A five-story office building that once served as the headquarters of Colorado's massive public pension fund is being torn down in Denver's Capitol Hill neighborhood, its final chapter closing after 17 straight years without a single tenant. The building at 1300 Logan St. sits on half an acre and is owned by the Colorado Public Employees' Retirement Association, known as PERA, which built it in the mid-1970s.
According to BusinessDen, the demolition was first proposed back in 2024, and Commerce City-based contractor Hillen Corp. is now handling the teardown. PERA spent roughly $3 million building the 43,000-square-foot headquarters, which was completed in 1976 and built to serve as the pension fund's headquarters before it emptied out.
The demolition is focused on the former office tower at 1300 Logan St.
Why the Building Sat Empty for So Long
1300 Logan St. sat vacant after PERA left the building, as Colorado Politics reported. A 2019 city appraisal pegged the vacated property's value at around $8 million, but PERA officials told the outlet that two and a half years of active marketing had failed to land a single lease tenant.
The prolonged vacancy took its own toll. Local real estate specialists noted at the time that leaving the structure unused without a sale led to progressive physical deterioration, the same report found.
A Site With Deep Capitol Hill History
Long before PERA's office tower rose on the site in the mid-1970s, Chappell House became the Denver Art Museum's permanent home in 1922, according to the Denver Art Museum.
Downtown's Office Vacancy Crisis
Vacancy in the downtown core hit 38.6% in the second quarter of 2026, according to data from CBRE. CBRE has discussed conversions and obsolete space in downtown Denver.
Denver municipal code requires demolition permit applications for structures older than 30 years to go through a Landmark Preservation staff review to assess potential historic eligibility before permits are finalized, a process Colorado Politics detailed in its earlier reporting on the property.
PERA's Financial Scale
The demolition of one deteriorating office building is a small line item for an institution of PERA's size. The fund manages approximately $75.1 billion in its Combined Investment Fund for defined benefit plans, plus another $7.6 billion in voluntary capital accumulation plans, according to PERA's own year-end 2025 figures. At the same time, PERA recorded a combined funded ratio of 69.1% across its five division trust funds at year-end 2025, representing an unfunded actuarial accrued liability of $30.1 billion — a gap that a 2018 state law, SB 18-200, established reform mechanisms to close over a 30-year horizon.
Demolition will clear the half-acre Capitol Hill parcel of its long-vacant, deteriorating structure.
