Buz Koelbel, who led his father’s Denver-area real estate firm for nearly 40 years before stepping down from the top job earlier this year, has died.
Koelbel, 72, died Thursday from blood cancer, according to his family.
Buz Koelbel (Provided by Koelbel and Co.)
Koelbel’s father, Walter A. Koelbel Sr., was a Michigan native who moved to Colorado for military training in World War II, then stayed to attend the University of Colorado Boulder. He founded Koelbel and Co. at age 26 in 1952 as a residential brokerage and found early success buying land to the south of Denver in the path of the region’s growth.
“Early on, my dad realized that dealing with the real-estate agents and the brokers wasn’t as much fun as looking for good land and figuring out what to do with it,” Buz Koelbel told Avid Lifestyle, a publication that covers Denver’s southern suburbs, in 2021.
Koelbel, born the same year his father founded the company, was his father’s junior. But he acquired his nickname early on, thanks to his toddler older sister’s mispronunciation of “baby brother.”
“My sister couldn’t say Walter and she called me her little baby buzzer — and it just stuck,” he told the Villager newspaper in 2017. “When I was learning cursive in first or second grade, I looked at it and thought it sounds the same with one ‘z’ as two.”
Koelbel and his father’s company grew up together.
“To get us kids out of the house, he’d take us on property tours,” he told the Villager. “But probably the most significant memory is when they started converting my grandparents’ Hereford cattle farm into what is now Pinehurst Country Club and community. We used to play in the cornfields out there as a kid. That was our first big flagship community.”
Koelbel graduated from Thomas Jefferson High School and, like his father, UC Boulder, where his family became a major donor. The university’s Leeds School of Business is located in the Koelbel Building.
After graduating in 1974, Koelbel worked in property management in San Francisco for two years before joining Koelbel and Co. in 1976. He was named president in 1985. His father died in December 2011.
Koelbel and Co.’s development activity has been varied. The firm has developed single-family home communities in the Denver area, including The Preserve in Greenwood Village, as well as Rendezvous in Grand County. It also developed the region’s largest apartment complex — The Breakers Resort, now TAVA Waters, in southeast Denver, which set a record when it sold in 2016. The company also developed 10 income-restricted housing projects during his tenure.
The firm, however, isn’t just residential. Commercial projects have included retail space in Parker, a business park in Louisville and RiNo’s Catalyst office building. Another office building is underway in Aurora geared at defense contractors. In recent months, Koelbel has been the buyer as sellers have unloaded Denver Tech Center office buildings at big losses.
The firm didn’t stray outside Colorado for decades. But last year, Koelbel and Co. broke ground on a Catalyst office building in Omaha.
Koelbel stepped down from day-to-day responsibilities at the company in the spring, handing the title of president and CEO to son Carl Koelbel and taking on the title of chairman. His other sons, Walt and Dean, are also executives at the firm. Koelbel and Co. calls itself “the longest operating family-owned real estate development firm in the region.”
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“We’ve all got what my dad calls the dinner-table DNA,” Carl Koelbel told the Villager in 2017. “It was growing up and hearing my dad talk about real estate. It just got embedded within us.”
Koelbel was a co-founder of the Denver South Economic Development Partnership, the Common Sense Institute and the High Line Canal Conservancy, according to his family. He served as a board member for a variety of organizations including the Denver Museum of Nature and Science and CU Real Estate Center.
Koelbel is survived by Sherri, his wife of 41 years, as well as his four children — Carl (Fallon), Walt (Laura), Dean (Kristin), and Bethany Mihalcin (Justin) — and four siblings: Lynn Stambaugh (Jim), Bob (Deb), Leslie Webb (Tom) and Laurie Chahbandour (John). He is also survived by 11 grandchildren who, according to his family, gave him a new nickname: “Bop.”
A memorial service will take place on Oct. 1 at 1:30 p.m. at Bethany Lutheran Church in Cherry Hills Village. A reception will follow at Cherry Hills Country Club. In lieu of flowers, his family asks that donations be made to Junior Achievement or the High Line Canal Conservancy.
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