Asher Luzzatto just got the keys to two more downtown office towers.
The developer from Taos, New Mexico, purchased the Denver Energy Center at 1625 and 1675 N. Broadway on Monday for $5.25 million, or $6.80 per square foot.
The buildings, which are 28 and 29 stories, span 770,000 square feet and are just 18% leased. The 1.4-acre complex was formerly known as World Trade Center Denver.
Both buildings are roughly 45 years old and were sold by JPMorgan Chase, which foreclosed on the property in 2022. The previous owner, Los Angeles-based Gemini Rosemont, paid $176 million for the Denver Energy Center in April 2013.
Luzzatto, the son of a Southern California developer, wants to convert one of the towers into 350 to 400 apartments while keeping the other as office space. The ground floor plaza is to get a major facelift with new tenants and programming.
“We’ve been working through design. We already have a unit matrix and some of the common area stuff planned,” Luzzatto said.
Luzzatto plans to finance most of the project, expected to cost well over $100 million, through his personal networks at his family business, The Luzzatto Co. He also plans to submit an application to the Downtown Development Authority next month to help finance the build but has yet to decide on the dollar amount he’ll need.
He’s tapped Dallas-based Beck Group as the designer and general contractor.
When complete, the residential tower will come with a rooftop deck and a movie theater inside, Luzzatto said. He wants the other tower to continue to embrace the energy industry, foreseeing a coworking space that is home to, say, a climate nonprofit and clean energy startups.
“We’re going to really lean into the sort of history of energy in Denver, in the Denver area, and we’re going to use a lot of light and sound,” Luzzatto said.
The project on Broadway is one of two office conversions that Luzzatto is working on downtown. The other is at 621 and 633 17th St., where he wants to turn two towers built in 1957 and 1974 into 700 apartments.
That project has been held up by a 6,650-square-foot plot of land underneath one of the towers, which Luzzatto ground leases from Lakeside Amusement Park owner Rhoda Krasner. The two parties dispute the value of the ground, among other sticking points.
“We’re pretty deep into design, and I’d say we’ve made a ton of progress, even though we haven’t yet solved that,” Luzzatto said of that project.
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