For over seven (7) years, Colorado Community Church sought an existing building to purchase and renovate near their existing church facility at 2220 S Chambers Road in Aurora, Colorado. If they were to move too far away, they would risk losing members and breaking up their special multi-ethnic, multi-cultural congregation.
Developco identified every building greater than 75,000 SF within a 2-mile radius of their church. The ideal candidate was a 91,000 square foot former big box retail building formerly occupied by Gander Mountain at 14000 E Jewell Avenue in Aurora, Colorado, except that it only had 300 parking spaces and the church needed twice that amount for a desired 1,750 seat auditorium. Before it could purchase this building, CCC would have to assemble an additional 350 parking spaces from adjacent properties. With Developco’s leadership, CCC was able to obtain a lease from Xcel Energy on the electrical substation located to the north and to obtain a permanent easement right from a restaurant owner to the south, paving the way for CCC to purchase the building for $6.8 million.
Over the next 12 months, Developco led the City of Aurora entitlements including rezoning the Xcel property (with their permission) to allow a parking lot. This required meeting with neighbors and presenting at both the Aurora Planning Commission and the Aurora City Council. This request was approved unanimously.
Developco worked closely with RidgeTop Civil Engineering to design the Xcel land parking lot with a storm water detention pond above a spaghetti of electrical cables directly below. The engineering, municipal approvals and RTD’s storm pipe easement proved to be extremely onerous and time consuming, but eventually, we prevailed. This was the most technically challenging site Developco has ever worked on.
As CCC’s project manager and owner’s representative, Developco orchestrated all aspects of this $20 million adaptive re-use including the entitlements, financing (FirstBank), design (Lee Architects), engineering, construction (Fransen Pittman) and outfitting of the new building with new furniture, fixtures, equipment and audio, visual, lighting systems.
On November 21, 2019, CCC obtained a certificate of occupancy.