Denver Health has purchased a site at the edge of its campus where a national developer once hoped to build apartments.
The health care provider paid $5.5 million last week, according to public records, for a 0.7-acre site along Bannock Street just south of Sixth Avenue. That works out to $180 a square foot.
Denver Health didn’t respond to requests for comment about the purchase. It hasn’t submitted any development plans to the city for the site, which is made up of multiple parcels zoned C-MX-8. That generally allows for up to eight stories and a mix of uses.
The bulk of Denver Health’s operations are north of Sixth Avenue. But the system has a paramedic training facility across Bannock Street from the site it just bought, and a parking garage behind that along Acoma Street.
In early 2022, Dallas-based developer Mill Creek Residential submitted plans to Denver proposing an eight-story, 219-unit apartment building at the site, which is at the north end of the Baker neighborhood.
But Mill Creek never bought the site. The parcels were sold by Bannock Properties LLC, an entity managed by Thomas Barenberg.
In 2022, two dilapidated homes sat on the southern end of the site. But those have since been demolished.
This is Denver Health’s second real estate deal south of Sixth Avenue since August. That month, the system sold a parking lot at 155 W. Fifth Ave. to developer Jeff Shanahan of Shanahan Development, who plans to build an income-restricted housing project.
That deal happened because Shanahan sold a site he’d been planning to develop near Burnham Yard to the Denver Broncos, who intend to build a new stadium at the former railyard.
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