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Making Neighborhoods

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East-West Partners’ Mark Smith and Harry Frampton Strive for their Own Style with a Sense of Community

Mark Smith, President, East West Partners Denver

Denver, CO (2001) - “We came into Denver to build neighborhoods, not just buildings.”

According to Mark Smith, President of East West Partners Denver, that’s the philosophy his company brings to almost any development project it undertakes, but especially one in an historic area like Denver’s Lower Downtown.

Smith has worked with Managing Partner Harry Frampton and a very experienced management team to make East West Partners one of the state’s biggest developers with more than $200 million in projects currently under way. The firm is developing one of LoDo’s biggest residential projects to date, the multi-phased Riverfront Park. Dubbed “Denver’s Central Park” neighborhood, Riverfront Park includes three projects; the Park Place Lofts, Promenade Lofts and Park Tower Condominiums.

The land, comprising 25 acres in the Central Platte Valley, is located on the green belt of the South Platte River, bordered by 20th and 15th Streets to the north and south and on the west by the new Commons Park.

Harry Frampton, Managing Partner, East West Partners

Until now, Smith said, Denver has lacked a cosmopolitan neighborhood that blends open space and city life, like New York’s Central Park, with its upscale, modern homes surrounded by parks, fine shops and entertainment venues.

“When we started planning Riverfront Park, we asked: ‘What is Denver? What should a new Denver neighborhood look like so that it works with the older ones?’ We wanted to complement LoDo but create our own niche at the same time, a place with its own style. And, like New York’s Soho and other great urban neighborhoods in American cities, we wanted a real neighborhood feel at Riverfront,” Smith said, “not just a bunch of buildings. LoDo is fast becoming a great neighborhood, with some of the best historic masonry buildings anywhere, and we wanted Riverfront Park and its exteriors to contribute to that atmosphere but not be a copy of it.”

Designed by Urban Design Group, the three buildings at Riverfront Park are the first to be constructed in a development that will ultimately include as many as 12 new structures built over the next five to seven years. The cost of both loft buildings and the condominium tower is $70 million, with completion scheduled by December 31, 2001.

Beaver Creek Village Resort offers an innovative combination of real stucco and native stone.

Park Place Lofts (176,000 sq. ft., 76 units) and Promenade Lofts (137,000 sq. ft., 52 units) are both seven-story structures with an exterior that’s a combination of precast concrete, brick, cut stone and casement windows.

Another component of Riverfront Park is the Park Tower Condominiums, a 221,000-sq-ft., 13-story steel frame structure with a below-grade parking level, retail on the first floor and 55 condominium units. Park Tower is also clad with a combination of precast, brick, cut stone and casement windows.

What makes this new Central Platte Valley neighborhood development so popular, according to Smith, is that Riverfront Park is within walking distance of Denver’s major cultural attractions and its burgeoning urban scene – including the Denver Performing Arts Center, the Pepsi Center and Coors Field.

“There’s also a great masonry tradition in the entertainment venues that support this neighborhood, especially at Coors Field,” Smith said. “We want to be distinctive but reflect those traditions too.”

East West Partners has applied that philosophy in its resort and mountain developments as well. It has built hundreds of millions of dollars worth of high-end resort communities, especially in the Vail Valley and Beaver Creek.

East West Partners’ Riverfront Park residential development is the cornerstone of Denver’s new Central Platte Valley neighborhood.

“In those locations, we wanted more of a European feel,” Smith said. “That means we used a lot of native stone and real stucco combinations, like they do in Europe. At Beaver Creek, we also built our structures with the ‘one roof’ appearance of the town, to contribute to the community continuity there.”

East West’s list of mountain projects is longer than a ski run, from hotels to gated communities, condominiums, retail and several mixed-use facilities throughout Colorado’s mountain towns. The company is currently building bigger community anchor projects like the Main Street Station in Breckenridge, a mixed-use development that will become the gateway to the town’s southern entrance.

But even in a project of that size, Smith said that East West Partners tries to work with the vernacular architecture of the area. In Breckenridge, that means everything from Victorian to Nordic styles. “You can’t very easily build a seven-story Victorian complex,” Smith said, “but you can be sure that the materials you use fit with the area. The nice thing about masonry is that it works almost anywhere, and we keep that in mind wherever we plant a shovel for our next project.”

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