Serving the community since 1926
WEEK OF MAY 22, 2025
VOLUME 98 | ISSUE 25
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Moves to convert offices to homes come to Downtown BY ANDREA DUKAKIS CPR NEWS
Jen Arnpriester stands behind the register at Beyond the Blackboard, a toy store at the corner of West 32nd Avenue and Perry St.
PHOTO BY ALLEN COWGILL
Tariffs start to affect some north Denver businesses Shop owners seek problems with supply chains BY ALLEN COWGILL SPECIAL TO COLORADO COMMUNITY MEDIA
The recent tariffs, taxes imposed on imported goods, are already affecting three north Denver businesses. Steve Pribyl, owner of SloHi Bike and Coffee Company, said tariffs are affecting his pricing and inventory. Much of the product sold at his bike shop at the corner of West 29th Avenue and Tennyson Street is manufactured in Taiwan, Vietnam and Indonesia. Some of his suppliers have already seen aluminum tariffs affect pricing and he has had to increase his own prices on chains and some bicycle locks. He said he’s been getting emails from
some of his suppliers that are preemptively raising prices. “Some of my suppliers are like ... we know the tariffs are coming. We are going to raise prices now,” Pribyl said. Getting inventory is also becoming an issue for the shop. Pribyl, who was an employee at SloHi up until two years ago when he bought the shop, has traditionally tried to run a lean-inventory management strategy because he is just starting out on the ownership side of the business. “I had a plan going into the year of how I wanted to do purchasing, and it mainly affects my inventory values,” he said. “I want to keep my inventory low to have more cash on hand so I can react to things. Instead, I have to spend more money, get more products, some of it on credit, just so I have stuff for the year.” Pribyl would like to buy more bikes to stock up before the tariffs hit, but there are
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Developers in U.S. cities have become bullish about the possibilities of what they call “adaptive reuse,” converting old office buildings into residential units. It’s an idea they are betting will solve the many problems afflicting the nation’s cities: namely, post-pandemic vacancies in office buildings, empty city centers and a lack of affordable housing. Downtown Denver is no exception, where a third of office space is vacant and many buildings are seen as good prospects for conversion. Recently, The Luzzato Company bought two towers on 17th Street in downtown Denver for $3.2 million, a tiny fraction of the $112 million the two buildings sold for in 2008. The developers plan to have 700 residential units with retail space on the lower floors. The architectural firm Gensler has worked to identify office buildings in downtown Denver that have the most potential for these conversions and has also created a tool for assessing which buildings are good prospects. Ryan Warner spoke with Gensler’s Josie Hyde. Here are takeaways from their conversation. What are the economic conditions in Denver that make these conversions more than just a pipe dream?
a lot of bikes that have been snapped up by larger bike shops because of the fear of tariffs. “It’s getting harder to replenish inventory,” he said, adding lead times on products are getting longer. “Things I thought I would get in a month might take two, three months. Everything is on backorder. Something I might have been expecting in May now might come in June.” Pribyl also had to cancel a demo program. He was supposed to get a set of demo bikes from one manufacturer so that he could have a bunch of bikes for his customers to test drive. That program was canceled by the manufacturer as they are starting to stockpile all of the bikes they have in the U.S. before the tariffs take effect. So he canceled that demo program for the rest of the year.
“There are. I think one of the factors … is we’ve got about 13 million
SEE TARIFFS, P4
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“They’ve always been a challenge but they’re very doable. We’ve done plenty of them across the country, and really what it takes is finding the right buildings. And so even though the economics are somewhat challenging, one of these buildings just sold for a very good price, and so that one’s going to be much easier to convert. But if you start with the right buildings, the cost will be lower to start with.” And the realities of downtown office space mean that there are deals to be had?
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