While trams and trolleys have been off Denver streets for 75 years, a piece of their history is key in creating the city’s newest apartment project.
Local income-restricted housing developers Medici Communities and the Urban Land Conservancy are working together on a planned 63-unit income-restricted apartment building at the northwest corner of Gilpin Street and 35th Avenue in Denver’s Cole neighborhood.
“Being so close to downtown and being so close to Five Points and the River North Art District, Cole is gentrifying quickly,” said Andrea Burns, a spokeswoman for the conservancy.
The building is designed with a brick facade and will go up on a 2.3-acre concrete pad. It’s next door to the Tramway Nonprofit Center, a 1930s tram and bus storage building that occupies three-fourths of the block between 35th and 36th avenues and Franklin and Gilpin streets.
The conservancy bought the block in 2007 for $2.5 million, according to public records. The tramway building is home to 14 organizations and has been a hub for nonprofits since the 1990s.
“When you realize the after-school programs that are happening there that are all free for kids from the Cole neighborhood, there’s no doubt that there is a need for more affordable housing in this place,” Burns said.
The deal for the apartment project calls for the conservancy to lease the land for 99 years to Medici — which will build the four-story complex — ensuring that the apartments remain income-restricted for decades to come.
But a lot has to happen before hammers are swinging on-site.
The conservancy demolished an old building to make way for development in 2018 and considered condos for it in 2020. But zoning challenges got in the way; the property is under the outdated code, which the city updated in 2010.
“The city’s old zoning code, and the complexities and obstacles related to that zoning, made it very difficult. So, this is a restart,” Burns said.
The Denver Planning Board will be the first city body to review the rezoning application on July 16, Burns added. The new custom zoning being applied for will allow the firms to build the apartment building while protecting the existing tramway building next door from development.
Before the conservancy, the block was owned by local philanthropist Chuck Phillips. He sold the site to ULC in 2007 and died in 2021. Phillips’ family trust also owns the real estate for Wyatt Academy, a public charter school that leases the building immediately north of the tramway building.
“We have really felt an imperative, as part of our mission, to try to deliver affordable housing here, also knowing that that was what Chuck Phillips wanted to do, and he wasn’t able to do it in his lifetime,” Burns said.
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