Aug. 25, 2000

A PLACE IN THE CITY

So now I'm an urban pioneer.

If all goes as planned this weekend, between the time I write this and you read it, I will have moved into Craig Nassi's gorgeous new condominium building in downtown Denver.

It's called the Belvedere Tower and you can't miss it. Eighteen stories, traditional design, faced in stone the color of rich cream, ornamented with antique bronze lanterns and intricate gates. Eventually, the ground-floor retail level will include a restaurant, a day spa, a chocolate shop and other stores.

And it's only the first of several similar buildings Nassi is planning for the Golden Triangle, an area just south of downtown Denver.

Why would I want to live there? Besides the fact that it is beautiful and I'm up so high I can see all the way to Pikes Peak? Think of all the places I can easily walk to. My office, to start with; the Denver Rocky Mountain News building is two blocks north of my new home. So while the rest of Denver is stuck in construction traffic on Interstate 25 for the next seven years, my commute will be a five-minute stroll.

What else? The Denver Art Museum and the main downtown library. The 16th Street Mall. The Performing Arts Center. The Cherry Creek greenway.

Lots of people like me are making the same decision. People who can afford to live anywhere are choosing the city over the suburbs. We used to hear that cities were dying, that they were fated to become decaying, hollowed-out urban cores surrounded by affluent suburbs. That grim future turns out to be not inevitable after all.

"All great development comes from a vision," Nassi said. He is proud to be part of this new wave of development, and of his building, but it took years for him to turn his vision into concrete and stone. When he opened Metropolitan Antiques six years ago, he said, he'd walk around the neighborhood and imagine what it could be instead of an eyesore of parking lots. He investigated the zoning; he could go up to 200 feet, which allowed for something grandiose. But people told him -- especially people with money to lend for building -- that nobody had built a residential high-rise in Denver for 20 years, and it couldn't succeed.

"Not a lot of people in the world are risk takers," he said.

He bought the land. He planned the building, and began marketing it. He had 15 reservations, and then 20, and then 25. And the bankers began to see it could be done.

Did you have the same trouble with the second building, I asked him.

That's the Prado, two blocks from the Belvedere and 30 percent larger. It will open in late 2001, and it's about 70 percent sold.

"Very easy," he said. "Now people want to throw money at me."

Finding an architect for a building so traditional wasn't easy either.

Modern architectural sensibilities favor constructions that look as if someone dropped a big spool of silver ribbon and it got all tangled up, or two paper airplanes suffered a midair collision and crashed to the ground.

But a client who knows what he wants can usually get it, eventually. Nassi bought the Belvedere's signature gates, which are about 120 years old, from a palace in Buenos Aires that was being demolished. He bought the lanterns, too, "that would only fit a building like this." When the building finally took shape, though, architect Joe Simmons told Nassi "she's standing proud."

Once these buildings have been there for a little while, they'll look as if they've been there practically forever. Already people ask him, Nassi said, whether he's doing a renovation although the building is brand-new. He wants the design to convey the solidity and permanence that one senses in London, or Paris.

When I first saw a picture of the Belvedere I thought of Central Park West in Manhattan, but you get the idea.

There are still plenty of parking lots in the Golden Triangle. Nassi hopes that the success of his buildings will encourage others to use traditional designs, whatever their personal taste may be. Developers build what people want to buy.

Since I'm going to live there and whatever they build I'll be seeing it out my new kitchen window, I sure hope he's right.

(725 words)