The Department of Personnel Administration presented an informational update to the Capital Development Committee on the future of the Centennial Building (1313 Sherman), a 50-year-old state office building with an estimated $120 million renovation cost, exploring options including office renovation, a public-private partnership conversion to housing and childcare, and outright sale. No vote was taken and no recommendation was made; the department expects to return to the committee after receiving a fair market appraisal within approximately one month.
Madam Vice Chair argued she would 'have a hard time getting on board with renovating it for office space or renovating it for residential when the building is in such disrepair' and that the return on investment would be so far out that the building would need renovating again before costs were recovered, implicitly challenging the prior legislative authorization for renovation. Tobin Fallen Winder acknowledged the $120 million cost and lack of current demand as countervailing factors but did not take a formal opposing position, as the department stated it has not yet made a recommendation.
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“Right now, the downtown Denver office market stands at a historic 39% vacancy rate. It's nothing that anyone is. I mean, you read the newspapers, you know how the vacancy rates in the downtown area have remained stubbornly low, stubbornly high. And we have, there's not been any new office inventory offered into the Marketplace since the second quarter of 2024.”
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Sign in to subscribeCapital Development Committee will come to order. Mr. Pogue, please call the roll. Senator Henrickson, Representative Lindsey. Here. Senator Pelton. Excused. Representatives Winter. Excused. Story. Here. Mr. Chair. Here. Members, we have Department of Personnel Administration here to give us a presentation. Who wants to start us off? Go ahead, just introduce yourself and start us off. Yes. Thank you Mr. Chair. Members of the committee, my name is Tobin Fallen Wider. I'm the the Deputy Director of Operations for the Department of Personnel Administration. Thank you for having us present today about the capital complex renovation projects and specifically about the cap Centennial building feasibility study update. So I'll start with the next slide. I'm going to run through some context slides. It's really just an update that I think you regularly receive about capital complex renovation projects. But just to sort of remind the committee, Capital Congress renovation was authorized by two senate bills. The goal was to address many of the deferred maintenance issues on the our buildings and outdated tenant space. So the plan was to renovate three buildings, the Annex 1570 grant in Centennial as well as some restoration and upgrade projects for the capital.…
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