s some neighborhood hesitation with the Lorain Midway—namely due to its threat to on-street parking spaces—and concerns about development in general, McCormack’s call for public input, even just for one building, should help avoid neighbors at loggerheads. And it may help align the councilman’s own push for suitable housing for seniors.
And just simply allow for a new building in general, one that will better match the future of the street.
“It’s pretty dingy and dated inside. I mean, they’ll have to tear it down ’cause the condition of the building is not great,” Whitney Anderson, 37, who owns a home across the street from McCafferty, told Scene. “And so, I mean, I imagine it would be more expensive to try and rehab into housing.”
Not, Anderson clarified, another Welleon. “With so much market rate housing being built in the area, I think having the balance is really essential.”
As for McCafferty’s asset to the less fortunate, the future is a little more nebulous. Margolius told Scene that CDPH has “some leads” as for a new West Side location, but hasn’t signed anything. Because a developer wouldn’t be lined up for another year or so, Margolius said “we have a little time to find the perfect fit.”
Just as it would for patients themselves.
“I’m not sure what I’d do, not sure what I’d do,” Don, a cancer patient in his sixties in a multicolor leg cast, told Scene sitting in a wheelchair on the corner of 42nd and Lorain.
Though Don said he’s only been to McCafferty for healthcare “a few times” in the past three years, he said the move further west, even just a few blocks, prove a hurdle. Especially when, as a homeless man, he relies on hygiene materials from the shelter across the street.
It’s a massive, unsightly hole in the ground — the site of a construction project in downtown Carmel-by-the-Sea whose previous owners ran out of money six years ago, leaving behind nothing but concrete, rebar and hard feelings.
In 2020, The Pit was purchased by Patrice Pastor, a billionaire real estate developer from the tiny European nation of Monaco, for $9 million.
Last year, he plopped down $22 million for a much prettier property: Cabin on the Rocks, the only oceanfront home ever designed by famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright.
Jeff Becom, president of the board of the Carmel Art Assn., stands next to the construction eyesore known as “The Pit” in Carmel-by-the-Sea.
And in mid-June, he got approval from the California Coastal Commission for his “visionary plan” to restore public access at Rocky Point, a seaside property he bought for $8 million in nearby Big Sur with views of the iconic Bixby Bridge.
Pastor has been on a buying spree in and around Carmel-by-the-Sea, dropping more than $100 million on at least 18 properties over the last decade. So much so that his presence has become a source of intrigue, and for some, downright suspicion, in this moneyed one-square-mile town of 3,200 people.
Pastor bought the Hog’s Breath Building, the site of the pub once owned by actor Clint Eastwood. He bought the L’Auberge Carmel hotel, which houses a Michelin star restaurant. He snapped up the Der Ling building, a 1924 shop, done in fairytale-style architecture next to a stone pathway leading to a hidden garden.
“When someone comes in with so much money and can use that money for influence on so many things, that’s … scary in any community,” said Dee Borsella, who owns a custom pajama shop across from The Pit. “Every person has the right to do this. But why is he picking Carmel?”
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1.A visitor walks through the central courtyard of Der Ling Lane.2.The Bingham Building on Dolores Street, reflected in a storefront window.3.The Rocky Point Restaurant, one of the latest purchases by Monaco billionaire Patrice Pastor, rests on a bluff high above the Pacific Ocean in Big Sur.
Pastor is the scion of a powerful real estate family that built much of mega-rich Monaco, a dense, one-square-mile nation on the French Riviera.
He says he first came to Carmel-by-the-Sea at age 7 during a trip with his father, and that he had never seen his dad more relaxed. The memory stuck with him. He now owns multiple homes in town and visits several times a year.
“It’s not like he picked up a book one day and was like, ‘Let me find the best place to invest.’ It’s that he personally loves it here,’” said Claire Totten, a spokeswoman for Esperanza Carmel LLC, the local branch of his international real estate company.
