A high-profile plan to turn the historic Symes building at 820 16th St. into roughly 116 apartments has been knocked off course after the lender foreclosed, shelving a project city officials had been treating as part of Denver’s downtown recovery playbook. The eight-story structure, also known as The George, had been seen as one of the simpler office-to-residential candidates on the 16th Street Mall, and its unraveling complicates the Denver Downtown Development Authority’s early efforts to turn empty offices into housing.
Thorofare Capital foreclosed on the Symes property last week, effectively ending Harbor Associates’ bid to convert the building into apartments. Harbor bought the property in 2018, later shifting it into a Harbor-affiliated LLC. Thorofare provided about $18.6 million in financing in April 2022, and the two sides have been locked in litigation since the loan matured, according to BusinessDen.
Public backing was conditional
The Symes conversion had been approved for a $17 million loan from the Denver Downtown Development Authority in July, part of a broader $100 million pilot aimed at breathing life back into downtown. Those awards, however, are only real once developers secure construction financing and obtain building permits. The DDA’s pilot-year strategy allows awards to sit in the pipeline for some time before any money is actually released, as outlined by Colorado Politics.
City officials weigh options
Bill Mosher, Denver’s chief projects officer, told BusinessDen that the DDA funds "had not actually been given" and that the authority will either back a new sponsor at Symes or redirect the commitment elsewhere. "It’s no money out of our project, and we’ll either work with a new group or move on to the next project," Mosher said, per BusinessDen. He noted that the DDA’s conversion loans are intentionally structured so that cash does not flow until developers line up the rest of their capital stack and pull permits, which can delay disbursement for months or longer.
What this means for downtown conversions
The Symes foreclosure underscores how fragile office-to-residential deals can be when developer equity, lender decisions, and public incentives are not pulling in the same direction. Other downtown conversion efforts, including big proposals along 17th Street and work at the Petroleum Building on the 16th Street Mall, have already run into financing or lease disputes, highlighting just how intricate these capital stacks can get, Colorado Politics reported.
With Thorofare now holding the keys to Symes, the building could be marketed to a new buyer or repositioned in some other way, but any new sponsor would still have to secure construction financing and building permits before a single DDA dollar moves. City officials have not announced a next step, and it is still unclear who, if anyone, will pick up the stalled conversion now that the lender has reclaimed the property.
