Denver Mayor Mike Johnston announced the DDA’s intent to buy Denver Pavilions on Sept. 30. Bill Mosher, the city’s chief projects officer, is at the far right. (BusinessDen file)
Bill Mosher didn’t want the Downtown Development Authority to buy Denver Pavilions.
But he felt it had to.
So, last month, the city’s chief projects officer stood with Denver Mayor Mike Johnston and DDA board members as they announced the quasi-governmental entity would pay $37 million for the struggling downtown mall.
“Our last role is to be a landlord and particularly a long-term landlord,” Mosher told BusinessDen the next morning. “We do not take this acquisition lightly. It’s not what we wanted to do.”
The deal for the mall, in the works since the spring, banks on finding a way to unify it with two adjacent parking lots, which missed out on Denver’s decade-long development boom. It envisions the mall itself shifting to meet the needs of a growth in downtown residents that the DDA is also working to spur.
The pending purchase follows the current owner’s attempts to begin that transition, including unsuccessful efforts to bring a grocer to Pavilions. It means the DDA will have to step into renewal talks with the mall’s movie theater, an anchor that would be a blow to lose.
“In my view, we have to do something right now. … We believe in Upper Downtown as a new neighborhood. And Pavilions is the anchor of that,” Mosher said.
Mall owner proposed deal in the spring
The DDA, an independent entity with city oversight, began accepting applications earlier this year for spending that would help revitalize downtown, fresh off a small group of voters there authorizing $570 million in bonds.
One of the first to come in, Mosher said, was from Denver-based Gart Properties, which owns the Pavilions.
In his March 20 application, Gart CEO Mark Sidell called for “unifying the Denver Pavilions … with two adjacent and underutilized surface parking lots” behind the mall along 15th Street. Those lots are owned by Brookfield, a New York-based real estate giant.
“Should these parcels go to multiple owners or revert to lenders, a rare opportunity to shape an entire section of downtown under a cohesive plan would be lost,” Sidell wrote. “Unifying them now will enable the DDDA to ensure thoughtful, integrated development that attracts new tenants, safeguards existing local businesses, and increases foot traffic.”
Sidell’s application, obtained by BusinessDen through a public records request, didn’t directly state who should “unify” the parcels. Mosher said he interpreted it less as a request that the DDA buy the mall, and more that Sidell was laying out a problem and seeing if the DDA cared.
“We did not go into this to buy Pavilions,” Mosher said. “We went into it wanting to understand its issues and figure out how we could help.”
The core issue became clear. Yes, the Pavilions had lost big-name tenants in recent years — Uniqlo, Hard Rock Cafe, Banana Republic — amid the pandemic and construction on the 16th Street Mall. It’s currently 40% vacant.
But the real problem was coming up this past July, when Gart and co-owner MetLife would default on an $85 million loan they’d taken out 10 years earlier from Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Co.
In his application, Sidell wrote that Gart’s “motivation is not profit-driven.”
“Both Gart Properties and MetLife have already lost 100% of our equity, and the lender is also accepting a substantial loss,” he wrote. “This is about infusing new life into Upper Downtown in an opportune moment — when valuations are at an all-time low.”
Denver Pavilions on March 10, 2025. (BusinessDen file)
‘We have issues and we need to start addressing them’
The application put the Pavilions on the radar of Mosher, who is considered something of a downtown Denver elder statesman.
Now in his mid-70s, Mosher led the Downtown Denver Partnership in the 1990s and then went into development, working on the Webb Municipal building and Denver Post building. After that, he joined prominent Dallas-based firm Trammell Crow, which played a role in the much-touted redevelopment of Union Station.
Bill Mosher
He also serves as CEO of the city affiliate that developed and owns the Hyatt Regency hotel near the Colorado Convention Center.
Mosher joined Johnston’s administration late last year. Since then, his biggest tasks have been helping on Denver Water-Denver Broncos negotiations related to the planned Burnham Yard stadium and setting up the DDA.
“When I got into this, I was probably dealing 50% with lenders. Today, I’m dealing 80% with lenders,” he said of the DDA component.