Still, Pastor has created quite the buzz in this gracefully aging town where, according to Zillow, the typical home price is $2.2 million.
During a scuffle last summer, the city administrator took a swing at an art gallery owner who accused local officials of being xenophobic for slowing one of Pastor’s projects. And the billionaire’s local real estate portfolio burst into international headlines this year after an article by SF Gate quoted an anonymous business owner who said people were “terrified” of his intentions.
Soon afterward, Pastor showed up to a City Council meeting via Zoom and said he would “like to inform those who feel terrified by my presence” that he would be in town a few days later: “So I suggest they either take a vacation during this period or come and meet me for a relaxation class.”
Pastor — who, according to the French newspaper Le Monde, has squabbled over lucrative development contracts with associates of Monaco’s Prince Albert II — has more humble antagonists in Carmel-by-the-Sea: the City Council, the Planning Commission and the Historic Resources Board.
The city has rejected several of his design proposals, including two for The Pit.
Development — including upgrades to private homes — is notoriously slow here. The city strictly regulates architecture to maintain the so-called village character of this woodsy place. Carmel uses no street addresses (people give their homes whimsical names instead), and has no streetlights or sidewalks in residential areas.
The Mrs. Clinton Walker House is the the only oceanfront home designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.
Eastwood, who was mayor in the 1980s, got involved in local politics after fighting with the City Council over what he said were unreasonable restrictions on the design of an office building he wanted to erect. Pastor now owns that building.
Pastor “loves that it’s a bit idiosyncratic,” Totten said. “Carmel is a little bit etched in time. The world moves on, but Carmel is still Carmel.”
Pastor’s local defenders question whether he is being discriminated against because he is too rich.
“He’s had a hard time with the city,” said Karyl Hall, co-chair of the Carmel Preservation Assn. “It’s one thing after another after another. They’ve just beaten him down incredibly.”
“There’s no question that he gets more scrutiny,” said Tim Allen, a real estate agent who has handled most of Pastor’s local purchases, including the Frank Lloyd Wright residence, also known as the Mrs. Clinton Walker House.
Completed in 1952 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the architectural jewel had been kept within the original owner’s family until Pastor bought it in February 2023. The 1,400-square-foot house, on a rocky bluff jutting into Carmel Bay, has a hexagonal living room and stone masonry walls shaped like a ship’s prow cutting through the waves.
In a 1945 letter to Wright, artist Della Walker wrote: “I am a woman living alone — I wish protection from the wind and privacy from the road and a house as enduring as the rocks but as transparent and charming as the waves and as delicate as a seashore. You are the only man who can do this — will you help me?”
The architect replied: “Dear Mrs. Walker: I liked your letter, brief and to the point.”
“There’s no question that he gets more scrutiny,” real estate agent Tim Allen says of Monaco billionaire Patrice Pastor, whose land purchases in Carmel-by-the-Sea have generated suspicion.
Allen said Pastor’s purchase includes the original furniture, because “he’s buying a piece of history” — albeit one that “needs a ton of work,” including an expensive new roof.
Last spring, Esperanza Carmel LLC, applied for a Mills Act contract for the site, a tax break for owners of historic properties who commit to restoring and preserving them. Although the City Council had approved such a contract for the home’s previous owner, some council members balked at giving the tax break — a saving of an estimated $1.5 million over 10 years — to Pastor and postponed a decision for several months.
One resident, in a letter to the City Council, wrote: “I doubt the applicant is in financial hardship … I’m not in favor of giving handouts to ultra wealthy property owners.”
Before the council approved the tax break this spring, city officials tried to persuade Pastor to give public tours of the house and to make direct payments to local schools (which are partly funded by property taxes) — requests not made of applicants for other properties. Pastor refused.
Via Zoom, Pastor told the council he would “maintain this wonderful house in perfect condition, even if only to continue to bother those jealous people who will never have access to it.”
