When I walk the streets every day in The Ballparkmarketplace I’m continually flashing back to the area when it was a consortium of small businesses, government buildings, and seas of parking lots.  In my office I’ve pictures of many of the old buildings that have been demolished over the last 50 years that with the signage that identified the businesses painted on the brick.  The Dikeou Tobacco Buildings, ML Foss, countless old hotels, service stations and other businesses.

I’ve been walking the area since 1967 when I would help my Dad run his parking lots and garage.  On Friday and Saturday nights we would stay downtown late and watch the cars cruise down 16^th Street.  It was at this time that I was introduced to Pete’s Coney Island restaurant on 15^th Street and looked forward every day to a Toro Pot and hamburgers smothered with the best ever chili.

I loved the summer because I could be in Downtown everyday.  The hustle, the business, car cruises and running lots.  That was the time that I became infatuated with being in Downtown Denver.

Working with my Dad I had the chance to park the cars some ofthe most successful real estate people in town. John Fuller, Hank Vanderysk, Jim Allen, Bob Sanderson, Paul Dawkins and so many others.  In my Dad’s “Master Garage” at 17^th and Welton where the Fairmont hotel stands today, I got to wash and polish their cars.  They were all driving Cadillac’s, Porsches and Mercedes. It was then at 12 years old when I decided that I was going to be in the real estate business (whatever that was).

After working in the residential real estate world and beingtrained by the best like Patricia Richards of Duncan and Duncan and Bill Moore of Moore and Company I formed my Downtown Denver specialty office in1980.

Since 1980 my small company (me) has handled the sale ofhundreds of Downtown Denver parcels.  Sale prices have ranged from 10$ per foot to my record of$789 per foot for a parcel at 15^th and Cleveland where the Rocky Mountain News Building now rests.

Now more focused on the Ballpark Marketplace because of the emerging and incredible opportunities that exist.  As I sit in my same office space for the last 29 years I have seen the Ballpark area slowly but surely evolving into Denver’s greatest development opportunities.