Cherry Creek West Overhaul Advances With City Council Vote
The Denver City Council on Monday unanimously approved a zoning application for an overhaul of Cherry Creek West by developer East West Partners.
The 13-acre mixed-used redevelopment is expected to cover about four blocks, from University Boulevard to the Clayton Lane retail property and from First Avenue to Cherry Creek.
The project is projected to create about 825 residences, 600K SF of office space, 100K SF of retail, 4 acres of open space and more than 2,000 underground parking spaces.
Twelve percent of the residential units will be affordable for those earning 60% of the area median income, according to a release. Plans also call for what developers call “the first meaningful open space” in the Cherry Creek neighborhood, complete with protected cycling tracks and improvements to the area’s pedestrian crossings and the Cherry Creek Trail.
“As owners of the land underlying Cherry Creek West, our goal in reimagining the west end of the Cherry Creek Shopping Center was to find someone aligned with our history of enhancing the neighborhood while creating a sustainable cash flow for the beneficiaries of the Foundation — the children of Colorado,” Steve ErkenBrack, president and CEO of the Buell Foundation, said in the press release.
East West Partners’ plan calls for seven buildings, four of which can reach the maximum height of 13 stories under the rezoning and three of which would be eight stories.
Internal road and utility work is expected to start at the site by the end of this year, with the demolition of existing buildings beginning next spring and groundbreaking projected in the summer of 2026.
Phase 1 of Cherry Creek West is expected to be complete by 2029, while the overall two-phase project is anticipated to take nearly 10 years to complete.
“With the rezoning complete, now comes the fun part,” said Amy Cara, managing partner at East West Partners. “We can begin to design the public spaces and the individual buildings and watch this community really start to take shape.”
As Denver's commercial real estate market has coped with an uneven recovery from the pandemic, Cherry Creek has emerged as a consistently popular target for investment dollars, whether for acquisition or new development. Long known as a retail destination, the area's reputation as an office hub is growing.
