Shotgun Willie’s is getting some competition in the late-night Glendale scene.
A groundbreaking ceremony was held Thursday for a 10-acre entertainment district in the municipality surrounded by Denver, the final variation of a project Glendale has been planning for more than a decade.
“It’s been a long time coming,” said City Manager Chuck Line, who assumed that role last year but was deputy city manager for two decades before that.
The project, expected to cost $150 million, is being developed by Denver-based Central Street Capital, a family office founded by health care entrepreneur Rob Salazar. It’s dubbed “4 Mile District,” a reference to the nearby Four Mile Historic Park, which once served as a final stopping point for those making their way to Denver.
The development site is along Virginia Avenue and Clermont Street — south of a Target, east of some office buildings and a few blocks west of the Shotgun Willie’s strip club owned by the mayor’s wife. Most of the land is currently a park, although Line said part of it was once home to a wastewater treatment facility, which was decommissioned in 2006 and torn up.
The plans for 4 Mile District call for a host of retail and restaurant space across multiple buildings, along with parking garages and outdoor plazas. The second phase calls for a hotel. There is no residential component for the project. Central Street plans to develop all the buildings itself.
The area is poised to be classified as a common consumption area, allowing visitors to walk around with alcoholic beverages and bars to serve until 4 a.m.
For now, there’s one committed tenant: a Alamo Drafthouse movie theater, which will be owned by Central Street. President Isiah Salazar, Rob’s son, said it will have nine screens and be about 40,000 square feet.
Thursday’s groundbreaking ceremony marked the start not of vertical development but rather of improvements to 7 acres, or Phase I, of the project, Salazar said. That will involve the creation of a private road, stormwater and power infrastructure, and the laying out of pads for individual buildings. The first thing to go vertical, Salazar said, will likely be a parking garage. Work on that should begin around November.
The theater should break ground next year. Salazar said he hopes the Alamo Drafthouse will be open for business in late 2026 or early 2027.
The land is owned by the city of Glendale, but a development agreement that Central Street and the city reached in 2021 allows the development firm to buy it for $1 when a certain amount of work is done at the site — essentially purchasing the land by improving it.
Weitz Co. is the general contractor on the project. Central Street has hired David Hicks & Lampert Brokerage to market the retail and restaurant space. While there is no live music anchor within the project — Central Street initially approached LiveNation about a possible concert venue — Salazar said he expects some restaurants that come will have a live music component.
Salazar said leasing efforts will ramp up with the project breaking ground. Possible tenants have been somewhat wary, he said, given the project’s past.
“It’s been a revolving door of developers over the past dozen years,” he said.
City Manager Line said Glendale has been planning the entertainment district since at least 2011. It was originally dubbed “Glendale Riverwalk” (the site is along Cherry Creek) and then “Glendale 180,” both of which were going to be on much larger chunks of land. But successful lawsuits from owners of property that would have been swallowed up led to a scaling down of plans.
The developers involved changed too. Houston-based Wulfe & Co. and Dallas-based Lincoln Property Co. were each involved for a time.
In the case of Lincoln, “When they really started getting their arms around it, Covid happened, and they had other issues in their portfolio,” Line said.
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Line said the average Glendale resident is in their late 20s, and 65 percent live alone; the city’s residences are nearly all apartments and condos. He said the 4 Mile District will offer “18-hours-a-day-type activity.”
“You have Cherry Creek, but it has different offerings than this is going to have,” he said.
Speaking at Thursday’s ceremony, Mayor Mike Dunafon called Glendale a “the Vatican of liberty and Luxemburg of freedom,” and said Glendale “had the No. 1 entertainment district in Colorado before LoDo.” It was undone by state regulation, he said, but 4 Mile District will return Glendale to what it once was.
“That was more organic,” Line said of the heyday, back in the 1970s and 1980s. “This is more planned.”
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