City officials are waging another only-in-Carmel fight with Pastor over a mixed-use development and subterranean parking garage on Dolores Street that he has been trying to build for more than three years.
Plans submitted to the city in 2021 called for the demolition of a former bank annex once used as a community room. Because it was less than 50 years old, it did not qualify as a historic structure — but after it turned 50 in October 2022, the Carmel Historic Resources Board voted to add it to the city’s historic resources list.
Pastor agreed to build around the annex.
Then, another issue arose: The project would require the removal of a small concrete wall, decorated with exposed aggregate and inlaid rocks, built in 1972 by a man local historians dubbed the “father of stamped concrete.”
The City Council last fall said the wall was too important to be moved and sent Pastor’s company back to the drawing board.
Allen, the real estate agent, decried the delays as petty grievances. Pastor’s proposed developments, he said, will add apartments, parking and public restrooms — all of which are sorely needed.
Carmel-by-the-Sea relies on the tourists drawn to its cottages, courtyards and secret passageways.
Carmel-by-the-Sea strictly regulates development to maintain its village character. The city uses no street addresses. Instead, people give their homes whimsical names.
“He doesn’t just buy to terrorize people,” Allen said. “He buys because it’s a good investment.”
Mayor Dave Potter said it is tough for anybody to build here and that Pastor is being treated fairly.
“We pride ourselves on our uniqueness,” he said. “You don’t get to just come in and build whatever you want. We don’t care if you’re a movie star or a mega-millionaire. You have to play by the same rules everybody else does.”
Hall and Neal Kruse, co-chairs of the grassroots Carmel Preservation Assn., are adamant, if surprising, supporters of Pastor.
They believe modern architecture — which they describe as ‘Anywhere, USA’ buildings with sterile facades and box-like structures — poses an existential threat to Carmel-by-the-Sea, which depends on tourists drawn to its cottages, courtyards and secret passageways.
Hall, a retired research psychologist, said she talks regularly with Pastor, whom she described as “so nice, so charming and so heartfelt,” and noted that he has several modern-architecture projects in the works overseas.
“He said, ‘Karyl, you’d hate them,’” she said, laughing.
Hall and Kruse started the preservation association in response to the first proposal for The Pit, a contemporary design approved by the Planning Commission for the previous owners. They called that planned edifice “the ice box.”
Hall said they were heartened by Pastor, who proposed more traditional buildings for The Pit.
Longtime residents “remember Carmel, and we remember the sacredness of it and why people come here,” said Kruse, an architectural designer. “We’re the ones that are largely concerned about the loss of character. But Patrice played a central role in reassuring the residents that he would help that not happen.”
Karyl Hall, left, and Neal Kruse started the Carmel Preservation Assn. Longtime residents “remember Carmel, and we remember the sacredness of it and why people come here,” Kruse says.
Over more than two years, the Planning Commission rejected two Esperanza Carmel designs for The Pit before approving a third last August for a mixed-use project with apartments, stores and an underground parking garage. Construction has not yet begun.
The 91-year home of the Carmel Art Assn. — of which surrealist painter Salvador Dali was a member — is next door to The Pit. The demolition of two buildings there, which started in 2017, caused the art gallery to shift so much that it damaged its new roof, which started “leaking all over the place,” said Jeff Becom, president of the art association’s board.
“It’s on a sand dune. You dig a big hole and you vibrate it for several weeks, it starts to slip,” Becom said. “It’s an important place, and we didn’t want it to fall into The Pit.”
With Pastor’s plans, “I have much more hope than I’ve had for some time,” he said.
Across the street, Borsella, owner of the sleepwear shop Ruffle Me to Sleep, is more dubious. She keeps prints of the architectural designs tucked under colorful tissue paper because customers ask her about The Pit every day.
Dee Borsella, owner of Ruffle Me to Sleep, says Patrice Pastor seems to be on a charm offensive “to ease the collective opinion that somebody’s invading our property, our town.”
