Denver's ground-floor retail gamble isn't paying off — at least yet
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One River North in Denver's River North Art District, pictured under construction in 2023, opened in April 2024 and has yet to fill its ground-floor retail spaces. Photo: Hyoung Chang/The Denver Post via Getty Images
The empty storefronts on the ground level of Denver's newest apartment buildings tell a story the city isn't tracking.
State of play: Denver mandates ground-floor retail in new apartment projects across several neighborhoods, with the goal of fostering vibrant street life.
- But in practice, many of those spaces remain dark.
Why it matters: The city isn't collecting data on how many of these spaces are vacant, Axios Denver has learned. That presents a critical blind spot that makes it hard to know whether these policies are working.
What they're saying: "Apartment developers don't know retail, don't like retail, and I think they would never build retail. They are forced to by planning departments," Cary Bruteig, founder of Apartment Insights, tells Axios Denver.
- It's "an economic drain," Bruteig says. "Planners trying to do the right thing … have hurt apartment buildings and ended up with space that isn't very usable."
Between the lines: Vacant storefronts can harm a building's reputation and keep tenants from moving in or into the surrounding neighborhood.
- "In a market where every building has the same amenities, neighborhood character matters," Wyatt Lovera, founder of Denver-based lease-up and marketing firm The Dwelling Collection, told Bisnow. "And empty retail sends the wrong signal."
State of play: According to Bruteig, several factors are fueling the vacancies:
- The spaces often lack visibility and foot traffic — retail's lifeblood.
- Apartment developers aren't equipped to attract or manage retail tenants like they are residential ones.
- Many apartment ground-floor retail spaces are small, isolated and far from other businesses, especially in suburban-area projects.
Zoom in: In 2023, Denver's Art District on Santa Fe joined the list of neighborhoods where retail is required — and it's now a hotbed for vacant ground-floor space.
- Even high-profile projects like the One River North apartments — hailed as one of the city's most anticipated buildings — have struggled to rent their retail spaces. That building is located in the River North Art District, which has been hit particularly hard by the city's ground-floor retail zoning requirements.
- Similar zoning requirements are also in place for parts of downtown, Cherry Creek, Tennyson Street and East Colfax.
🤐 The intrigue: Axios Denver contacted nearly a dozen property management companies. None agreed to talk on the record.
The other side: "They're not all disasters," Bruteig notes.
- Tennyson Street remains vibrant under mixed-use zoning.
- Filipino restaurant Magna Kainan recently opened in the bottom of the newly built Novel RiNo apartments.
- And some coffee shops and corner stores in ground-floor mixed-use buildings are also holding their own, Bruteig says.
What we're watching: Whether the city begins tracking vacancy data — and if that sparks a shift in its retail-in-residential approach.