The former AT&T building at 2535 E. 40th Ave. on Sept. 10, 2025. (Thomas Gounley/BusinessDen)
As Denver Water looks to free up land by its headquarters for the Denver Broncos, the utility hopes to relocate some operations to a former AT&T call center where redevelopment efforts have failed to take off.
The 235,000-square-foot building at 2535 E. 40th Ave., just east of York Street in the Elyria-Swansea neighborhood, sits on 14 acres. It has sat unused for years.
Now, in conjunction with some industrial parcels to the west, it’s the largest of three sites that Denver Water says it could move operations to when it sells 25 acres south of its headquarters to the Broncos.
The Broncos confirmed this week they intend to build a stadium at Burnham Yard, the state-owned former railyard in central Denver. Denver Water’s main base of operations is next door.
“For our relocation to work, we needed a location that would provide us with a large enough parcel so we could maintain our critical operations in one location,” Denver Water spokesman Travis Thompson said in an email Wednesday.
AT&T sold the site along 40th Avenue to Tom and Brooke Gordon, acting as Iselo 40th Avenue LLC, in August 2018.
The Gordons paid $19 million for the property, months after selling a 4.6-acre site along Brighton Boulevard in RiNo for $30 million.
By 2019, the Gordons had come up with redevelopment plans for a project dubbed “Smokestack 40.” The idea was to repurpose the 235,000-square-foot call center structure, with part of it becoming a 500-seat theater for local dance company Wonderbound, and to build on the property’s parking lot. Seven hundred residential units were planned, with 10% of them income-restricted.
The City Council rezoned the property in May 2019 to allow residential use up to three stories, although four members voted against it. GES Coalition, a neighborhood group, opposed it because the Gordons wouldn’t agree to establish a $140,000 fund to ease the effects of rising property taxes on nearby residents, according to The Denver Post. Elyria-Swansea is one of the city’s poorest neighborhoods.
The project never broke ground, although Wonderbound did operate in the building for a time.
The property in 2019. (Google Maps)
In 2022, the Gordons said in a press release that work on Smokestack 40 was delayed by the pandemic, then derailed by a jump in construction costs and “a rapidly changing financing environment.” But they said they had reached a deal with Kentucky-based residential builder LDG Development to develop a modified project now called “High-Iron 40.”
The Gordons said in 2022 they hoped to be allowed to add another story, increasing the residential unit count to 900, because of incentives in the recently passed Expanding Housing Affordability ordinance.
But the second take also didn’t get off the ground. Today, the property sits fenced off and overgrown. Stretches of windows are completely gone, exposing the inside to the elements. The brick facade is heavily graffitied.
Reached by BusinessDen Wednesday, Brooke Gordon declined to comment, saying she was out of the country.
In addition to the AT&T property, Denver Water also aims to purchase the 3.5-acre industrial parcel at 2401 E. 40th Ave., which sits along Josephine Street on the other side of RTD’s A Line.
That site, cluttered with vehicles, is owned by an entity linked to Sam Leger, CEO of real estate brokerage Unique Properties. He did not respond to a request for comment. Denver received a development proposal for Leger’s site just last month, proposing a four-story apartment complex with more than 300 units.
The southern end of Denver Water’s site in the Lincoln Park neighborhood on June 14, 2025. The operations will relocate as part of the deal with the Denver Broncos. (BusinessDen file)
Denver Water said this week that the Broncos, who are owned by members of Walmart’s Walton family, will pay the costs associated with the relocation.
The purchases in Elyria-Swansea still need to be approved by the utility’s board.
“We are still going through the purchasing process for these parcels,” Thompson said. “It will go to our board once it’s ready for their approval.”
In an interview with Denverite on Tuesday, Mayor Mike Johnston said the site was identified as a relocation possibility “just a few months ago.”
“We stepped in as the city and negotiated the acquisition of that first,” Johnston said. “Because Denver Water has a slower process than the Broncos do, we said, ‘Let us start that process.’ The landowners, to their credit, very selflessly agreed to just hand that entire contract that we negotiated over to Denver Water. And so that was what we did about 10 days ago, which was the final step.”