Borsella, who used to work in one of the now-demolished buildings, thinks Pastor’s planned complex is too big. She doesn’t like its mezzanine. And she does not think the city should compromise its building standards just because people are sick of looking at a hole in the ground.
Pastor, she said, seems to be on a charm offensive “to ease the collective opinion that somebody’s invading our property, our town.” A few weeks ago, he stopped in her shop to introduce himself.
“I’m a bit of a lion,” she said. “I knew he was kind of trying to come over and pet me. I felt like he was trying to win me over.”
In 2021, Pastor bought another coastal gem in Big Sur, about 10 miles south of Carmel-by-the-Sea: a 2.5-acre cliffside parcel off Highway 1 occupied by the closed Rocky Point Restaurant.
Pastor inherited a slew of issues with the land, including investigations by the California Coastal Commission into unpermitted development by the previous owners and the use of locked gates and “No Trespassing” signs to block access to public land.
The Coastal Commission struck a deal with Pastor to clear the violations and potential fines if he restores the poison oak-covered bluffs and trails and removes the gates. Pastor also agreed to add public bathrooms, parking and electric vehicle chargers.
The deal is limited to clearing the violations — not the redevelopment or reopening of the restaurant.
Jeff Davisson takes in the view from a bluff on Rocky Point in Big Sur.
On a recent blue-sky Monday, Jay Davisson, chief executive of a Carmel-by-the-Sea luxury home-building firm, led family members visiting from Detroit and Tampa, Fla., to a bluff top on the property where they could see the Bixby Bridge.
Davisson, who recently moved to Carmel from Atlanta, said he considered buying Rocky Point, but it was “a little too expensive.” He loves Pastor’s plans to restore access — and has been closely following the news and scuttlebutt about his other purchases.
In such a small town, he said, “everybody talks. But I like the fact that it’s growing.”
Less than a decade ago, quaint single-family homes sat on the Northside block of 26th Avenue and Alcott Street in Denver’s working-class Jefferson Park neighborhood.
It was the sort of community where a teacher could afford to live.
Across town, Denver property values were rising fast. The Latino Northside community was being rebranded as “the Highlands,” as dense luxury apartments, duplexes and condos rose.
Through the change, longtime neighbors, including many Latino families, were priced out. More white and wealthier individuals moved in.
Former Coloado Poet Laureate Bobby LeFebre wrote an entire play about the gentrification of the Northside. History Colorado created a Northside Memory Project to preserve the legacy of the largely demolished Latino neighborhood.
A view of Mile High Stadium from the new Skyline at Highlands apartment building in Jefferson Park. June 26, 2024.
Different neighborhoods looked to the Highlands as a cautionary tale of how development can destroy naturally affordable housing and displace longtime residents.
Others promised that more supply would bring prices down, something that has not panned out in the short-term, and something that many former Northsiders who left the city will never enjoy.
Fast forward to 2024, and the homes at 26th Avenue and Alcott Street are now gone, replaced with luxury apartments dubbed Skyline at Highlands.
The largest multifamily apartment building to open in the city since 2021, Skyline at Highlands is bringing 533 units to the neighborhood.
New residents will enjoy “gourmet kitchens,” “luxurious finishes,” “scenic mountain views” and “intelligent smart features.”
The pool at the new Skyline at Highlands apartment building in Jefferson Park.
The building includes a large pool and hot tub; gathering spaces with hammocks, chairs and barbeque grills; a small dog park; rentable video-game consoles and outdoor equipment; a movie room and a music room with instruments and a turntable to play; a fitness center and a separate Pilates room; personal trainers; concierge service; and stylish apartments.
Renting at Skyline at Highlands looks like a great life — for those who can afford it
You can rent a studio apartment for a mere $1,899. A one-bedroom starting at $2,049 a month. Two bedrooms start at $3,189.
The new Skyline at Highlands apartment building in Jefferson Park. June 26, 2024.
