WEST COLFAX FR FRENZY: MOMENTUM BUILDS AROUND ST. ANTHONY REDEVELOPMENT, LIGHT RAIL.

• Author: Titus, Steve
• Position: REAL ESTATE REPORT

Real estate development around central Denver is as hot as ever, and investors are constantly on the lookout for undervalued, under-developed lots to exploit for their next construction project. But until recently, even close proximity to light rail wasn't enough to get the attention of builders in one central Denver neighborhood.

For the last decade, West Colfax Avenue provided a firebreak from gentrification in the popular Sloan's Lake neighborhood. While new duplex and other multi-family projects sprang up around the lake, the south side of Colfax--just three blocks from the "W" light rail line--was a pariah. That is, until the former St. Anthony Hospital redevelopment started to take shape. With the opening of a handful of new restaurants and brew pubs, all in walking distance from several light rail stops, the development wildfire has jumped the road, engulfing all of West Colfax and creating the next hot neighborhood. "When you see anchor restaurants like Tap & Burger, Little Man Ice Cream, Alamo Draft House and Cinema and more, you start to think differently about an area we may not have considered even just a few years ago as a place we may want to live," says Krista Paul, an entrepreneur and real estate investor.

Paul and her husband, Jeff Macco, currently live in the popular Lower Highlands (LoHi) neighborhood and are in the planning stages of building a new four-unit townhome project in their adopted West Colfax neighborhood.

"We think it is today where LoHi was 10 years ago," Paul says.

Since the early 2000s, the neighbor-hood around Sloan's Lake has been a hotbed of redevelopment, fueled, in part, by zoning regulations that encourage more density on lots currently occupied by older single-family homes. But favorable zoning alone couldn't get builders interested in crossing to the south of a still-seedy Colfax Avenue. Even the introduction of light rail wasn't enough to turn builders' heads. But by 2006, Peter Park, Denver's then-director of planning, was scrapping the city's patchwork zoning code and laying the kindling for what would become a rebirth in many of Denver's oldest neighborhoods.

Park, who oversaw a zoning code rewrite in Milwaukee before coming to Denver, focused on creating transit-friendly zoning that increased density and lowered parking requirements for residential development the closer you got to public-transit opportunities. The uniform planning, called "form based" zoning, gave builders a predictable basis...