Denver’s Mile High United Way organization is moving its headquarters from its current location at 18th and Central in Lower Highland to the Curtis Park-Five Points district just northeast of Downtown. The new 63,000 square foot, three-story office building will occupy the entire block face along Park Avenue between Stout and California Streets. Here’s a GoogleEarth aerial where I’ve outlined the project site:

Mile High United Way recently held the groundbreaking ceremony for the development and, if all goes as planned, they will move into their new building in the fall of 2014.

Here are two renderings of the project, courtesy of LoDo-based Davis Partnership. The first image is the view of the California Street corner, and the second image shows the Stout Street corner. These are nice high-resolution renderings, so click/zoom to enjoy at maximum size:

Once Mile High United Way moves into their new building next fall, their current location in Lower Highland will be redeveloped into new apartments (more on that later).

This project is significant in several ways. Not only does it provide an important charitable organization in our community a larger home in an area where their services are especially needed, but it also continues the revitalization of the Curtis Park-Five Points and Arapahoe Square districts. The property was owned by the Denver Housing Authority which has had plans for several years to put a future phase of their Curtis Park housing redevelopment on the site. DHA agreed to sell the property to Mile High United Way given the compatibility between the two organizations’ missions and that DHA wasn’t ready to develop the site yet anyway. DHA still owns the remaining undeveloped quarter of the block at 24th and Stout, and still plans to put housing there at some point in the future.

By taking up an entire block face along Park Avenue, this project represents another major piece in the transformation of Park Avenue from a street lined with deteriorating buildings and surface parking lots into a more vibrant corridor with a repaired urban fabric. By my count, the new Mile High United Way headquarters will be the thirteenth new infill project fronting Park Avenue between Colfax Avenue and Blake Street since 2000, with an additional half-dozen or so projects on blocks that are bordered by Park Avenue.

A welcome improvement to the Curtis Park-Five Points neighborhood!