Paul Frassanito rushed to jump on a “good deal” on a house in Denver’s West Colfax neighborhood in 2000. He made an offer — even before touring the home — soon after he moved from Albuquerque, N.M.
Since then, the area around his house on Vrain Street has retained some of its character, with several neighbors residing on the same street for generations. But it’s also seen some of the most rapid change in the city as new apartment complexes and townhomes have gone up. There are good and bad sides to that, with Frassanito, 56, counting himself as a fan of the businesses that have opened within walking distance.
But the increase in “high-density living” has made West Colfax noticeably more crowded, Frassanito said, raising concerns about the uptick in traffic and cars speeding close to where his children play.
“Within just three blocks of any direction from where we walk right now, there’s multiple projects going up,” he said. “Most of them are single-family homes that got taken down, and there’s duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes going up in their place.”
West Colfax is a neighborhood in flux, and, for some residents, that’s caused uneasiness over the pace of change. The last decade has brought new opportunities and a refreshed vibrancy, but, for many, the area’s changing demographics, rising rents and higher median income — markers of gentrification that have hit West Colfax harder than most neighborhoods along the thoroughfare — have prompted new worries of being priced out.
As The Denver Post took stock of how neighborhoods along Colfax Avenue have changed over the last decade, West Colfax stood out not only as a bookend to the corridor but also as a community that reflects so many of the ways Denver is transforming into a more expensive, more densely populated city.
Ten years ago, the average selling price of a home in West Colfax — which straddles Colfax Avenue for two to three blocks on either side, between Sheridan and Federal boulevards — was about $265,000, according to REcolorado, which provides real estate listings for metro Denver. Today, buyers shell out nearly triple that amount, with the average price reaching $732,000 for home sales during the year ending in March. West Colfax has become a hot market, with 205 annual home sales recorded in the last year that reflect a 153% increase in sales volume, compared to the same period a decade ago.
The clients of Caitlin Clough, a broker associate at real estate agency Milehimodern, sometimes gravitate to West Colfax “because there’s so much redevelopment,” she said. That means more opportunities to own recently built homes.
And the area’s multifamily zoning attracts investors because they can construct apartment complexes and townhomes — larger buildings with numerous units that are more likely to guarantee financial returns.
“Investors — they were licking their chops,” Clough said.
Buildings were razed and replaced in adjacent Denver neighborhoods, too, though the outcomes have varied so far.
To the north, Sloan’s Lake has become a real estate market that’s broadly considered unattainable by the standards of the average Denverite. The average price of a home has skyrocketed over the last decade to more than $1 million — up 168% from the $390,000 average price for homes sold between March 2013 and March 2014, REcolorado data shows.
And to the east, Sun Valley is also changing, but under different circumstances. That neighborhood, which stretches along the South Platte River from Empower Field to the Sixth Avenue Freeway, has long hosted large concentrations of public housing.
As reimagined affordable housing is built there now, much of it is purposely income-restricted — keeping it affordable for former residents, who intend to move back once construction wraps up.
“It’s a bit early yet to know if gentrification will manifest there in the same way we see it elsewhere,” said Councilwoman Jamie Torres.
A residential area between West Colfax Ave. and Sloan’s Lake Park in Denver on Wednesday, April 3, 2024. (Photo by Hyoung Chang/The Denver Post)
Redevelopment, new apartment buildings
But the most eye-catching changes have happened in West Colfax over the last decade.
One catalyst was the redevelopment of the former St. Anthony Hospital site, which also affected Sloan’s Lake. The project brought an Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, several apartment complexes, restaurants and bars. Other new and repurposed buildings are now largely situated within West Colfax’s borders — some fronting the corridor itself.
Row homes have popped up, along with a flurry of “slot” homes — or sideways-oriented townhouses wedged between older single-family houses — before the city reined in zoning rules for them.
The Alamo Drafthouse multiplex on West Colfax Avenue near Sloan’s Lake in Denver on April 25, 2017. (Photo by RJ Sangosti/The Denver Post)
West Colfax and Sloan’s Lake are “the latest neighborhoods that are transforming completely before our eyes in the last, probably, 15 to 20 years,” said Tom Romero, an associate professor of law at the University of Denver, whose academic research focuses on the city’s history of race relations. He said the areas’ demographics have fluctuated historically — but not without issues.
