1st new building in a decade

This is the first privately financed medical office building in the Uptown hospital district in more than a decade.

Denver-based Fleisher Smyth Brokaw announced today that it will build a $32 million, 95,000-square-foot medical office building at the southern edge of the Uptown Hospital District near downtown Denver, in what it says is the first private development of a medical office building in the Uptown area in more than a decade.

The Class A building at the southwest corner of East 17th Avenue and Lafayette St., is an easy walk to Exempla/St. Joseph’s Hospital, the Kaiser Permanente Medical Campus, Presbyterian/St. Luke’s Hospital and the Rocky Mountain Hospital for Children. The new building is part of Fleisher Smyth Brokaw’s long-term strategy to acquire and develop a significant medical office building portfolio in the Denver metropolitan area.

Fleisher Smyth Brokaw also announced that a major Denver medical practice has agreed to lease the entire top floor of the building. “Securing this prestigious practice as our lead tenant for 25 percent of the building will jump-start our leasing efforts,” said Glen Sibley, president of Fleisher Smyth Brokaw. He said the building will be financed from a combination of private equity, institutional equity, bank debt, and potentially tax credits. It will open in mid-2012.

Another look at the planned building in Uptown

The building will feature office floor plates of 22,000 to 25,000 square feet on floors five through eight and can accommodate an ambulatory surgery center, state-of-the art imaging services and a variety of other medical services. Ground floor retail/restaurant uses will complement the “growing vibrancy” of the 17th Avenue corridor, Sibley said. Structured parking for more than 300 cars is planned for the development. The top two floors feature an atrium. All office levels feature striking views of the downtown skyline and the Front Range.

“The high quality of the building, flexible floor plates, in-building parking, embedded technology and particularly strategic location adjacent to the mid-town medical campuses will be very attractive to a wide variety of medical office users,” said Sibley. “This new property can accommodate medical practices from as small as 800 square feet to 25,000 square feet”.

Designed by Denver architects The Mulhern Group, the building takes design cues from 19th, 20th and 21st century Denver buildings. It will include state-of-the-art Medical Office Building features and will incorporate the latest “green building” technology. Saunders Construction will build the building. Fleisher Smyth Brokaw will begin pre-leasing the property immediately.

The building will help create jobs, both in the short-term and long-term, Sibley said.

Economic engine

“In the short-term, it will create about 100 construction jobs for a year, while it is being built,” Sibley said. “In the long-term, we think it has the ability to generate about 200 permanent jobs.” The jobs, he said, will run the gamut, from extremely highly paid to entry level positions. Our building, along with the plans to build a new St. Joe’s Hospital, an effort that is underway as we speak, will offer some new opportunities regarding medical practices and research and health-care options that do not exist with the current existing inventory of space. Our building will serve the full spectrum of job creation, from the most highly paid physicians, scientists and other professionals, to other relatively lower-wage jobs.”

Plenty of housing choices

Sibley thinks the area housing market will get a boost from the new jobs.

“There is a wide-variety of housing stock in that immediate area, which is in walking distance from our building,” Sibley said. “There are 1890s vintage mansions available, as well as new public housing mixed in with market-rate properties. Housing, like the job, runs the gamut from the very high-end to public housing, and everything in-between. Not all neighborhoods provide such a variety of housing options.”

“This building is the next step in our plan to significantly increase our medical office holdings in the Denver and Front Range marketplace. We believe Denver will continue to experience solid growth in medical sector employment,” said Michelle Brokaw, CEO of Fleisher Smyth Brokaw.

Here is a ground-floor perspective of the planned medical office building in Uptown.

The property’s amenities include a patient drop-off area, first floor retail space, a comfortable lobby, covered in-building parking, high speed elevators, physician parking and expansive insulated glass. Access is easy via 17th Avenue, 18th Avenue and Park Avenue.

Fleisher Smyth Brokaw LLC is a privately-owned real estate firm. The firm specializes in the acquisition, development and asset-management of office, retail, and industrial properties in the Denver/Boulder metropolitan area. Owned by Michelle Brokaw and founded in 1987, Fleisher Smyth Brokaw has acquired or developed more than 40 properties, representing in excess of two million square feet of office, medical office, mixed-use, and residential buildings. Fleisher Smyth Brokaw continues to focus on the acquisition, investment and development of office and medical office properties throughout Colorado.

Contact John Rebchook at JRCHOOK@gmail.com

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