The former St. Anthony Central Hospital site is an almost 19-acre property located in West Denver between West Colfax Avenue and Sloan’s Lake. The project involved acquisition, abatement and demolition of 1.3 million square feet of former hospital buildings; development and pursuit of approval of a General Development Plan (GDP), and planning and implementation of the re-installation of the City streets and all utilities on the property. This work created seven city blocks for development of both for-rent and for-sale residences, retail, office and entertainment uses, and associated open spaces.

While employed as President of EnviroFinance Group, Stuart Miner led the team that negotiated the purchase of the hospital from Catholic Health Initiatives of Colorado. Mary Hashem, as Executive VP of EFG, managed the environmental work and oversaw the community relations. The due diligence for the acquisition was a sophisticated process of phased fatal flaw analyses and critical path execution. With staged contingency dates and deposits, the management team was able to bracket the project risks and costs with increasing precision. By the time of closing, fixed price performance-based contracts had been negotiated for the abatement, demolition and engineering work for the property, and insurance was fully underwritten and manuscripted. Work began the week after closing, creating tremendous efficiencies in the development process.

Throughout project execution, the team managed unexpected abatement, development and environmental conditions when they were encountered, and kept the site work on budget and on schedule. Further, the team successfully processed a claim on the project’s environmental liability insurance that paid most of the cost for remediation of unknown conditions discovered during demolition and overlot grading.