Mosher learned that the Pavilions’ lender was poised to take ownership of the mall post-default. What might happen next was unclear. Would the lender sit on it for a time, hoping downtown property values would rebound? Would it quickly sell it? Regardless, who would buy it?
Mosher didn’t think there was time to find out, given the challenges that Upper Downtown faces. Office buildings are emptying out. Retail vacancies abound even outside the mall.
“We have issues and we need to start addressing them right now and we need to take ownership,” he said.
On April 14, less than a month after Sidell submitted the application, DDA board chair Doug Tisdale signed a confidentiality agreement with Gart Properties that stated the firm intended to sell the mall to the DDA, records show.
Denver Pavilions on March 10, 2025. (BusinessDen file)
Unification, and a new leasing strategy
Gart Properties purchased the Pavilions in July 2008 alongside ING Clarion Partners for $94 million. In June 2015, with the mall’s position having improved, Clarion sold its stake to MetLife at the same time the $85 million loan was taken out.
Mosher said the $37 million the DDA is poised to pay, which works out to $105 a square foot, is based on what the lender would accept. While the lender won’t ever take ownership of the mall — “That’s an important thing to us,” Sidell said — it had to sign off on any deal.
“They said that’s as low as they would go, frankly,” Mosher said.
Mosher said it’s a reasonable price based on the income the mall receives from leases and parking.
“Today’s cash flow supports the purchase price,” he said.
The big opportunity with the purchase, according to Mosher, is what Sidell identified in the application: uniting the mall with the parking lots behind it. Three months before announcing the planned Pavilions acquisition, the DDA agreed to buy the parking lots for $23 million.
“The opportunity that’s been missed over the last 30 years, for whatever reason, is that the Brookfield parking lots and the Pavilions never came together as a place,” Mosher said.
The lots have long been considered a natural spot for development. In late 2008, amid the 10-year anniversary of the Pavilions, The Denver Post reported that Brookfield was interested in constructing an office building and hotel.
The ensuing years saw the financial crisis. Yet Denver experienced a development boom throughout the 2010s, as population surged. But Brookfield didn’t break ground. And no other developer bought the parking lots.
“The comment always was that Brookfield’s price was too high,” said Mosher, who worked for Trammell Crow during that period.
In part, he said, that was due to a unique revenue-share agreement. The owner of the lots gets two-thirds of the revenue from the Pavilions’ underground parking.
Denver’s development boom has died off amid higher interest rates and construction costs, and slower population growth. Nevertheless, Mosher hopes the DDA’s acquisition will finally facilitate something going up on the lots.
“Is it office? Probably not, but it could be. Is it a hotel? Could be. Is it a convention hotel? Probably not, it’s not a big enough site … but it could be a significant hotel location. Is it residential? Absolutely. One or both lots could be residential,” he said.
“And then you think about — are there ways to tie those new uses directly into Pavilions?”
For example, Mosher said, a new building might feature walkways that connect it with the upper floors of the Pavilions.
The DDA expects to close on the Pavilions purchase by the end of the year, assuming the City Council signs off. Around that time, Mosher said, the city will issue a request for proposals for firms interested in creating a sort of master plan for the Pavilions and the lots.
That could lead to the city bringing on a development partner, or selling to a firm that executes that plan, according to Mosher. How long the DDA itself will own the mall is up in the air.
“I think that’s a question of how we envision the two blocks,” he said.
Mosher said some people have interpreted the DDA’s pending purchase to mean the mall will be knocked down. But he hasn’t had a single conversation about that.
“If we were to demolish Pavilions we’d be here for 10 years with a hole in the ground trying to figure out what to do,” he said.
Master planning won’t be the only city-led process. Mosher also wants to bring in fresh thinking for the existing mall, which has been managed by Gart with retail leasing handled by The Zall Co. He said they’ll need to evaluate Pavilions “in this new neighborhood context.”
Pavilions has three constituencies: conventioneers, nearby office workers and nearby residents. The tourists are still coming, Mosher said — “Right now, what’s keeping this place alive is the Convention Center” — but the workers aren’t there since nearby offices are more than 40% vacant.
There also aren’t a ton of nearby residents. But the DDA is also working on changing that. It has agreed to provide loans for two office-to-residential conversions three blocks from the Pavilions. And more loans are expected.
