5 Highlights from Boulder Commercial Real Estate in 2018
This year was a significant one for commercial real estate in Boulder County. The meaning is obvious: it was a good year for business. The Boulder market rarely struggles to thrive, even in recession years, but the remarkable change we are seeing recently is the increasing number of big entities taking an interest in Boulder.
Google. 2018 was the highly anticipated year in which Google opened the doors to a newly constructed Boulder campus (northwest corner of 30th Street and Pearl). While phase one officially created over 800 jobs, more will be added in phase two at the end of 2019. The building has capacity for up to 1,500 employees.
Amazon. In addition to opening a new 2.4 million square-foot fulfillment center in Thornton (1,500 new jobs and speedier deliveries for the holiday season!), Amazon opened a 37,000 square-foot office right in downtown Boulder (1900 15th Street) this fall. Amazon has called the Denver-Boulder-Broomfield area a tech hub and is actively adding hundreds of high-tech jobs to its location.
WeWork. We’ve had a lot to say about co-working spaces, but WeWork, which has announced they a Boulder location, further unearths the volume of upstarts creating demand for the co-working model. WeWork, WeWork also expanded its Denver presence this year when it took over seven floors (139,000 square feet) of the Tabor Center on the 16th Street Mall.
The endorsement of two powerhouses like Google and Amazon and the country’s biggest co-working space is only the beginning of Boulder’s burgeoning tech hub. We see little evidence of this trend slowing at all in the coming years.
Redevelopments
Alpine-Balsam. In 2015, the city (backed by a lot of stakeholders) purchased the property that is the site of Boulder Community Hospital (Broadway between Alpine and Balsam). Plans are currently under way to redevelop the 8.8-acre site into a “multi-generational hub for community life and local government services
Macy’s. Speaking of redevelopments, in November we learned of another big redev: the Macy’s store at the TwentyNinth Street Mall. With a changing retail landscape, Macy’s, who built the property in 1982 is likely to get more value by redeveloping the property into multiple floors of office space, parking spaces, rooftop decks, a courtyard and a fitness center. Better get your half off flatware while you can!
