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Page 26 — Multifamily Properties Quarterly — November 2016
wanted to stay in. He found his part-
ner in Al Feld, founder and president
of The Feld Co., who was bored with
the present day’s “average apart-
ments” and was eager to focus his
design-oriented skills on something
new and different. Together they set
out to push the envelope in terms of
what people expected to see in an
apartment in Denver.
While the process was far from
over, a vision began to take form.
“Because it had a 60-acre lake, which
is obviously one of the big, unique
amenities and catalysts to the whole
property, we thought we could do
something much higher end and dif-
ferent than the normal apartment
projects,” said Koelbel.
The location, at the time, was
rather marginal, Koelbel said. So to
further set the community apart,
they built a 26,000-square-foot club-
house on the lake. “It became quite
a novelty, to the point that we liter-
ally had to go to appointment-only
for rentals because people wanted
to come out and see what these two
young guys were doing out here in
this hybrid location,” he said. “It got a
lot of exposure, and we started see-
ing some pretty good success, which
validated that we really could cre-
ate something unique and special if
we did the right kind of apartment
units.”
In total, they built six different
communities between 1989 and 1997
on the land, totaling 1,523 units fea-
turing 42 different floor plans, from
townhome rentals with double-car
attached garages to standard three-
story walk-ups. At the time, the
Breakers Resort’s presence pushed
other Denver multifamily developers
and accelerated the philosophy of
providing a better overall package to
the renter community, Koelbel said.
“It’s kind of interesting that phi-
losophy, vision and strategy worked
because we were so different,” he
said. “But over time, the market
started catching up with us. All of a
sudden, we weren’t quite as compet-
itive as we were at the initial stages.”
Standard upgrades to the commu-
nity were performed over the years,
including in 2006 when the Bascom
Group bought out Feld’s interest to
became the majority owner. Over the
last eight or nine years, the Break-
ers has seen another $15 million or
$17 million worth of improvements,
Koelbel said. This past year, Bascom
decided to sell its majority ownership.
However, the project had become a
legacy piece to Koelbel, and one that
held “great emotional attachment” to
him and his company, having been
a project he’d worked on for almost
his entire career. Koelbel also believed
there was still upside opportunity for
the Breakers Resort, largely due to its
location.
The property went from a C+ loca-
tion, without any major facilities or
services nearby, to an ideal infill loca-
tion over the past 27 years, he said.
This is thanks in large part to being
located near Lowry and Stapleton,
both enjoying successful redevel-
opments as well as the Fitzsimons
Anschutz Center, which will employ
over 30,000 people, and Cherry Creek,
which has been enjoying a major
growth spurt in the past 10 years.
The Next Step
In early October, the Breakers Resort
sold for a record price of about $350
Project Profile
ARA, a Newmark Co.
An aerial of the Breakers Resort, which features 1,523 units on 190 acres of land and includes a 60-acre lake.