A trial that kicked off Tuesday will determine whether a local architectural firm is to blame for project delays at an apartment building in Denver’s RiNo neighborhood or whether it is being scapegoated.
“This project was delayed partly, if not entirely, due to the design team’s errors,” Brock Fleming, a part-owner of Flora with Belay Development, testified Tuesday afternoon.
Flora, at 3500 Chestnut Place, has 92 apartments and 15,000 square feet of commercial space. Its developers initially imagined it as a condo building but they pivoted to apartments before breaking ground in 2021 when faced with pandemic-era delays and uncertainty.
Flora’s development team was Edee Anesi, her father Greg Anesi, Fleming and the food hall creator Brad Arguello. After several setbacks, Flora opened in the spring of 2024.
“It is an apartment building that is at the top of or near the top of the Denver market,” Jonathan Pray, an attorney for Flora’s developers, said during opening arguments Tuesday.
Between 2018 and 2023, when it left the project, Flora was designed by Studio Completiva, a firm in RiNo whose other projects include the Great Hall at Denver International Airport.
“Studio C was faced with the choice of continuing to work for free or walk off the job, and continuing to work for free would have resulted in bankruptcy. Yong Cho will testify to that financial reality,” Daniel Woodward, an attorney for the studio, said of its principal.
“Studio C and its consultants acted within their standards of care throughout the life of this project, despite dealing with difficult circumstances and with difficult owners.”
Flora’s owners are seeking $3.6 million from Studio Completiva, which includes payments the development team made under protest and additional costs they say were incurred as a result of design flaws.
“The architect walked off the job,” Pray said of the defendant, “and abandoned this project.”
Studio Completiva is seeking $130,000 for work it claims it was never paid for.
“The owners actually made voluntary decisions to incur additional costs throughout the course of the project and then, only after Studio C began demanding payment, did the owners say, ‘Well, we incurred those costs due to some error on your part,’” Woodward said.
The opening day’s testimony centered around Fleming, who owns less than 1% of Flora but acted as the owners’ representative during its development. Throughout the morning and all afternoon, he walked Denver District Judge Bruce Jones through the development team’s decision to pivot from condos to apartments and the work of Studio Completiva.
“Yong was the principal of the company, they have a lot of projects, he wears a lot of hats for Studio Completiva, and his attention fell off within a few months,” he said of Cho.
“Did you get the sense that he was too busy?” Pray asked Fleming, who said, “Yes.”
While noting several alleged design flaws at Flora, Fleming spent much of his time on an issue with the brick facade that required a redesign of Flora’s exterior wall during construction.
“That was a significant impact to the schedule, and the resolution of that redesign took a long time,” according to Flora’s co-developer. “I want to say several weeks, if not months.”
The case will be decided by Jones rather than a jury. His verdict could take months.
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