Colorado Real Estate Journal - February 5, 2014
East West Partners in Denver is best known as the developer of Riverfront Park, a tony, mixed-use neighborhood that transformed abandoned railroad yards behind Union Station. And more recently, it teamed up with Continuum Partners to develop buildings around Union Station. So at first blush it may seem its most recent assignment is a bit out of its wheelhouse. East West has been appointed by the Arapahoe County District Court as the receiver for the troubled Landmark development, a mixed-use two-tower condominium with a strong retail component at Interstate 25 and Belleview Avenue in Greenwood Village. The assignment as receiver comes through a relationship with a member of an investment group, a consortium of institutional investment firms, that purchased the Landmark complex last September, explained Amy Cara, a principal at East West Partners. The $100 million Landmark loan was purchased by Neuberger Berman and Strategic Value Partners and East West had a history with a key player at SVP when he was with Starwood, Cara said. East West worked with him with a Starwood partnership for land around Denver Union Station. East West also had been a receiver before, although not in Colorado. “In Charleston (S.C.), we ended up being the receiver in a project called the Tides,” a luxury condominium tower, which also is controlled by a SVP/Neuberger Berman Partnership, she said. But the Landmark is different than the Tides, she said. In the Tides, East West was appointed the receiver because the lender took back the project, while at the Landmark, Neuberger and SVP bought the note because it sees potential in the development and wants to own it. East West shares that vision. “East West Partners is excited to bring the vision of The Landmark to fruition,” Cara said. “We are actually acting much more like a developer at the Landmark than as a typical receiver.” The retail has great potential, according to Cara and Melissa “Mel” Machell, the broker with Continuum Partners who East West has brought on lease it. The Comedy Works and Vectra Bank own their own locations, leaving about 140,000 square feet in the development that is 68 percent occupied. Most of the retail vacancy is on upper floors and in the Meridian building. “One of the things about Landmark is that it already is a destination entertainment district,” Machell said. “We want to continue to build on the strengths of the existing restaurants there without cannibalizing them,” she said. Its location also is truly Main and Main along the southeast corridor. “We have very strong demographics and incredible traffic counts,” she said. “You have all of the office in the tech center area during the week, and with the Comedy Works and movie theater, you have great weekend traffic, too.” She noted that she has been leasing space at Continuum’s Belmar in Lakewood for the past 14 years. Machell, in fact, began leasing space at Belmar’s predecessor, the Villa Italia Mall. “The Landmark is very similar to Belmar in that it is a mixeduse development with a residential, restaurant and entertainment component,” Machell said Cara noted that in addition to ground-floor retail, they have some “nontraditional” space available on the second and third floors. “This could be quasi-office space,” Machell said, such as a medical office or a dentist’s office. “You would not put a traditional apparel store there because it would be more of a destination place as opposed to an impulse place where people would just walk by and drop in.” Currently, she is speaking to a number of restaurants seeking about 1,500 sf to 6,500 sf. “We could actually go a bit larger, to about 7,000 square feet, where we can combine some spaces,” Cara said. She said they are looking for a broad mix of tenants. “It’s good to have those independent restaurants and also have strong, national brands that do a good job,” Cara said. She also said they hope to attract some first-to-market retailers. “First to market is always desirable,” Cara said. “They create a lot of buzz.” In addition, they have an approximately 12,000-sf parcel of undeveloped land for a new pad. “That piece of land is right on I-25 with great visibility,” Cara said. “It is a great piece for a future development. We think it likely will have multiple tenants, although it is possible that a single user might want it. Time will tell.”