The former AT&T building in Denver’s Elyria-Swansea neighborhood on Sept. 10, 2025. (BusinessDen file)
Denver Water has agreed to pay $53 million for the site in Elyria-Swansea where it will relocate some of its operations to free up land for a new Denver Broncos stadium.
The public utility’s board approved purchase agreements with two sellers in late September for an approximately 18-acre site along 40th Avenue east of York Street.
The majority of the site is a former AT&T call center at 2577 E. 40th Ave. Denver Water has agreed to pay $39.5 million for the site, which last sold for $19 million in 2018.
That deal is expected to close this month, according to both sides.
Denver Water also has agreed to pay $13.5 million for an industrial site just west of the former call center, records show. That’s 10 times the $1.34 million the seller paid, records show.
The second deal is expected to close in the spring, according to Denver Water.
Denver Water plans to use the site for operations currently housed just south of the utility’s headquarters at 1600 W. 12th Ave. That site is adjacent to Burnham Yard, a state-owned former railyard.
The Broncos said in September that the team intends to build a stadium-anchored project on Burnham Yard and surrounding land. BusinessDen reported three months before then, in June, that the team had already purchased some land and was in discussions with Denver Water.
Denver Water has said the Broncos will pay all costs associated with the relocation of its operations.
Cheesman Park resident Tom Gordon, who owns the former AT&T property, said he heard from brokers representing the city in late May or early June. Initially, he said, they just asked how his efforts to redevelop the site were going.
“There was clearly an implication in the ask, whether I’d consider selling the property,” he said.
That led to negotiations and a signed purchase agreement. Gordon declined to disclose the city’s initial offer but said the process wasn’t anything special.
“It’s pretty standard,” he said. “They came, we negotiated, they agreed and now we’re ready to close.”
Gordon said he initially didn’t know why the city wanted the property, but was eventually told over the summer that the property was wanted for Denver Water because of a deal with the Broncos. He signed off on the city transferring its purchase agreement to the utility.
Gordon, 71, made his money in the telecommunications sector, which he exited about 15 years ago. He has lived in Colorado since 1972, even though the firm he owned, Americatel, primarily served Central America.
His decades in Denver have, naturally, included Broncos games. Gordon said he had a suite at the former Mile High Stadium during the 1980s when that came with the opportunity to travel with the team to one away game each season, including flying on the team plane and taking the team bus to the team hotel.
“It was a great perk,” he said.
In 2014, Gordon and his wife, Brooke, bought a site in Denver’s RiNo neighborhood for $11.5 million. They planned to develop it, but wound up in a legal battle with Denver that Gordon said ended with the city paying the couple about $4 million plus legal expenses. In early 2018, just three-and-a-half years after their purchase, the couple sold the property to an apartment developer for $30 million.
The couple put much of that money into the former call center they bought from AT&T that August.
Once again, they plotted to redevelop the site with hundreds of residential units, initially planning to repurpose some of the existing structure. But before their plans could be approved, Gordon said, the pandemic hit. Construction costs skyrocketed.
And conditions were deteriorating at the building.
“We had a lot of break-ins stealing copper,” Gordon said. “And finally it got so bad that the people doing it tore out our electrical system.”
Denver police, meanwhile, “felt there were dangerous conditions for their officers,” Gordon said. So several years ago, he tore down a portion of the building and gutted the remainder and remediated asbestos. Windows were removed, making it so one could see into the structure.
By then, Gordon said, he had decided not to repurpose any of the building. Meanwhile, interest rates jumped, slowing the pace of new development across the country.
In recent months, Gordon said, his brokers at Newmark had been talking to potential development partners, as well as firms that might want to buy the site outright.
Gordon said selling the site to Denver Water is bittersweet, particularly because he believes a couple years from now will be a great time to be delivering new apartments.
“We believe it’s a great location in the long run,” he said. “We would have developed something that would be profitable that we would be personally proud of. But on the other hand, as we’ve learned over the last few years, nothing is predictable.”
The second, adjacent site that Denver Water is buying is owned by an entity managed by Sam Leger, CEO of real estate brokerage Unique Properties.
Leger, who did not respond to a request for comment, also owns the former Esquire Theatre building at the edge of Cap Hill and the office building at 800 Grant St., which he bought just last week.
Records indicate that Leger’s Claudrey LLC bought the bulk of the property it’s selling to Denver Water in 2015 for $1.28 million. He spent an additional $63,000 in 2024 to buy a chunk from the Regional Transportation District, whose A Line rail route runs between Leger’s property and Gordon’s.
The southern end of Denver Water’s site next to Burnham Yard on June 14, 2025. (BusinessDen file)
After buying the Elyria-Swansea site, Denver Water will still need to redevelop it to suit its needs. The land the utility is giving up has a host of small industrial buildings on it.
