Plans for a small Cherry Creek condominium building have been nixed, and half the development site has a new owner.
Frank Penn and Dave Bracht, two longtime friends, planned to build a four-story project across two parcels at 325 and 329 Detroit St., which combined are just over a quarter acre.
The pair got the site rezoned in September 2023, and refined their design earlier this year, adding some office and retail space, and saying groundbreaking could be a year away.
Last week, however, Bracht sold his 6,250-square-foot parcel at 325 Detroit St., which he’d bought for $2.8 million in September 2022. The buyer paid $3.25 million.
Penn, meanwhile, is also trying to sell his adjacent parcel at 329 Detroit St. That plot is the same size, and has a nearly 2,000-square-foot building on it. Roche Fore of Roche & Co. is marketing it.
In a Tuesday evening email, Bracht declined to comment on why the condo project wasn’t moving forward. On a Wednesday afternoon call, Penn told BusinessDen that they couldn’t get the project to pencil.
“It was just the perfect storm of high interest rates and high-construction costs,” Penn said.
The decision to nix the project was made in the spring, he said.
Bracht’s parcel was bought by Camran Wani and Orhan Deli, operating as Arman Group LLC. The two men operate Erol’s Tailoring and Alterations two blocks away at 314 Columbine St. They financed the deal with a loan from Bank of Colorado.
Wani told BusinessDen the purchase was made as a long-term investment. In the short term, he and Deli will likely use the existing building at 325 Detroit St. as an extension of their business, which they purchased in 2022 and which is “running out of space” on Columbine Street, where they are renters.
Down the road, the two men are interested in redeveloping the property, Wani said.
Penn, meanwhile, has owned the 329 Detroit parcel since 2016, when he paid $1.2 million, records show. If an attractive offer doesn’t come in, he said, he might return to leasing out the property.
Larger assemblages are typically more valuable on a per-square-foot basis than individual parcels. But Penn said the pair marketed the lots separately because he and Bracht didn’t necessarily believe that was the case for 325 and 329 Detroit St., which they felt could be in demand by owner-operators.
Cherry Creek is still poised to get new condos. A Waldorf Astoria-branded project at 185 Steele St. should break ground by the third quarter next year, developer Property Markets Group said in October.
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