Sterling Bay Nails Down Final OK for Tech Campus Near Denver
Plans call for more than 2.5 million square feet of life science, industrial, office and retail space.
Sterling Bay has received final approval from the city council in Louisville, Colo., for the 475-acre Redtail Ridge innovation district.
The multi-phase mixed-use campus is along the U.S. 36 corridor in Boulder County and will eventually total more than 2.5 million square feet of commercial space, including life science, R&D, manufacturing (cGMP/Current Good Manufacturing Practices), industrial, office and retail buildings. The initial anchor will be a new 160-bed home for AdventHealth Avista Hospital.
Redtail Ridge will also feature more than 139 acres of public parks and dedicated open space and more than 20 miles of walking trails and bike paths. The project’s sustainability components will include Fitwel and LEED certifications and on-site solar generation.
Chicago-based Sterling Bay acquired the site two years ago. It had previously been the location of StorageTek’s global headquarters. StorageTek, a manufacturer of data storage systems, was bought by Sun Microsystems in 2005 for $4.1 billion; Sun was itself acquired by Oracle Corp. in 2010 for $7.4 billion.
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Infrastructure investments by Sterling Bay as part of the development plan include more than $25 million in offsite improvements to the Northwest Parkway and a third underpass connecting Monarch Campus and Redtail Ridge.
Infrastructure work is expected to begin in the first quarter of 2025, with the first building delivered in the second half of 2026.
Metro Denver’s lab space market
Last September, Conscience Bay Co., a local private equity firm, announced plans to develop a speculative 112,423-square-foot, all-electric tech campus in Boulder, Colo. Ridgeway Science & Tech reportedly will be Colorado’s first net–zero carbon life science and technology campus. It was scheduled to break ground this year and deliver in 2026.
Metro Denver’s inventory of lab/R&D space is about 1.5 million square feet, of which there’s a total availability of 31.1 percent, according to a recent report from Avison Young. Year to date, there was a minor amount—about 3,000 square feet—of negative absorption.
As of the second quarter, biotech job postings in metro Denver were languishing versus 2023, unlike most other U.S. biotech hubs, which have been seeing growth in job postings.
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