BY FREDA MIKLIN – STAFF WRITER
As Colorado comes out on the other side of the COVID-19 tunnel we’ve been stuck in during the past year plus, the Belleview Station neighborhood is coming alive with people and construction. Belleview Station is a 55-acre mixed-use development on the southern edge of Denver, often mistaken as being in Greenwood Village, its neighbor to the south. Located just across from the Belleview light rail station, it is already home to two upscale apartment buildings, Milehouse and The Den, both just about full, with another one under construction at the northeast corner of East Chenango Avenue and South Newport Street. It will have 250 units ranging from studios to three-bedrooms, plus 7,000 square feet of retail on the ground level, which “will connect our retail spine as it moves from Belleview north and then east to the light rail station. This is a beautiful building and the architectural control committee worked well with the building architect,” Brooke Maloy, vice-president of Front Range Land and Development – Belleview Station, told us.
Just east of that building will be a new boutique hotel comprising around 150,000 square feet, with 200 rooms and “a rooftop restaurant capturing tremendous views of the Rocky Mountains.”
Retail and restaurants in Belleview Station weathered COVID-19 very well. When The Villager met with Maloy at the Corvus Coffee on South Newport Street, every outside table was full and there were people sitting inside as well. As the onsite executive for the neighborhood, she told us, “The success of the residential is the key to the success of the retail.”
The beautiful glass-covered 6900 Layton building is the new home of Newmont Mining, which left the classic Palazzo Verdi building in Greenwood Village’s Village Center development, where they occupied 74% of its 15 stories, because their employees told company executives they wanted to work in a place where they could walk to restaurants, retail, and other amenities that are found in a mixed-use development like Belleview Station. Easy access to the Belleview light rail station was also important, because Newmont’s Greenwood Village location was close to the Arapahoe light rail, so many employees were used to that convenience. Newmont originally leased five floors at the new building, but the pandemic intervened, and they subleased two of those floors to DCP Midstream, which, like Newmont, is a Fortune 500 company.
Also under construction in Belleview Station is the new home of Vectra Bank. Vectra has 35 branches in Colorado. The nine-story unique building will have four floors of parking and 127,000 square feet of office space, solely for Vectra’s corporate headquarters. Vectra plans to have 200 employees there and an expansive patio on the sixth floor. Move-in is planned for late next year.
Already well known for its neighborhood-friendly weekly Sunday summer farmer’s markets and other festivals, Belleview Station also has a popular dog park and is planning an outdoor beer garden. A large public plaza which Maloy told The Villager will “serve as a huge amenity for everyone” will be built in the future and “have thoughtful design, scale and programming,” consistent with surrounding development.
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