Real Estate & Construction  September 19, 2014

Pearl West: ‘A Boulderesque kind of place’

BOULDER — With high-end office vacancy rates in downtown Boulder hovering at 2 percent, Pearl West developers plan to cash in, offering nearly 200,000 square feet of commercial space with an almost unobstructed view of the Flatirons and a perch on one of the most desirable blocks of Pearl Street.

A group of about 30 investors including Denver-based Nichols Partnership Inc. formed Ten Eleven Pearl LLC to take on an $80 million redevelopment of the property at 1048 Pearl St. and the adjoining property to the south at 1023 Walnut St. The site used to house the Daily Camera newspaper buildings.

In late 2012, Ten Eleven Pearl purchased the property for $13.5 million from Karlin Real Estate, a Los Angeles-based real estate investment and development group. Karlin got the ball rolling on the redevelopment after it bought the property for $9 million in 2010.

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“This, I think, is the most significant project in Boulder in the last 50 years,” said Chris Shears, a Boulder resident and a principal of the Denver-based architecture firm Shears Adkins + Rockmore that is designing Pearl West. “With its public areas and green spaces, it will be a Boulderesque kind of place.”

Pearl West will have 127,000 square feet of high-end office space, 23,000 square feet of retail space, about 10,000 square feet for three restaurants, including one on the roof, and a public plaza at street level and a public rooftop deck. It also will have about 7,000 square feet of rooftop decks for tenant use. A rooftop bridge will connect the four-story Pearl and three-story Walnut buildings.

Below grade will be a robotic parking garage for tenants and a conventional parking garage for the public and tenants. Also below grade will be room for a 13,000-square-foot indie theater.

The 1.4-acre site is in the locally and nationally designated Downtown Historic District and lies within the Boulder Original Townsite, which was established by the Boulder City Town Co. in February 1859.

Shears said ensuring the project complied with historic guidelines required several years of work with the city and the Landmarks Design Review Committee.

Marcy Cameron, a historic-preservation planner with the city, said the historic guidelines address shapes and sizes of buildings, and materials used to make sure a new project is compatible with the surrounding buildings.

“We don’t want to replicate an historic building,” she said, “but we want it to be compatible with and blend into the area.”

Shears said he believes the project works well.

“We’ve listened to many groups including the planning commission, city staff, Plan Boulder and Downtown Boulder Inc.,” he said. “I live here, and we want to do this right. We want the community to be proud of this building.”

One of the issues with office space in downtown Boulder is that there aren’t many large floor plates available for major companies. In the past, companies that start in Boulder have moved out because they’ve outgrown their space.

Lynda Gibbons, founder, president and managing broker of commercial real estate brokerage Gibbons-White Inc., is an investor in and leasing agent for Pearl West. She said Pearl West could accommodate a tenant requiring 50,000 square feet.

Earlier this year, Crestone Capital Advisors LLC signed on to take 28,000 square feet of space on the top floor of the Pearl Street side of the property.

“We’re really excited to be a part of the building,” said Patience Baldwin, a spokeswoman for Crestone. “It’s an amazing location at 11th and Pearl, and it’s going to be one of the best locations in Boulder,”

High-end office space in Boulder is at a premium, with a vacancy rate less than 2 percent and average per-square-foot lease rates of $39, according to the most recent report compiled by Guidance Corporate Realty Advisors, which has offices in Denver and Boulder.

Gibbons said Pearl West lease rates for retail space ranges from $48 to $70 per square foot, and high-end office space is going for $34 to $38 per square foot. She said there is a healthy interest in Pearl West and anticipates she will be announcing more tenants in December.

Ten Eleven Pearl, made up mostly of local investors, believes the project at the west end of the Pearl Street Mall will be an “uber-green” boon to the area. It is being constructed to meet LEED Platinum requirements, the highest level of green certification issued by the U.S. Green Building Council.

Randy Nichols of the Nichols Partnership estimated that going green is adding about $500,000 to construction costs.

Doug Storum can be reached at 303-630-1959, 970-416-7369 or dstorum@bizwestmedia.com.

BOULDER — With high-end office vacancy rates in downtown Boulder hovering at 2 percent, Pearl West developers plan to cash in, offering nearly 200,000 square feet of commercial space with an almost unobstructed view of the Flatirons and a perch on one of the most desirable blocks of Pearl Street.

A group of about 30 investors including Denver-based Nichols Partnership Inc. formed Ten Eleven Pearl LLC to take on an $80 million redevelopment of the property at 1048 Pearl St. and the adjoining property to the south at 1023 Walnut St. The site used to house the Daily…

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