A family would need a gross income of roughly $126,000 a year, according to Rent Cafe’s Rent Affordability Calculator, which estimates how much rent a household can afford if they spend the recommended max of 30 percent on housing a month.
That’s nearly $9,000 higher than the area median income for a Denver family of three: $117,360.
The developer, Grand Peaks, acknowledged housing affordability is a big issue in Denver with a free rent lottery.
The company gave 10 Denver teachers free rent for a year. The homes were divvied out through a lottery between 218 teachers in their first three years of service who applied.
In total, roughly 1,200 received the invitation. The district employs around 15,000 educators, most of whom were not eligible.
Those educators in their first three years on the job make between $63,586 and $72,422 a year. That’s far below the $91,280 area median income for a single person in Denver or $117,360 for a family of three.
A music room in the new Skyline at Highlands apartment building.
“I think it’s no secret that there’s an affordability housing crisis right now in Denver,” said the foundation’s CEO Sara Hazel. “I also know is that Denver benefits from having our leaders like our teachers living in the communities that they serve.”
The ten lucky teachers living rent-free could pay off debt, or save for a downpayment on a house.
“I heard from one educator yesterday that I notified that she won,” Hazel said. “And she responded right away, just saying this was this was life-changing for her and her family, this opportunity. And so I think that being able to provide that, at this scale, and hopefully bigger scales in the future is just really powerful.”
Mayor Mike Johnston and Superintendent Alex Marrero came out to cut the ribbon on the building.
Marrero praised Grand Peaks for its “innovative” approach in housing 10 teachers.
While he’s aware of developers focused on workforce housing for educators he has never heard of a market-rate developer offering free rent to teachers.
Johnston described Denver as a world-class city where young people want to move. But it also has a housing affordability crisis he attributes to a lack of housing.
Skyline at Highlands is now open on 26th Avenue in Jefferson Park. June 26, 2024.Kevin J. Beaty/Denverite
Even the creation of market-rate housing, he argued, has the potential to lower prices in the long term.
“When you have a real shortage of housing, when you build more units, even market-rate units, that has a dramatic effect of immediately opening up more affordable units,” he said.
He described this phenomenon as the “moving chain effect.”
“These 500 units are going to be incredible for folks to move here,” he said. “They’re gonna be incredible for that teachers will be able to live and work in their neighborhood. They’ll also be incredible for the other 400 units that open up around the city that create more affordability around them.”
The TULU “vending machine” for tents and Nintendos.
A rooftop dog park at the new Skyline at Highlands.
School Board Director Scott Esserman said “it’s hard” for Denver teachers to afford to stay in the city.
While some can afford Aurora, they are burdened with long commutes and often decide to leave the city or the profession altogether.
The question the city has to answer beyond the 10 who now have a year of free rent: “How can we make living in the city more affordable for educators?”
An apartment in the new Skyline at Highlands apartment building in Jefferson Park. June 26, 2024.
A statewide conversation about housing affordability for teachers is happening across Colorado.
School Board President Carrie Olson, who serves on the Colorado Association of School Boards, said that the organization is in a constant conversation about how to make housing affordable for teachers — especially in mountain towns.
“This is what we need to be doing to make sure we’re supporting our teachers, especially our first, second and third year teachers — making it affordable for them to be able to live and work in their community,” Olson said. “Because when teachers are a part of the community, it just makes it different. They know their families better. They know the places that their families shop and live and worship — whatever there they do inside and out of school.”
The gym at the new Skyline at Highlands apartment building.
Her peer group is made up of teachers, and many in her community are struggling to stay in town.
“Ten for free is a drop in the bucket,” she said. “But all of the units that are here are going to serve more than 10. So teachers can still access affordable housing, and I think this is something that DPS is going to continue to work with.”
The main courtyard at the new Skyline at Highlands apartment building in Jefferson Park. June 26, 2024.
