Kevin Preblud and Justin Croft stood behind yellow caution tape on Wednesday afternoon in a parking lot in northern Denver and watched as construction workers in hard hats removed old windows — 400 in total — from the National Western Center’s Livestock Exchange Building for repair work and refinishing.
It’s one of the first steps in restoring the 125-year-old building to its former grandeur. The developers, including Preblud and Croft, are working to revive the Livestock Exchange as a focal point of the rapidly transforming campus by filling the long-quiet building with private offices and creating a public lobby.
For now, “it’s dirty, old and neglected,” said Preblud, an executive at EXDO Development. But, he added, “the bones are amazing.”
The new concept by the building’s owners is for it to reopen as The Exchange, which is envisioned as a “mercantile and commercial hub.”
EXDO, a real estate company led by developer Andrew Feinstein that’s focused primarily on the River North Art District, is at the helm of the project, which kicked off about a month ago. Plans have been in the works for years after a consortium of partners — EXDO, the National Western Center Authority and the Colorado Cattlemen’s Association among them — bought the building and its restaurant, the Denver Stockyard Saloon, from the city for $8.5 million in 2020.
It’s one piece of the city’s broader $1 billion-plus redevelopment of the National Western Center campus. Major construction began in 2019 to turn the longtime home of the National Western Stock Show into a year-round exhibition, agricultural education and entertainment campus.
On 250 acres of land largely owned by the city, the changes happening at the Livestock Exchange Building stand out because it’s privately owned.
Construction is expected to wrap up in late 2025, and the hope is to hold the grand opening in January 2026, right before that year’s stock show.
The majority of the building will consist of offices for agricultural companies, including agriculture technology, said Croft, the co-founder of the development company Natural Object, a consultant on the project. He and Preblud declined to identify their future tenants but confirmed they were in conversations, with some spaces already claimed.
The pair also declined to provide the final price tag for the redevelopment project.
Their improvements to the Denver Stockyard Saloon include upgrading its bathrooms, the ventilation and cooling systems and more. The restaurant on National Western Drive remains open for now, but it will close temporarily at some point.
For Preblud, the renovation’s mission is personal. A fourth-generation Denverite, he recalled that his great-grandfather once walked the storied halls of the Livestock Exchange Building, selling his cattle for cash.
As the one-time focal point of the state’s livestock industry, the institution hosted a bank, a newspaper, a barbershop and a radio station, with 200 acres of animal pens surrounding it. The building was constructed in three stages in 1898, 1916 and 1919.
“I’m surprised that it was never tagged as historic before we got it,” Preblud said.
The Livestock Exchange Building sits in Denver’s Elyria-Swansea neighborhood and is just east of Globeville — both of which “were actually built by the folks who worked here,” Croft said.
“The stockyards and the smelters that were here before that as well — they’re the reason that these residential neighborhoods exist,” he added.
Croft wants to return the site to its former reputation as an economic center that creates jobs.
On Wednesday, he and Preblud toured the building’s four stories together, criticizing design choices of yesteryear that they aim to fix: a drop ceiling that blocks an original pyramidal skylight, linoleum flooring that interrupts terrazzo tiles and walls that hide part of a staircase with wrought-iron railing.
“A lot of the effort is just undoing layers of bad renovations that have taken place over the years,” Croft said.
With its Classical Revival architecture, the building’s first floor is intended eventually to serve as a lobby for the public, Preblud said. Events held at the National Western Stock Show and Colorado State University’s nearby Spur campus will help bring visitors through the door, he said.
For now, excitement around the restoration is building in the agriculture industry.
“They can’t wait to come and step back into a building that feels like their history,” Preblud said.“They’re very anxious to return to their roots.”
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Originally Published: July 19, 2024 at 6:00 a.m.
