Colorado Real Estate Journal -

Marathon Oil campus being marketed at $23 million price

A well-known infill development site in Littleton is being taken to market at a price of $23 million, or $6.88 per square foot.

The former Marathon Oil Petroleum Technology Center campus at the northeast corner of South Broadway and East Dry Creek Road in Littleton is being touted as one of the best infill opportunities in the Denver metro area, and at 77 acres, it is one of the largest.

An approved development plan for the property, which is known as Littleton Village, allows for 512 multifamily units, 250,000 sf of retail and 388 single-family residences.

“I think it’s really one of the best large development sites in the Denver metro area, and really one of only a couple in the city of Littleton,” said Wade Fletcher of the Newmark Knight Frank Fredrick Ross, who has the property co-listed with NKFFR brokers Steve Roesinger and Tim Harrington.

“We think developers are looking for lower-risk, higher probability-of-success properties, and that mainly means infill sites. Of this magnitude, there are not many. We think it’s a prime piece of real estate.” Roesinger said the listing team has talked to developers interested in the entire site, as well as residential and commercial developers that may be willing to take the whole site, develop a portion of it and sell the rest. “Almost everybody we’ve talked to has been interested in it. It is a large development project, though,” he said.

Marathon Oil closed the campus in 2000, at which time research-and-development activities were relocated to Houston. The property has frontage on Broadway and Dry Creek.

A development plan was approved in early 2006, and development was waylaid by the recession.

For the city of Littleton, the development has the potential to provide a diversity of housing, from single-family to townhomes to condos and high-density multifamily, said Community Development Director Glen Van Nimwegen.

“One of the things we hear people clamoring for is a single-family home that meets our aging demographic in Littleton,” he said.

“Certainly the city is excited for the potential of 250,000 sf of new retail space,” Van Nimwegen said.

“If you look at an aerial, it hits you right in the face. It is the only site in that part of the world for a development of that size,” said Roesinger. “It is an island of suburban development that can be done with lots of demographic strength all around it.” Within a fivemile radius of the property, there is a population of 250,000 and average household income of more than $107,000.

“If you wanted to do something here, and I think demographics show that you do, you couldn’t do it anywhere else (in the south metro area).” Littleton Village is owned by a local family that holds it as part of a limited liability company called Littleton Village LLC.