Denver Water has also said it could relocate some operations to 1801 W. 13th Ave., a small parcel just north of its headquarters that it’s buying for $2 million, and another smaller site near Empower Field at Mile High Stadium.
Specifics about the relocation effort have yet to be ironed out.
Denver Water spokesman Travis Thompson said the utility is still working to estimate the total cost. He also said it had yet to be determined exactly how the Broncos will pay for the costs — say, by paying certain expenses directly, or reimbursing Denver Water in one fell swoop at the end. Records show Denver Water is buying the Elyria-Swansea sites with its own money for now.
Thompson also couldn’t address whether the Broncos are paying for Denver Water’s land by Burnham Yard or are being given it in exchange for paying the relocation costs.
“We are still working through all details with the Broncos,” he said.
The Elyria-Swansea neighborhood is one of Denver’s poorest and features a tight mix of residential and industrial uses, including a Purina pet food factory. Residents interviewed by BusinessDen last month generally spoke in support of Denver Water’s impending arrival.
“I know it’s an industrial use, but that’s what we’re used to,” said 29-year-old Alfonso Espino, who lives about two blocks away.
While neighbors weren’t opposed to residential redevelopment at the AT&T site, they didn’t like that the property devolved into an eyesore, Espino said.
In 2019, when the Gordons were seeking to rezone the property, their bid was opposed by the GES Coalition. The neighborhood group wanted the Gordons, who had already agreed to keep 10% of future units income-restricted, to also establish a $140,000 fund to ease the effects of rising property taxes on nearby residents.
Gordon, who had thought he and the GES Coalition had a deal, said he didn’t have a relationship with the group after that.
“There was nothing to really have a relationship about,” he said.
GES Coalition Executive Director Nola Miguel voiced optimism about Denver Water.
“A community utility seems more stable. Maybe once they come they’ll build a relationship with the neighborhood,” she said.
Jeff Popiel owns Geotech, a manufacturing operation across the street from Denver Water’s future site. (Thomas Gounley/BusinessDen)
Across 40th Avenue from Denver Water’s future site is a large manufacturing facility used by Geotech Environmental Equipment Inc. Owner and CEO Jeff Popiel said the company, founded in 1978 and at its current location since 2006, has 135 employees and operates 24 hours a day.
While he was on board with residential redevelopment across the street — “we could recruit people who would live there,” he said — the 56-year-old said he is also happy to have the utility as a neighbor.
“We make equipment related to clean water, so to have a customer move across the street is great,” he said.
The former AT&T building in Denver’s Elyria-Swansea neighborhood on Sept. 10, 2025. (BusinessDen file)
Denver Water has agreed to pay $53 million for the site in Elyria-Swansea where it will relocate some of its operations to free up land for a new Denver Broncos stadium.
The public utility’s board approved purchase agreements with two sellers in late September for an approximately 18-acre site along 40th Avenue east of York Street.
The majority of the site is a former AT&T call center at 2577 E. 40th Ave. Denver Water has agreed to pay $39.5 million for the site, which last sold for $19 million in 2018.
That deal is expected to close this month, according to both sides.
Denver Water also has agreed to pay $13.5 million for an industrial site just west of the former call center, records show. That’s 10 times the $1.34 million the seller paid, records show.
The second deal is expected to close in the spring, according to Denver Water.
Denver Water plans to use the site for operations currently housed just south of the utility’s headquarters at 1600 W. 12th Ave. That site is adjacent to Burnham Yard, a state-owned former railyard.
The Broncos said in September that the team intends to build a stadium-anchored project on Burnham Yard and surrounding land. BusinessDen reported three months before then, in June, that the team had already purchased some land and was in discussions with Denver Water.
Denver Water has said the Broncos will pay all costs associated with the relocation of its operations.
Cheesman Park resident Tom Gordon, who owns the former AT&T property, said he heard from brokers representing the city in late May or early June. Initially, he said, they just asked how his efforts to redevelop the site were going.
“There was clearly an implication in the ask, whether I’d consider selling the property,” he said.
That led to negotiations and a signed purchase agreement. Gordon declined to disclose the city’s initial offer but said the process wasn’t anything special.
“It’s pretty standard,” he said. “They came, we negotiated, they agreed and now we’re ready to close.”
Gordon said he initially didn’t know why the city wanted the property, but was eventually told over the summer that the property was wanted for Denver Water because of a deal with the Broncos. He signed off on the city transferring its purchase agreement to the utility.
Gordon, 71, made his money in the telecommunications sector, which he exited about 15 years ago. He has lived in Colorado since 1972, even though the firm he owned, Americatel, primarily served Central America.
His decades in Denver have, naturally, included Broncos games. Gordon said he had a suite at the former Mile High Stadium during the 1980s when that came with the opportunity to travel with the team to one away game each season, including flying on the team plane and taking the team bus to the team hotel.
“It was a great perk,” he said.
