Platte's progress: developers peg historic street as innovation cluster.

• Author: Jackson, Margaret
• Position: REAL ESTATE ROUNDUP

PLATTE STREET IS POISED TO BECOME Denver's innovation corridor with the development of three new office buildings.

Already the stretch is bustling with restaurants, boutiques and a dog-friendly brewery and beer garden, and the influx of people who will work in the new buildings is sure to boost business for those retailers, as well as attract others to the street.

Projects under construction include:

* The Nichols Building--a 78,000-square-foot office building.

* The Lab at 17th and Platte Streets--a 78,576-square-foot speculative office building.

* The Boathouse--a 10,400-square-foot office building at 1850 Platte Street.

An additional three sites are available for development, and the northeast corner of 15th and Platte streets, where Natural Grocers by Vitamin Cottage and a large parking lot are located, appears poised for a revamp.

"It's tied to economic and development cycles," said Jamie Gard, executive man-aging director of Newmark Grubb Knight Frank, which is handling leasing for The Lab. "But it's also part of the evolution of what happened in downtown. The LoDo sites got filled up. The Central Platte Valley was dirt forever, and now almost every piece of dirt has something about to move forward on it. This was a logical step."

FEET ON THE STREET

But it's the series of pedestrian bridges connecting the Lower Downtown and Lower Highland neighborhoods that helped Platte Street become a destination in itself, though it's not officially part of any neighborhood.

"If you look at these micro markets --LoDo, the Central Platte Valley, Highland --those are three of the hottest submarkets in the area," said Marshall Burton, a partner in Confluent. which is developing The Lab in a joint venture with Denver-based Brue Capital. "Then you have Platte Street, which is the keystone among the neighborhoods. It really bridged the millennial employment base in Highland with all the mix of uses Platte Street has."

Opened in 2002, the $9 million Millennium Bridge married the Central Platte Valley, developed by East West Partners --to Lower Downtown. Two years later, the cable-stayed wooden bridge across the South Platte River opened connecting Commons Park to Platte Street. And finally in 2006, the Highland Bridge spanning Interstate 25 completed the chain into LoHi.

"Then you had all sorts of people moving from the Highland neighborhood to downtown because they could do it." said architect Chris Shears of Shears Adkins Rockmore, which designed The...