A 15-story office tower at 4643 S. Ulster St. in Denver's Tech Center has landed back in the hands of a familiar owner. PaulsCorp, which owned Regency Plaza back in the mid-1990s, has bought the 335,000-square-foot building for $57.3 million, or about $170 per square foot, marking the firm's return to office acquisitions after largely exiting the sector before the pandemic.
The sale, first reported by The Denver Post, represents a roughly 20% discount from the $71.3 million that seller Granite Properties paid for the tower in 2019. That 2019 purchase itself followed a longer arc of valuation swings: the Texas-based firm bought the building from Barings, which had acquired it in September 2008 for $55 million, according to CommercialSearch. Regency Plaza was completed in 1985 and renovated in 2020, and it earned LEED Gold certification in 2018, per the same outlet, with amenities that include an adjacent Hyatt Regency hotel, structured parking, a training center and an updated fitness facility.
A Return to Office After Years of Retreat
PaulsCorp's move is notable because the firm had largely stepped away from office real estate. Per the Denver Post, PaulsCorp sold nearly all of its office buildings before the pandemic, keeping only its Cherry Creek headquarters at 100 St. Paul St. and selling a building two blocks north in 2022. Company president Brian Pauls told the Post that prices were getting quite high and inflated at the time, which helps explain the earlier exit.
Now, with valuations down, PaulsCorp is looking again. Pauls said the company is watching the office sector quite closely and is moving back into it where it sees quality and value line up, according to the Post's reporting. He described Regency Plaza specifically as a great value and positioned very well as the office recovery continues. Beyond office holdings, PaulsCorp also owns industrial, residential and land properties, and it is currently building an apartment project near Denver International Airport — part of a broader residential push that included a proposed master-planned project of more than 1,100 rental units across 60 acres near Peña Boulevard, as detailed by PaulsCorp.
Financing and Leasing Details
PaulsCorp financed the purchase with a $40 million, six-year fixed-rate loan from Collegiate Peaks Bank, with the ability to draw down an additional $7 million per the loan agreement, according to the Post. Collegiate Peaks is a division of Montana-based Glacier Bancorp that operates Denver-area branches, including one in the Tech Center itself, as noted by Connect CRE. Newmark brokers Tim Richey and Jack Richey represented Granite Properties in the sale, the outlet reports.
Leasing at Regency Plaza will continue under Colliers, with brokers Abby Pattillo and Robert Whittelsey remaining in place, according to the same Connect CRE report. The building is currently 83% leased, with tenants signing 176,000 square feet of new leases since 2024 and an average remaining lease term of more than six years, the Denver Post reports. Granite Properties, for its part, still owns Prentice Plaza, a 162,000-square-foot office building in Greenwood Village, per CommercialSearch — showing the seller isn't exiting the submarket entirely, even as it sheds Regency Plaza.
Suburban Stability Amid Downtown Distress
The deal lands against a backdrop of a widening gap between Denver's suburban office nodes and its struggling downtown core. The Southeast/Denver Tech Center submarket posted a 26.4% office vacancy rate in the second quarter of 2026, well below the roughly 38% vacancy rate downtown, according to figures from CBRE. Metro Denver office space overall logged 179,000 square feet of positive net absorption in that same quarter — its strongest showing since early 2022 — reversing three prior quarters in which negative absorption topped 2.2 million square feet, CBRE reported.
Downtown towers have fared far worse. A 16-story tower at 475 17th St. was scheduled for foreclosure auction in September 2026, according to Connect CRE, underscoring how central business district assets are lagging well-located suburban buildings with modern amenities. Hoodline previously reported on a similar dynamic in July, when UCHealth snapped up towers at a discount in nearby Greenwood Village. Whether suburban office values have truly bottomed out, or whether prolonged remote-work trends will continue to cap appreciation in business parks like the Tech Center, remains an open question for the market going forward.