In 2014, Gordon and his wife, Brooke, bought a site in Denver’s RiNo neighborhood for $11.5 million. They planned to develop it, but wound up in a legal battle with Denver that Gordon said ended with the city paying the couple about $4 million plus legal expenses. In early 2018, just three-and-a-half years after their purchase, the couple sold the property to an apartment developer for $30 million.
The couple put much of that money into the former call center they bought from AT&T that August.
Once again, they plotted to redevelop the site with hundreds of residential units, initially planning to repurpose some of the existing structure. But before their plans could be approved, Gordon said, the pandemic hit. Construction costs skyrocketed.
And conditions were deteriorating at the building.
“We had a lot of break-ins stealing copper,” Gordon said. “And finally it got so bad that the people doing it tore out our electrical system.”
Denver police, meanwhile, “felt there were dangerous conditions for their officers,” Gordon said. So several years ago, he tore down a portion of the building and gutted the remainder and remediated asbestos. Windows were removed, making it so one could see into the structure.
By then, Gordon said, he had decided not to repurpose any of the building. Meanwhile, interest rates jumped, slowing the pace of new development across the country.
In recent months, Gordon said, his brokers at Newmark had been talking to potential development partners, as well as firms that might want to buy the site outright.
Gordon said selling the site to Denver Water is bittersweet, particularly because he believes a couple years from now will be a great time to be delivering new apartments.
“We believe it’s a great location in the long run,” he said. “We would have developed something that would be profitable that we would be personally proud of. But on the other hand, as we’ve learned over the last few years, nothing is predictable.”
The second, adjacent site that Denver Water is buying is owned by an entity managed by Sam Leger, CEO of real estate brokerage Unique Properties.
Leger, who did not respond to a request for comment, also owns the former Esquire Theatre building at the edge of Cap Hill and the office building at 800 Grant St., which he bought just last week.
Records indicate that Leger’s Claudrey LLC bought the bulk of the property it’s selling to Denver Water in 2015 for $1.28 million. He spent an additional $63,000 in 2024 to buy a chunk from the Regional Transportation District, whose A Line rail route runs between Leger’s property and Gordon’s.
The southern end of Denver Water’s site next to Burnham Yard on June 14, 2025. (BusinessDen file)
After buying the Elyria-Swansea site, Denver Water will still need to redevelop it to suit its needs. The land the utility is giving up has a host of small industrial buildings on it.
Denver Water has also said it could relocate some operations to 1801 W. 13th Ave., a small parcel just north of its headquarters that it’s buying for $2 million, and another smaller site near Empower Field at Mile High Stadium.
Specifics about the relocation effort have yet to be ironed out.
Denver Water spokesman Travis Thompson said the utility is still working to estimate the total cost. He also said it had yet to be determined exactly how the Broncos will pay for the costs — say, by paying certain expenses directly, or reimbursing Denver Water in one fell swoop at the end. Records show Denver Water is buying the Elyria-Swansea sites with its own money for now.
Thompson also couldn’t address whether the Broncos are paying for Denver Water’s land by Burnham Yard or are being given it in exchange for paying the relocation costs.
“We are still working through all details with the Broncos,” he said.
The Elyria-Swansea neighborhood is one of Denver’s poorest and features a tight mix of residential and industrial uses, including a Purina pet food factory. Residents interviewed by BusinessDen last month generally spoke in support of Denver Water’s impending arrival.
“I know it’s an industrial use, but that’s what we’re used to,” said 29-year-old Alfonso Espino, who lives about two blocks away.
While neighbors weren’t opposed to residential redevelopment at the AT&T site, they didn’t like that the property devolved into an eyesore, Espino said.
In 2019, when the Gordons were seeking to rezone the property, their bid was opposed by the GES Coalition. The neighborhood group wanted the Gordons, who had already agreed to keep 10% of future units income-restricted, to also establish a $140,000 fund to ease the effects of rising property taxes on nearby residents.
Gordon, who had thought he and the GES Coalition had a deal, said he didn’t have a relationship with the group after that.
“There was nothing to really have a relationship about,” he said.
GES Coalition Executive Director Nola Miguel voiced optimism about Denver Water.
“A community utility seems more stable. Maybe once they come they’ll build a relationship with the neighborhood,” she said.
Jeff Popiel owns Geotech, a manufacturing operation across the street from Denver Water’s future site. (Thomas Gounley/BusinessDen)
Across 40th Avenue from Denver Water’s future site is a large manufacturing facility used by Geotech Environmental Equipment Inc. Owner and CEO Jeff Popiel said the company, founded in 1978 and at its current location since 2006, has 135 employees and operates 24 hours a day.
While he was on board with residential redevelopment across the street — “we could recruit people who would live there,” he said — the 56-year-old said he is also happy to have the utility as a neighbor.
“We make equipment related to clean water, so to have a customer move across the street is great,” he said.