Over a century ago, Denver’s Jewish population largely resided in West Colfax. In the 1950s, as the Mexican-American population swelled, the westside communities along Colfax Avenue were at “the center of some really fascinating neighborhood tension,” Romero said.
Today, the once majority-minority neighborhood has grown to be much more white. Census estimates show that, between 2012 and 2022, non-Hispanic white residents went from making up about 32% of West Colfax’s population to more than 59% — the steepest increase of any neighborhood along Colfax Avenue in Denver.
“Gentrification is a high-level concern throughout my district and certainly in West Colfax, where we’ve seen the most amount of new and more expensive development in District 3,” Torres said.
West Colfax has seen among the sharpest rent increases, with the median rent rising by 66% over that same decade, to around $1,500 per month in 2022, according to census surveys. And the median household income increased by 141% during that period — from about $39,000 to more than $93,000. The rent and income figures were adjusted for inflation.
But affordable housing options still abound. The Denver Housing Authority manages public housing, including Westridge Homes, which it plans to redevelop, and Mulroy Apartments — accommodations for older people and residents with disabilities. Denver’s Office of Housing Stability has also invested in a number of Colfax hotels for redevelopment.
“Commentary from neighbors falls along the spectrum, from folks feeling like the neighborhood doesn’t have enough parking to support for more affordable housing to opposition to additional affordable housing,” Torres said.
Several West Colfax residents shared their opinions on the neighborhood’s shifting landscape, varying between appreciation for the area’s increased walkability and new businesses to frustration about the housing redevelopment.
Jordan Denning, 32, considers most of the changes to be “extremely positive.”
After living in a two-bedroom apartment in Five Points for about five years, Denning and his wife sought to buy a home of their own before starting a family. They looked at “kind of old and run-down” options in Capitol Hill and Uptown before buying a West Colfax townhome, which was built in place of a house.
“We weren’t dead set on West Colfax,” Denning said. “What drew us in was the value we got for what we were buying.”
The first-time homebuyers moved in June 2020 and are now raising their daughter there.
Denning recognizes that “our demographics might not be the same as the demographics of people who have lived there in the past 30 years.” But with both longstanding and new residents living side by side, he said, “we see a really cool mix of people” in West Colfax.
He hasn’t noticed as much active construction in recent years. Along Colfax and Federal, “I would love to see even more development happening,” Denning said.
But Jonathan Pira with the West Colfax Association of Neighbors worries the empty lots dotting the neighborhood will inevitably turn into more cramped apartment buildings, instead of grocery stores and other community amenities, “because that’s the highest profit margin.”
Jonathan Pira in front of his home, left, in Denver’s West Colfax neighborhood on Wednesday, April 3, 2024. (Photo by Hyoung Chang/The Denver Post)
“Displacement is slowing down”
Pira suggested that other neighborhoods in Denver could take steps to prevent gentrification, including allowing not only more market-rate housing, but also more affordable projects — a responsibility his neighborhood and Sun Valley have largely shouldered.
“The only real way to prevent massive cost-of-living increases in a single neighborhood is to not force all of the development pressure onto one neighborhood,” he said.
For now, Pira said, “displacement is slowing down — mostly because most of it has already happened. The most vulnerable populations have already been lost, to some extent.”
Across northwest Denver, Councilwoman Amanda Sandoval has watched as its communities have been transformed since her childhood. She doesn’t recall the Sloan’s Lake neighborhood, which officially includes the city park and homes to the north and east, as high-income back then.
But “the housing stock had always been a little bit higher-priced on the market, because of its proximity to Sloan’s Lake and the views,” she said.
A site cleared for new construction in a neighborhood between West Colfax Ave. and Sloan’s Lake Park in Denver on Wednesday, April 3, 2024. (Photo by Hyoung Chang/The Denver Post)
The closure of St. Anthony’s in 2011 brought new construction to West Colfax, including the Alamo Drafthouse and apartment buildings, that also affected Sloan’s Lake by introducing “a different type of density than that neighborhood had seen before,” Sandoval said.
