Platt Park redux: central locale drives buyers, builders to old Gates factory rentals.

• Author: Titus, Stephen
• Position: Who owns Colorado

Denver-area home buyers don't want much. Yeah, right: just a new home with modern amenities in an older neighborhood, close to downtown and public transportation, is all.

Good luck.

Because almost no open tracts of land remain in Central Denver, that means redevelopment of existing neighborhoods. This hit-and-miss task was once left to smaller developers, but in Platt Park a unique opportunity has come along with the redevelopment of the Gates Rubber plant along Santa Fe Drive and Interstate 25.

The Platt Park neighborhood is bounded by I-25 to the north, Evans to the south, Broadway to the west and roughly University Boulevard in the east. Many of the homes along the I-25 border were built as rentals for Gates employees in the company's 1930s and '40s manufacturing heyday. While small developers are snatching up double lots in the neighborhood and peppering the area with new construction, one production builder, McStain Neighborhoods, has purchased three city blocks from Gates and is vying with smaller builders to capitalize on the trend.

"We believe there is a strong desire for people to be in these inner-city neighborhoods in a new home," said Christine Regis, owner of Domani Homes, a small builder working in the area. "I think the competition is good and McStain is definitely competition, but I'd say we offer a lot more in our home than what they offer."

From the air, Platt Park looks like many other established Denver neighborhoods. But the key to the area's redevelopment potential is the R2 zoning of many properties that allows a duplex on lots of 6,200 square feet or larger.

"Sometimes it brings a better price point for a buyer," Regis said of building multi-family projects. "To put a single-family home on some of these lots prices you out of the market."

Along with remodels and some single-family homes, Domani focuses on multi-family infill projects in Platt Park and other neighborhoods such as Observatory Park, Washington Park and Northwest Denver where the R2 zoning is prevalent. While redevelopment has gone on for some time in these neighborhoods, Platt Park is the latest hamlet to see interest from builders. In the past two or three years, a critical balance point was reached, placing the demand for new homes in the area at a premium and allowing builders to scrape a $250,000 to $300,000 home and build a new duplex or triplex that yields a profit of $200,000 to $300,000. While improvements to the housing stock is great for...