Denver Pavilions on March 10, 2025. (BusinessDen file)
‘Any mall USA — that’s not the mix that we’re after’
On the day the planned purchase was announced, Sidell told BusinessDen he hoped Gart would help the mall “realize its potential” even after the deal. But Mosher said he’s primarily interested in keeping on maintenance staff that are familiar with the property’s escalators and other systems.
“I would like to keep them as asset manager,” he said of Gart. “But it is clear from the DDA’s standpoint that we need to identify a new leasing strategy and a new future for Pavilions.”
Mark Sidell
Sidell told BusinessDen he’s already been trying to shift the character of the mall.
“Any mall USA — that’s not the mix that we’re after,” he said.
One big tenant desired? A grocery store.
In January, Sidell told city officials that he’d “lost momentum” with one grocer prospect “over concerns of their management team related to employee safety, security and quality of life issues downtown,” according to emails obtained by BusinessDen through a public records request.
The identity of that grocer is redacted. But months later, in June, emails show Sidell toured Pavilions with executives from Castle Rock-based Leevers Supermarkets, which operates local Save-A-Lots and the more upscale Leevers Locavore in the Highlands. It didn’t lead to a deal.
Besides convenience stores, Upper Downtown has a Target, which leases space in a Gart-owned building just a block from Pavilions. At the other end of downtown, about a mile away, there’s a Whole Foods and King Soopers.
The DDA won’t just need to attract new tenants. It will also need to retain existing ones.
One focus will need to be Regal Cinemas. In September, Sidell emailed Adeeb Khan, the city’s director of economic development, saying he hoped Khan and the mayor could attend a meeting with a Regal executive.
“I could really use all of your help to articulate the vision and confirm your commitment to reinstating our clean, safe, and vibrant downtown!” Sidell wrote. “This is a critical element in completing their upcoming lease renewal.”
Sidell said the theater still has years left on its lease. But decisions about whether to stay or go are often made well in advance.
Read more: DDA doesn’t have to pay property taxes, but will if it buys Pavilions
Read more: DDA says it will pay Brookfield $23M for parking by Denver Pavilions
Denver Mayor Mike Johnston announced the DDA’s intent to buy Denver Pavilions on Sept. 30. Bill Mosher, the city’s chief projects officer, is at the far right. (BusinessDen file)
Bill Mosher didn’t want the Downtown Development Authority to buy Denver Pavilions.
But he felt it had to.
So, last month, the city’s chief projects officer stood with Denver Mayor Mike Johnston and DDA board members as they announced the quasi-governmental entity would pay $37 million for the struggling downtown mall.
“Our last role is to be a landlord and particularly a long-term landlord,” Mosher told BusinessDen the next morning. “We do not take this acquisition lightly. It’s not what we wanted to do.”
The deal for the mall, in the works since the spring, banks on finding a way to unify it with two adjacent parking lots, which missed out on Denver’s decade-long development boom. It envisions the mall itself shifting to meet the needs of a growth in downtown residents that the DDA is also working to spur.
The pending purchase follows the current owner’s attempts to begin that transition, including unsuccessful efforts to bring a grocer to Pavilions. It means the DDA will have to step into renewal talks with the mall’s movie theater, an anchor that would be a blow to lose.
“In my view, we have to do something right now. … We believe in Upper Downtown as a new neighborhood. And Pavilions is the anchor of that,” Mosher said.
Mall owner proposed deal in the spring
The DDA, an independent entity with city oversight, began accepting applications earlier this year for spending that would help revitalize downtown, fresh off a small group of voters there authorizing $570 million in bonds.
One of the first to come in, Mosher said, was from Denver-based Gart Properties, which owns the Pavilions.
In his March 20 application, Gart CEO Mark Sidell called for “unifying the Denver Pavilions … with two adjacent and underutilized surface parking lots” behind the mall along 15th Street. Those lots are owned by Brookfield, a New York-based real estate giant.
“Should these parcels go to multiple owners or revert to lenders, a rare opportunity to shape an entire section of downtown under a cohesive plan would be lost,” Sidell wrote. “Unifying them now will enable the DDDA to ensure thoughtful, integrated development that attracts new tenants, safeguards existing local businesses, and increases foot traffic.”
