Charlie Woolley: Denver developer has his heart in historic preservation - and ending homelessness.

• Author: Bronikowski, Lynn
• Position: EXECUTIVE EDGE

On a frigid night in December, Denver developer Charlie Woolley gathered business leaders and commercial real estate colleagues in a LoDo building under renovation to give them a taste of what being homeless is like.

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The president and CEO of St. Charles Town Co. announced he was pledging $100,000 of his own money in matching funds to kick off the Commercial Real Estate Initiative to support Denver's Road Home. Never mind that the stock market had dropped as low as the temperatures. Woolley was confident Denver's commercial real estate community could raise $500,000 for the city's comprehensive 10-year plan to end homelessness.

"I've seen how Denver's Road Home works, and it's so inspiring to see people who have struggled so hard get into a situation where they really do get in a home with lots of support services," said Woolley, who since founding St. Charles Town Co. in 1993 has centered his career around converting old, urban buildings, including historic ones, into housing, retail, office and other viable structures. "Having those people on the street and not getting our support creates a lot of health problems and all the costs for the city and county of Denver associated with the problem of homelessness. And that's really bad for commercial real estate and downtown Denver."

Woolley traces his interest in historic preservation to his father's avocation of restoring 17th and 18th century houses in Massachusetts where he grew up. His grandmother's family members were antique dealers. Woolley earned a bachelor's in urban planning from the University of Massachusetts and an MBA from the University of Denver.

"I was interested in the social-values side of urban planning - people getting into good housing and solving other problems," said Woolley, whose first job was renovating the Four Mile House Park before entering commercial real estate in 1985.

He was an urban pioneer - converting what was once a turn-of-the-century clothing manufacturing plant and warehouse into Bayly Lofts, one of the first residential projects in the Ballpark Neighborhood.

The project would give him an insatiable taste to preserve dozens more historic buildings including his favorite--the Lowenstein Theater, which his company acquired in 2005 and converted...