She said she’s heard from young families that can’t afford the current housing stock and older constituents who are struggling with higher property taxes. There’s not much they can do in the face of a fast-rising market, but Sandoval said she’s encouraged residents to take advantage of zoning changes that permit accessory dwelling units on single-family lots, which could give family members and renters the opportunity to also live there in garage apartments or backyard units.
Sun Valley, too, is seeing redevelopment.
What used to be a parking lot for Empower Field is now home to 129 units — a mix of affordable housing and market-rate apartments that opened last year. GreenHaus counts as one of Denver Housing Authority’s new residential buildings, and, with amenities including a playground and garden boxes, the property is in several ways indiscernible from luxury apartment complexes around the city.
On a sunny afternoon in late March, construction workers toiled in a dirt lot across the street from GreenHaus where three houses once stood. The property is now owned by a private developer. Nearby, five single-family homes built before the 20th century are still standing, but they could be targeted for redevelopment if their owners decide to sell.
“The neighborhood is changing,” said María Islas-López, the manager of History Colorado’s Museum of Memory project.
Kamiah Traylor, 11, left, her sister Saniah, 13, on scooter and their friend Janeen Rodriguez, 11, play outside of their apartments in the newly built THRIVE building in Denver on March 27, 2024. Part of DHA’s Sun Valley redevelopment plan, THRIVE is a 7-story mixed-income development with a mix of two-story townhomes and one- to five-bedroom multi-family units. (Photo by Helen H. Richardson/The Denver Post)
Revamping public housing
When Sun Valley was known as the Bottoms, it served as home to low-income, working-class families, with many living in DHA’s large network of properties.
But now, “the community’s going through this very process of being displaced and moved around,” Islas-López said, as the DHA finishes replacing traditional public housing with seven buildings through its Sun Valley redevelopment plan. Former residents were moved to other properties throughout the city during that time and are given the first right to return once construction finishes up.
The housing authority, which has ties to Denver city government, owns more than 25 acres in Sun Valley. It long had 333 row home-style units in its portfolio, though the last of those were demolished in May 2022.
The DHA received $30 million from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to redevelop the neighborhood, starting with a $4 million grant in 2014. In Sun Valley’s new complexes, the housing authority is focused on providing higher-quality amenities and not concentrating poverty in one area, while also creating healthy food access and outdoor spaces, said Erin Clark, its chief real estate investment officer.
Notably, the DHA buildings are mixed-income, but about 60% to 80% of the total units in each complex will be subsidized.
“That is intentional, so that we are matching the income levels of the folks that were there before with those that are coming back,” Clark said.
Finished housing, upper right, and road work along Decatur Street are part of the Denver Housing Authority’s redevelopment of the Sun Valley area near West Colfax Ave. in Denver on March 27, 2024. (Photo by Helen H. Richardson/The Denver Post)
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With fewer privately owned homes than other neighborhoods, “I don’t really feel that Sun Valley fits that classic gentrification mold,” said Jeanne Granville, the president of the Sun Valley Community Coalition.
Previously, she heard “lots of complaints” about the old public housing. The redevelopment sought to answer the question: “How do we elevate this neighborhood for the folks that have been living here?” she said.
In phase one of the project, two complexes started leasing in 2021 and are now fully occupied. The second phase included GreenHaus and another building, which opened in 2023. The final three are under construction, with completion planned for next year.
Mary Green, 70, resided in a two-story brick townhome in Sun Valley’s bygone public housing for five years. She recalls birthday parties and potlucks with her neighbors, who babysat each other’s children and shared clotheslines outside.
“I wasn’t looking forward to the redevelopment,” the lifelong Denverite said. “I never wanted to move away from here.”
Mary Green, with her grandson Antoine Scott and her dog Baylee, walk near her apartment in the newly built GreenHaus residence along West 13th Avenue in Denver on March 27, 2024. (Photo by Helen H. Richardson/The Denver Post)
Once the construction started, she was relocated south to the Athmar Park neighborhood, and “I lost contact with almost all of my old neighbors,” Green said.
Five more years passed before she moved into GreenHaus in December. With added building security like key fobs, she feels safer. But it’s very quiet.
In Sun Valley, “I hope for the homeyness to come back,” Green said. “There has been a lot of changes.”
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