BY FREDA MIKLIN
STAFF WRITER
Last month, the 310-unit Vue West apartment complex at 4811 S. Niagara Street in Denver’s Belleview Station neighborhood sold for $123.5 million, or $398,387 per unit. The building is six stories tall and apartments range in size from studios to three-bedrooms.
The purchaser, Sequoia Equities, Inc., reportedly has also recently purchased two other area rental properties, both in Greenwood Village, the 248-unit Parc Apartments at 5500 DTC Parkway and the 236-unit Isabella Apartment Homes at 5400 S. Park Terrace Avenue.
The new nine-story Vectra Bank headquarters building opened in December at 7222 E. Layton Avenue in Belleview Station.
We reported last month that the 19-story, 204-guest room Kimpton Claret boutique hotel is well underway in Belleview Station. It is set to open next year.
Front Range Land & Development company, the master developer of Belleview Station, is said to have proposed two more towers at 6700 E. Union Avenue. One would be 19 stories and the other would be 20 stories.
Meanwhile, the stalemate over how to manage ever-increasing traffic in the area continues with no movement from any of the participants who are stymied by the position of the City and County of Denver. It has been over three years since Wilson and Company, a consultant hired by all the area jurisdictions, concluded that the most sensible way to address the longstanding, increasing traffic bottleneck at the Belleview and I-25 interchange is to build a new highway exit at Quincy Avenue, between Hampden and Belleview, primarily to handle vehicles headed to and leaving from the Belleview Station development.
Arapahoe County, Greenwood Village, Centennial, and several of the area’s metro districts agreed with that solution, which was also supported by CDOT (Colorado Department of Transportation). Denver disagreed because its overall traffic and transportation plan for the city designated Quincy Avenue as being focused on multi-modal transportation, primarily bikes, pedestrians, and busses.
Nothing has changed in the past three years, except for the addition of multiple office and residential buildings, along with the first hotel in Belleview Station, each bringing hundreds of cars to the area and the Belleview and I-25 interchange, even though many of the residents and employees make use of the Belleview light rail station.
John Chesser, one of the consultants, said, back in March 2020, “When we looked at 2040, the issues at this interchange (Belleview) are different than they are today… The transit-oriented development that Denver is doing in the northwest quadrant (Belleview Station) is one of the biggest deals effecting traffic in this whole area in 2040 that you don’t see the effects of near as much today.”
The Villager reached out to the Denver Department of Transportation and Infrastructure for this article but had not received a reply as of press time.
fmiklin.villager@gmail.com