The former AT&T building at 2535 E. 40th Ave. on Sept. 10, 2025. (Thomas Gounley/BusinessDen)
As Denver Water looks to free up land by its headquarters for the Denver Broncos, the utility hopes to relocate some operations to a former AT&T call center where redevelopment efforts have failed to take off.
The 235,000-square-foot building at 2535 E. 40th Ave., just east of York Street in the Elyria-Swansea neighborhood, sits on 14 acres. It has sat unused for years.
Now, in conjunction with some industrial parcels to the west, it’s the largest of three sites that Denver Water says it could move operations to when it sells 25 acres south of its headquarters to the Broncos.
The Broncos confirmed this week they intend to build a stadium at Burnham Yard, the state-owned former railyard in central Denver. Denver Water’s main base of operations is next door.
“For our relocation to work, we needed a location that would provide us with a large enough parcel so we could maintain our critical operations in one location,” Denver Water spokesman Travis Thompson said in an email Wednesday.
AT&T sold the site along 40th Avenue to Tom and Brooke Gordon, acting as Iselo 40th Avenue LLC, in August 2018.
The Gordons paid $19 million for the property, months after selling a 4.6-acre site along Brighton Boulevard in RiNo for $30 million.
By 2019, the Gordons had come up with redevelopment plans for a project dubbed “Smokestack 40.” The idea was to repurpose the 235,000-square-foot call center structure, with part of it becoming a 500-seat theater for local dance company Wonderbound, and to build on the property’s parking lot. Seven hundred residential units were planned, with 10% of them income-restricted.
The City Council rezoned the property in May 2019 to allow residential use up to three stories, although four members voted against it. GES Coalition, a neighborhood group, opposed it because the Gordons wouldn’t agree to establish a $140,000 fund to ease the effects of rising property taxes on nearby residents, according to The Denver Post. Elyria-Swansea is one of the city’s poorest neighborhoods.
The project never broke ground, although Wonderbound did operate in the building for a time.
The property in 2019. (Google Maps)
In 2022, the Gordons said in a press release that work on Smokestack 40 was delayed by the pandemic, then derailed by a jump in construction costs and “a rapidly changing financing environment.” But they said they had reached a deal with Kentucky-based residential builder LDG Development to develop a modified project now called “High-Iron 40.”
The Gordons said in 2022 they hoped to be allowed to add another story, increasing the residential unit count to 900, because of incentives in the recently passed Expanding Housing Affordability ordinance.
But the second take also didn’t get off the ground. Today, the property sits fenced off and overgrown. Stretches of windows are completely gone, exposing the inside to the elements. The brick facade is heavily graffitied.
Reached by BusinessDen Wednesday, Brooke Gordon declined to comment, saying she was out of the country.
In addition to the AT&T property, Denver Water also aims to purchase the 3.5-acre industrial parcel at 2401 E. 40th Ave., which sits along Josephine Street on the other side of RTD’s A Line.
That site, cluttered with vehicles, is owned by an entity linked to Sam Leger, CEO of real estate brokerage Unique Properties. He did not respond to a request for comment. Denver received a development proposal for Leger’s site just last month, proposing a four-story apartment complex with more than 300 units.
The southern end of Denver Water’s site in the Lincoln Park neighborhood on June 14, 2025. The operations will relocate as part of the deal with the Denver Broncos. (BusinessDen file)
Denver Water said this week that the Broncos, who are owned by members of Walmart’s Walton family, will pay the costs associated with the relocation.
The purchases in Elyria-Swansea still need to be approved by the utility’s board.
“We are still going through the purchasing process for these parcels,” Thompson said. “It will go to our board once it’s ready for their approval.”
In an interview with Denverite on Tuesday, Mayor Mike Johnston said the site was identified as a relocation possibility “just a few months ago.”
“We stepped in as the city and negotiated the acquisition of that first,” Johnston said. “Because Denver Water has a slower process than the Broncos do, we said, ‘Let us start that process.’ The landowners, to their credit, very selflessly agreed to just hand that entire contract that we negotiated over to Denver Water. And so that was what we did about 10 days ago, which was the final step.”