Sidell’s application, obtained by BusinessDen through a public records request, didn’t directly state who should “unify” the parcels. Mosher said he interpreted it less as a request that the DDA buy the mall, and more that Sidell was laying out a problem and seeing if the DDA cared.
“We did not go into this to buy Pavilions,” Mosher said. “We went into it wanting to understand its issues and figure out how we could help.”
The core issue became clear. Yes, the Pavilions had lost big-name tenants in recent years — Uniqlo, Hard Rock Cafe, Banana Republic — amid the pandemic and construction on the 16th Street Mall. It’s currently 40% vacant.
But the real problem was coming up this past July, when Gart and co-owner MetLife would default on an $85 million loan they’d taken out 10 years earlier from Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Co.
In his application, Sidell wrote that Gart’s “motivation is not profit-driven.”
“Both Gart Properties and MetLife have already lost 100% of our equity, and the lender is also accepting a substantial loss,” he wrote. “This is about infusing new life into Upper Downtown in an opportune moment — when valuations are at an all-time low.”
Denver Pavilions on March 10, 2025. (BusinessDen file)
‘We have issues and we need to start addressing them’
The application put the Pavilions on the radar of Mosher, who is considered something of a downtown Denver elder statesman.
Now in his mid-70s, Mosher led the Downtown Denver Partnership in the 1990s and then went into development, working on the Webb Municipal building and Denver Post building. After that, he joined prominent Dallas-based firm Trammell Crow, which played a role in the much-touted redevelopment of Union Station.
Bill Mosher
He also serves as CEO of the city affiliate that developed and owns the Hyatt Regency hotel near the Colorado Convention Center.
Mosher joined Johnston’s administration late last year. Since then, his biggest tasks have been helping on Denver Water-Denver Broncos negotiations related to the planned Burnham Yard stadium and setting up the DDA.
“When I got into this, I was probably dealing 50% with lenders. Today, I’m dealing 80% with lenders,” he said of the DDA component.
Mosher learned that the Pavilions’ lender was poised to take ownership of the mall post-default. What might happen next was unclear. Would the lender sit on it for a time, hoping downtown property values would rebound? Would it quickly sell it? Regardless, who would buy it?
Mosher didn’t think there was time to find out, given the challenges that Upper Downtown faces. Office buildings are emptying out. Retail vacancies abound even outside the mall.
“We have issues and we need to start addressing them right now and we need to take ownership,” he said.
On April 14, less than a month after Sidell submitted the application, DDA board chair Doug Tisdale signed a confidentiality agreement with Gart Properties that stated the firm intended to sell the mall to the DDA, records show.
Denver Pavilions on March 10, 2025. (BusinessDen file)
Unification, and a new leasing strategy
Gart Properties purchased the Pavilions in July 2008 alongside ING Clarion Partners for $94 million. In June 2015, with the mall’s position having improved, Clarion sold its stake to MetLife at the same time the $85 million loan was taken out.
Mosher said the $37 million the DDA is poised to pay, which works out to $105 a square foot, is based on what the lender would accept. While the lender won’t ever take ownership of the mall — “That’s an important thing to us,” Sidell said — it had to sign off on any deal.
“They said that’s as low as they would go, frankly,” Mosher said.
Mosher said it’s a reasonable price based on the income the mall receives from leases and parking.
“Today’s cash flow supports the purchase price,” he said.
The big opportunity with the purchase, according to Mosher, is what Sidell identified in the application: uniting the mall with the parking lots behind it. Three months before announcing the planned Pavilions acquisition, the DDA agreed to buy the parking lots for $23 million.
“The opportunity that’s been missed over the last 30 years, for whatever reason, is that the Brookfield parking lots and the Pavilions never came together as a place,” Mosher said.
The lots have long been considered a natural spot for development. In late 2008, amid the 10-year anniversary of the Pavilions, The Denver Post reported that Brookfield was interested in constructing an office building and hotel.
The ensuing years saw the financial crisis. Yet Denver experienced a development boom throughout the 2010s, as population surged. But Brookfield didn’t break ground. And no other developer bought the parking lots.
“The comment always was that Brookfield’s price was too high,” said Mosher, who worked for Trammell Crow during that period.
