A Sun Valley corner that no longer serves kids in the classroom could soon give them a place to live.
Chicago-based Evergreen Real Estate Group submitted a proposal to Denver last month to construct an 80-unit complex at 1275 Decatur St. Three- and four-bedroom apartments are planned.
“We always hear about the enrollments at the schools going down. A big piece of that is no one has anywhere to live,” said Javonni Butler, who leads Evergreen’s western operations.
“There’s just not many family-size units in the Denver metro,” he added.
The Lions Club of Denver has owned the 0.8-acre property, home to a vacant school building, since 1959, records show. Butler said he’s under contract to buy the site, and anticipates closing in December. Construction on the $41 million project is expected to begin by early 2027.
Dottie Lynn, a member of the Denver Lions Club board of directors, said the organization previously tried to build a new daycare facility on the site. Those plans were upended by the pandemic.
“When we started [fundraising], the new building was going to be about $3.5 million. As of last year, that cost was going to be about $9.5 to $10 million. … It went totally off the charts. It was just impossible to do,” she said.
Taylor said his firm was awarded the project after a public request by the Lions Club for a developer to reimagine the site.
The units will be restricted to families making between 80% and 120% of the area median income. For a family of three, that’s $93,800 to $151,320; for a family of four, it’s $104,200 to $168,120. The project is intended to serve middle-income families, with the Colorado Housing and Finance Authority giving the development $1.6 million in its first-ever Middle-Income Housing Tax Credit award. The state program launched last year.
“It was really compelling, to me specifically for middle income, with the Denver Housing Authority doing a lot of work in the area, there’s a lot of LIHTC (low-income housing projects) in the area, but there’s not really too much middle-income family housing,” Taylor said.
In addition to the state tax credits, which are sold by the developer to raise equity, Denver-based Weave Social Finance is backing the project as an equity investor, with debt making up the rest of the project cost. Lorcan O’Herlihy Architects out of Los Angeles, California, designed the building.
The building design features a wavy stucco pattern that wraps around the complex. A courtyard with a playground is planned for the middle of the structure, with open walkways to rooms surrounding it. The corner is adjacent to Rude Park and the Rude Recreation Center.
“That’s why we’re calling it Park Place. You’re surrounded by greenery over there,” Taylor said.
Elsewhere in town, Evergreen is working through a 170-unit project at 4995 Washington St., where a former used-car lot is being redeveloped into housing and a library branch, the first in Globeville. The company also plans to break ground on a 60-unit project just south of the Denver Health campus in Baker.
“I opened the office back in the fall of 2021 here and we’re working on a number of various projects in the city and throughout the state,” Taylor said.
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