Colorado’s fastest-growing county has expanded its office footprint.
Douglas County signed a 15-year lease for the entire 82,000-square-foot building at 11045 Lansing Circle in the Meridian International Business Center last October.
Roughly 175 employees will ultimately work from the building, which is in an unincorporated part of the county. Move-ins began in late 2024 and will continue through June.
“Typically, our preference is to buy, but based on availability, we went with a lease route to buy in the future,” said Tim Hallmark, the county director of facilities, fleet and emergency support services.
The deal was one of the largest local office leases in the fourth quarter of 2024. Douglas County will pay $23.50 per square foot in base rent annually starting out — or $107,000 a month, according to the lease agreement obtained by BusinessDen through a public records request. That amount will increase 3% annually.
The county also will be responsible for building expenses that add $8.45 per square foot at the start.
In the fourth and fifth years of the lease, the county will have the option to buy the building for a price based either on an outside appraisal or at least 10% of the building’s “capitalization rate as determined by the then-current base rent,” according to the document.
The landlord, Healthpeak Properties, Inc., is paying for the county’s build-out on-site, Hallmark said.
The Douglas County Health Department will consolidate two facilities in Lone Tree and Castle Rock into the second floor of the three-story building. The former office space will be occupied by other county employees.
The first-floor user is still being determined, though Hallmark said he anticipates it will be the county Department of Human Services, which administers welfare and social services to residents.
The building’s third occupant, Colorado’s 23rd Judicial District, is what really drove the real estate search.
“The initial search was driven for the judicial district. You do not need to be a citizen of Douglas County to require judicial services in Douglas County, and talking with our judicial partners, a vast majority of their clientele … come from the north in general,” Hallmark said.
“[The location is] for the citizens we serve, not for the staff,” he added.
The judicial district is the newest in Colorado and came into existence in January — the state’s first new judicial district since the early ’60s. It was split off from a shared district with Arapahoe County, prompted by the rapidly growing population in the south metro area.
The district’s probationary services will be housed in the newly leased space, along with its diversion program, which provides an alternative to the traditional court process for those charged with certain crimes. It has two offices in Castle Rock but needs additional space to support the district’s work, Hallmark said.
Because of this use, Hallmark was looking for buildings far away from residential areas and in mostly or totally vacant properties that would prevent the county from being a “bad neighbor.” Simultaneously, he wanted to be close to public transit, to help facilitate the flow of people into the office space. Those two constraints limited his search to 66 properties, 12 of which were in Arapahoe County.
“There’s a lot of sensitivity to judicial programing,” Hallmark said.
Jeff Brandon of NavPoint Real Estate Group represented the county in the deal.
Hallmark said he’s not interested in any more office deals in the near future.
“We are set with our office needs currently,” he said.
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