In part, he said, that was due to a unique revenue-share agreement. The owner of the lots gets two-thirds of the revenue from the Pavilions’ underground parking.
Denver’s development boom has died off amid higher interest rates and construction costs, and slower population growth. Nevertheless, Mosher hopes the DDA’s acquisition will finally facilitate something going up on the lots.
“Is it office? Probably not, but it could be. Is it a hotel? Could be. Is it a convention hotel? Probably not, it’s not a big enough site … but it could be a significant hotel location. Is it residential? Absolutely. One or both lots could be residential,” he said.
“And then you think about — are there ways to tie those new uses directly into Pavilions?”
For example, Mosher said, a new building might feature walkways that connect it with the upper floors of the Pavilions.
The DDA expects to close on the Pavilions purchase by the end of the year, assuming the City Council signs off. Around that time, Mosher said, the city will issue a request for proposals for firms interested in creating a sort of master plan for the Pavilions and the lots.
That could lead to the city bringing on a development partner, or selling to a firm that executes that plan, according to Mosher. How long the DDA itself will own the mall is up in the air.
“I think that’s a question of how we envision the two blocks,” he said.
Mosher said some people have interpreted the DDA’s pending purchase to mean the mall will be knocked down. But he hasn’t had a single conversation about that.
“If we were to demolish Pavilions we’d be here for 10 years with a hole in the ground trying to figure out what to do,” he said.
Master planning won’t be the only city-led process. Mosher also wants to bring in fresh thinking for the existing mall, which has been managed by Gart with retail leasing handled by The Zall Co. He said they’ll need to evaluate Pavilions “in this new neighborhood context.”
Pavilions has three constituencies: conventioneers, nearby office workers and nearby residents. The tourists are still coming, Mosher said — “Right now, what’s keeping this place alive is the Convention Center” — but the workers aren’t there since nearby offices are more than 40% vacant.
There also aren’t a ton of nearby residents. But the DDA is also working on changing that. It has agreed to provide loans for two office-to-residential conversions three blocks from the Pavilions. And more loans are expected.
Denver Pavilions on March 10, 2025. (BusinessDen file)
‘Any mall USA — that’s not the mix that we’re after’
On the day the planned purchase was announced, Sidell told BusinessDen he hoped Gart would help the mall “realize its potential” even after the deal. But Mosher said he’s primarily interested in keeping on maintenance staff that are familiar with the property’s escalators and other systems.
“I would like to keep them as asset manager,” he said of Gart. “But it is clear from the DDA’s standpoint that we need to identify a new leasing strategy and a new future for Pavilions.”
Mark Sidell
Sidell told BusinessDen he’s already been trying to shift the character of the mall.
“Any mall USA — that’s not the mix that we’re after,” he said.
One big tenant desired? A grocery store.
In January, Sidell told city officials that he’d “lost momentum” with one grocer prospect “over concerns of their management team related to employee safety, security and quality of life issues downtown,” according to emails obtained by BusinessDen through a public records request.
The identity of that grocer is redacted. But months later, in June, emails show Sidell toured Pavilions with executives from Castle Rock-based Leevers Supermarkets, which operates local Save-A-Lots and the more upscale Leevers Locavore in the Highlands. It didn’t lead to a deal.
Besides convenience stores, Upper Downtown has a Target, which leases space in a Gart-owned building just a block from Pavilions. At the other end of downtown, about a mile away, there’s a Whole Foods and King Soopers.
The DDA won’t just need to attract new tenants. It will also need to retain existing ones.
One focus will need to be Regal Cinemas. In September, Sidell emailed Adeeb Khan, the city’s director of economic development, saying he hoped Khan and the mayor could attend a meeting with a Regal executive.
“I could really use all of your help to articulate the vision and confirm your commitment to reinstating our clean, safe, and vibrant downtown!” Sidell wrote. “This is a critical element in completing their upcoming lease renewal.”
Sidell said the theater still has years left on its lease. But decisions about whether to stay or go are often made well in advance.
Read more: DDA doesn’t have to pay property taxes, but will if it buys Pavilions
Read more: DDA says it will pay Brookfield $23M for parking by Denver Pavilions
