After delivering the Viña apartments — 150 affordable units for tenants making between 30% and 80% of the area median income (AMI) — Columbia Ventures has proposed its next phase at the site. A concept plan submitted to the city indicates that this next stage will be a senior affordable housing center at 2150 E. 49th Ave. 

Iván Anaya, president of the Mountain West region at Columbia Ventures, said the number of units at the proposed senior housing building would be between 150 and 180 units and will target residents making between 30% and 70% of the AMI. 

Anaya said what makes Columbia Ventures stand out is its commitment to delivering community services at its development sites.

The Viña Apartments building at 2121 E. 48th Ave., for example, also has a taco shop, community health center and a future co-op featuring 18 different local vendors. At the senior housing building, Anaya hopes to collaborate with a nonprofit or another partner to operate a senior center on the first floor. 

According to Anaya, there’s a significant need for Columbia’s proposed senior affordable housing development in the Elyria-Swansea neighborhood. 

“If we could build two of them, we would,” Anaya said. 

Columbia Ventures hopes to finance the project through low-income housing tax credits and is targeting a groundbreaking date during the third quarter of 2024, with construction finishing up in 2026, according to Anaya. Urban Land Conservancy currently owns the property. 

Although the third phase of development at Columbia Ventures’ Elyria Swansea project is still in the earliest planning stages, Anaya said it will include multifamily housing, as well as community-based retail. 

Anaya thinks the site is well-connected to other parts of the city, located only one rail stop from Union Station and a block and a half away from the National Western Center. 

“It also is serving a neighborhood that has been neglected from an affordable housing investment standpoint for a really long time,” he said. “And so we’re really excited to not only bring the housing but the service enrichment that comes to housing, just based on our affordable housing model or mixed-income model.”

Columbia Ventures has offices in Atlanta and Savannah, Georgia, and just opened its Denver office last year. Anaya is the only Denver employee right now, but he’s looking to hire more people to help with the firm’s growing number of projects in the Denver area. 

In addition to its Elyria-Swansea site, Columbia Ventures is developing in Aurora.

Elevate at Aurora, located at 1671 Altura Blvd., is a 137-unit affordable housing project that will be available for residents making between 30% and 70% of the AMI.

Along with the four residential buildings on the site, Columbia Ventures plans to build a 15,000-square-foot one-story community facility. The landowner, Living Hope Community Church, and a career guidance organization called CrossPurpose would be the primary users of that facility.

Columbia hopes to break ground at Elevate at Aurora this fall.

“Within every single building that we build, we start with a human being first and then we back into a building, as opposed to starting with the building and trying to fit people into it,” Anaya said. 

In the early 1990s, Our Lady of Guadalupe Church, a large Catholic parish in Denver’s Northside that’s a hub for local Latinos, faced a crisis. Nearly every day, people come to the office asking for help with medical or mental health, the pastor at the time told the parish council, and we don’t have anything to offer. Is anyone willing to take the lead on this issue? Jim Garcia, attending his first meeting of the church’s leadership group, raised his hand.

Back then, Garcia worked for Tim Wirth, a Democratic U.S. senator from Colorado. “It wasn’t like I had a health care background,” Garcia says. “But I did have an understanding of the issue from the policy level…. It turned out to be a lot more than I imagined.”

The church owned a run-down two-bedroom, 800-square-foot bungalow in the Highland neighborhood that could potentially serve as a free clinic, but bids to renovate the century-old house came in around $150,000. Garcia’s budget was $10,000. So, he stood up at a Sunday service and asked for volunteers. “More than 100 people showed up,” Garcia says. And they kept showing up, often working construction jobs by day and laboring at the clinic into the night.

DENVER – Mayor Michael B. Hancock honored a dozen projects during the 2022 Mayor’s Design Awards ceremony tonight at the Studio Loft of the Ellie Caulkins Opera House. 

• Denver Beer Co. – South Downing, 2425 S. Downing Street 
• Improper City, 3201 Walnut Street 
• Burwell Center for Career Achievement, 2190 E. Asbury Avenue 
• Chicano/a/x Murals of Colorado Project, La Alma Lincoln Park Historic Cultural District and 2895 W. 8th Avenue  
• Milo Luxury Residences, 4109 E. 10th Avenue 
• Citizen West 10, 140 W. 10th Avenue 
• Colfax Is Colfax, Colfax Avenue from the Colorado State Capitol to East High School 
• Platte Street Plaza, 1553 Platte Street 
• Viña Apartments, 2121 E. 48th Avenue 
• Warren Residences, 1630 E. 14th Avenue 
• Platte Fifteen, 2375 15th Street 

• Denver Art Museum – Anna and John J. Sie Welcome Center and Martin Building Project, 100 W. 14th Avenue Parkway