‘The end of the line is with me’: Family sells East Colfax property after a century

Mark Lampert has never lived without 2020-2040 E. Colfax Ave. in the family.

The 71-year-old and some family members — his siblings, cousins and their mothers  — sold the 11,000-square-foot retail property last month for $1.6 million, or $145 per square foot. Tenants include Lion’s Lair, one of Denver’s oldest dive bars and a venue for punk and indie rock.

Mark Lampert’s great-great uncle Max Schiff bought the property in 1925, when a building boom was shifting Colfax from residential to commercial. There’s a major transformation now as well, as crews install a bus rapid transit line down the middle of the corridor.

“We could have held on longer until the BRT was done and probably sold it for more,” Mark Lampert said. “But, you know, frankly, all of us talked and we thought, let the next person, the next generation, take it and run with it to another high level.”

The building holds four retail spaces. Besides Lion’s Lair, there’s a liquor store, tattoo parlor and marijuana dispensary. While their lease agreements say a new building owner can force the businesses to move, Mark Lampert said he wanted to sell the property to someone who would keep them there.

That’s why, he said, he accepted $200,000 less than the property’s list price.

“There’s a close feeling with the tenants that are in there now,” Mark Lampert said.

The buyer, Commerce City resident Joginder Singh, initially reached out wanting to get the liquor store lease extended so he could buy it. Mark Lampert saw an opportunity and offered to instead sell him the building, which had been on the market for a few weeks.

“At a time when people are stepping away from East Colfax, he was in an opposite boat,” said Unique Properties broker Hudson Cramer, who represented the family alongside colleagues Michael DeSantis and Brett MacDougall.

Financing was challenging because of the dispensary and marijuana’s illegal status on a federal level. So the sellers stepped up and lent Singh $1.1 million at 5% interest.

And Mark Lampert’s run with the building isn’t completely over. He will still manage the property through another family company, Ann Lampert Realty Inc., which his grandmother started in the 1950s. He said she was one of the first women in Colorado to get licensed as a real estate agent.

“My grandmother would always say any husband would not buy a house without showing his wife a kitchen,” he said.

The property management firm oversees about 200 doors between Denver and Aurora. Mark Lampert, a George Washington High School graduate, spent his early career building apartments around the metro area with his father. There’s a subdivision in Denver’s Mar Lee neighborhood named after the family.

The family’s real estate gene, though, will go extinct with him.

“The end of the line is with me, unfortunately,” Mark Lampert said.

“Unfortunately, I burned my kids out at an early age,” he quipped. “I brought them to the office so many times that I had a little alcove in my office so they would play salesperson and buyer.”

Now in the twilight of his career, Mark Lampert insists he’s not sentimental about 2020-2040 E. Colfax.

Still, during the course of an interview he noted that he saw “Mary Poppins” for the first time six decades ago next door, where the Aladdin Theater once stood. And he recalled his Aunt Cissy was proud to own the real estate for a liquor store, tattoo parlor and bar. She’d visit her tenants often and Sugar Bear, the risque leather-and-lace tattoo shop artist, would always want to ink her.

It was emblematic of Colfax at the time — a seedy underbelly of Denver dotted with motels that Mark Lampert said were “rented by the hour.”