The best real estate decision that Ed Haselden said he ever made didn’t bring him riches.

He and his partners made no profit when, in late 2021, theysoldthe Rev360 office building they’d developed in RiNo. But it could have been worse.

“It would have cost us all a lot of money if we hadn’t bit the bullet,” he said last week.

The five-story, 170,000-square-foot building at 3600 Brighton Blvd. had no tenants when Haselden and his partners sold it to San Francisco-based Shorenstein Properties. And it still has none today.

This July marks four years since Rev360 was completed. No one has ever moved into the building. The doors are locked. The ground-floor retail space hasn’t been built out. The office space upstairs is empty.

Brokers marketing the space for lease didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Haselden developed Rev360 in partnership with Keystone Equities, Rob Cohen and Tributary Real Estate. The group broke ground in spring 2019, and had originally planned to “stabilize and sell” the building after completion — basically, find a buyer once much of the space had been leased.

They did have a tenant for a time. Before the building broke ground, the coworking firm WeWorksignedto take two of the office floors. But WeWork faltered amidst a late 2019 attempt to go public, and in 2020, the company paid toterminate its lease at Rev360, having never setting up shop there.

Haselden and his partners were left with a spec building amidst the pandemic. The amount WeWork paid “allowed us to carry the building for another 18 months,” he said. They and their JLL office brokers kept trying to find tenants.

“We were close two or three times, but back then people were paralyzed,” Haselden said, referencing company decision-makers.

By late 2021, the building was still sitting empty. And a deadline was looming. Haselden said the building’s construction loan was coming due in March 2022, meaning ownership would have to refinance into a new loan.

“And on top of that, there was talk of five more buildings coming on line” in RiNo, he said.

So the group made the decision to sell. Shorenstein, the buyer, “bought it for basically replacement cost,” or what it had cost to build it, Haselden said. The sale pricewas $72 million.

“We sold it for what we had in it,” Haselden said. “Nobody made any money.”

Shorenstein is a large firm with real estate holdings across the country. The company, which alsoco-owns the One Platte office buildingat 1701 Platte St. in Denver, declined to discuss Rev360.

Today, Rev360 looks the same as it did on the day the firm bought it. The same brokers are marketing it. Signage in one corner, which encourages prospective retailers to “Join our mix,” has been there since before the structure changed hands.

Across 36th Street, developer Ryan Tobin, a former Denver Housing Authority executive, is wrapping up construction on The Penrose, a 16-story apartment building. He said residential leasing interest has been good, and that he’s “optimistic” about the future of the area.

Tobin noted Rev360 has been surrounded by new construction. In addition to his project, two hotels have gone up across the street from the building in the last few years.

“360 is one of the anomalies,” he said. “We all got caught in a weird market.”

Despite its challenges, Rev360 did not mark the end of office development in RiNo. Four major buildings —T3,The Current,Paradigm River NorthandSteel House— broke ground within blocks of Rev360 between the spring of 2021 and early last year.

Haselden said he was surprised to see so many of those projects break ground, given that they could see he and his partners “had been beating our heads against the wall in RiNo for two years trying to lease Rev360.”

The neighborhood has landed some leasing wins. Xcel Energyleased the entirety of T3. A law firm has taken floors in Paradigm River North. But space remains available there and at The Current, and Steel House — which will be 1.5 times the size of Rev360 — has no announced tenants months out from completion.

Haselden said he’s still bullish on RiNo office space long-term, but “the duration of that term is a lot longer than I thought before.” Instead of plotting his next office project, he’s now looking to invest in existing buildings whose values have plummeted.

And while Haselden no longer owns Rev360, and won’t profit whenever a tenant finally moves in, he still speaks highly of it.

It’s a great building, he said. And a great location.

“It is a great asset. It just got caught in a combination of a hurricane, a cyclone and a tornado — all three combined.”

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Originally Published: July 22, 2024 at 3:02 p.m.