The building at 600 Grant St. on Aug. 5. (Max Scheinblum/BusinessDen)
The Colorado Education Association now has a landlord, and it couldn’t be happier about it.
The state’s largest teachers union leased about 23,000 square feet at 600 Grant St. in Denver’s Cap Hill last month.
The building is owned by the Colorado State Land Board, which owns millions of acres across the state and puts funds from leasing toward public education.
“Our rent essentially will go back into supporting public schools. That’s a really important feature for us,” CEA President Kevin Vick said.
The teachers union is moving nine blocks to the south from 1500 Grant St., an office building nearly twice the size of the space it leased. The union sold it at the end of last year for $4.5 million.
Vick said the CEA didn’t need all that space – not when the organization bought 1500 Grant in the early 1990s, and certainly not now with the rise of remote work and the desire for CEA representatives to be more spread across the state.
“We are trying to put our staff closer to where our members are. As opposed to being at headquarters and then driving out to these spaces, they’re going to be out more in the areas that they serve and then driving in when needed,” he said.
The CEA’s new space will be more flexible inside than its old one, with more open areas for meetings and collaboration. But it will be farther from the Capitol, where the group is often lobbying the state legislature on issues important to its roughly 40,000 members.
Kevin Vick
Vick isn’t too worried about that, though, and said the union looked as far away as Golden and Aurora during the search for new space.
“We didn’t see it as an absolute barrier to moving, to be a little bit further. Our members did want us to be somewhat in the same area, but our members were also open to moving out of the area, depending on the cost and things like that were. So we looked extensively all over the metro area to see what would be the best fit,” he said.
Tanner Mason and Jason Bollhoefner, brokers at their own firm Benchmark Commercial, represented the CEA in selling the building and leasing a new space.
“It really needed to be a nice, solid building — not too flashy, but nice and well kept at the right numbers, and this fit all those bills,” Mason said.
Vick said the Land Board cut him a sweet deal in part because its status as a public institution limits the funds it can provide for build-out of the space. The lease runs for 10 years, and concessions amount to a year and a half of “essentially free rent,” he said.
“We feel like it was a really fair, good, mutual deal for both parties, because we are going to be the largest tenant in the building, I believe,” he added.
The building at 600 Grant St. on Aug. 5. (Max Scheinblum/BusinessDen)
The Colorado Education Association now has a landlord, and it couldn’t be happier about it.
The state’s largest teachers union leased about 23,000 square feet at 600 Grant St. in Denver’s Cap Hill last month.
The building is owned by the Colorado State Land Board, which owns millions of acres across the state and puts funds from leasing toward public education.
“Our rent essentially will go back into supporting public schools. That’s a really important feature for us,” CEA President Kevin Vick said.
The teachers union is moving nine blocks to the south from 1500 Grant St., an office building nearly twice the size of the space it leased. The union sold it at the end of last year for $4.5 million.
Vick said the CEA didn’t need all that space – not when the organization bought 1500 Grant in the early 1990s, and certainly not now with the rise of remote work and the desire for CEA representatives to be more spread across the state.
“We are trying to put our staff closer to where our members are. As opposed to being at headquarters and then driving out to these spaces, they’re going to be out more in the areas that they serve and then driving in when needed,” he said.
The CEA’s new space will be more flexible inside than its old one, with more open areas for meetings and collaboration. But it will be farther from the Capitol, where the group is often lobbying the state legislature on issues important to its roughly 40,000 members.
Kevin Vick
Vick isn’t too worried about that, though, and said the union looked as far away as Golden and Aurora during the search for new space.
“We didn’t see it as an absolute barrier to moving, to be a little bit further. Our members did want us to be somewhat in the same area, but our members were also open to moving out of the area, depending on the cost and things like that were. So we looked extensively all over the metro area to see what would be the best fit,” he said.
Tanner Mason and Jason Bollhoefner, brokers at their own firm Benchmark Commercial, represented the CEA in selling the building and leasing a new space.
“It really needed to be a nice, solid building — not too flashy, but nice and well kept at the right numbers, and this fit all those bills,” Mason said.
Vick said the Land Board cut him a sweet deal in part because its status as a public institution limits the funds it can provide for build-out of the space. The lease runs for 10 years, and concessions amount to a year and a half of “essentially free rent,” he said.
“We feel like it was a really fair, good, mutual deal for both parties, because we are going to be the largest tenant in the building, I believe,” he added.
