The University of Denver has been buying up condominiums in a small building next to its campus after quietly selling a nearby house it owned for nearly a century.
The private school has purchased 13 residential units in the four-story building at 2295 E. Asbury Ave. since May 2024, with the most recent deals taking place this month, according to public records.
The purchases range from $220,000 to $270,000 per unit. In total, records show DU has spent $3.2 million for nearly half the building, which has around 30 units in all.
Jon Stone, a spokesman for the university, didn’t directly respond when asked if DU expected to purchase additional units, but said it has “always looked for real estate opportunities that are located in close proximity to campus.”
The condo building is adjacent to the Ritchie Center, DU’s athletics hub.
“Students, faculty and staff are given first priority to lease the housing,” Stone said in an email.
While DU is adding housing along Asbury Place, last year it quietly sold a residence two blocks east of campus at 2100 S. Columbine St.
The “Buchtel Bungalow” was once home to Henry Buchtel, who simultaneously served as governor of Colorado and chancellor of DU in the early 1900s. His daughter sold the house to DU in 1927 for $6,000.
Over the years, according to the college magazine, the house was a faculty club, residence hall, fraternity and home to DU’s final football coach (the school dropped the sport in the early 1960s). In recent years, it had been a housing option for DU leadership moving to Denver.
In November 2024, however, DU sold the home for $1.1 million.
“The house was no longer receiving enough use to justify the cost of maintaining the property,” Stone said.
Months before the sale, Denver included the Buchtel Bungalow in its newly created University Park Historic District. DU had opposed the inclusion, saying it might sell the home in the future.
“Inclusion in historic/design districts can make it burdensome for homeowners to make simple renovations or improvements … This may be a deterrent to some potential buyers,” Mark DeLorenzo, the university’s senior vice president for business and financial affairs, wrote at the time.
