Redevelopment of an approximately 37-acre former U.S. Army Denver Medical Depot site into a 650,000-square-foot flexible industrial and office park.
Constructed in 1942 as a regional medical equipment and supply facility for the U.S. Army, the Denver Medical Depot was operated by the Surgeon General as one of eleven branch medical supply depots in the U.S. during World War II. The facility was designed by renowned Denver architect Temple Hoyne Buell and erected by F.J. Kirchhof Construction Company.
During World War II, the depot employed almost 800 workers, many of them women, and shipped more than 250 million pounds of medical equipment and supplies in support of the U.S. war effort. Following the war, the Army discontinued its use as a medical depot and in subsequent years the site was used for a variety of public purposes: the Veterans Administration (1947), the City and County of Denver (1949 – 1950), the Air Force Finance and Accounting Center (1951 – 1977) and again by the City and County of Denver and Denver Public Schools (1977 – 1992).
The site was vacated in 1992 and returned to the federal government. Hampered by environmental contamination and years of deferred maintenance, the 37-acre site sat vacant and underutilized for six years.
In 1998, North Denver Industrial, LLC (NDI) and Inner-City Community Development Corporation (ICDC) partnered to redevelop the site into a flex-industrial office park. To facilitate redevelopment, DURA provided $3.6 million in TIF reimbursement and helped transfer the property to NDI and ICDC.
In addition to environmental remediation, the project rehabilitated and put back into service approximately 650,000-square-feet of industrial and office space. Today the formerly vacant and contaminated site is more than 70 percent restored and is on the National Register of Historic Places and the State Register of Historic Properties. The National Register of Historic Places has written a narrative of the history of the site and provides pictures of the property before the redevelopment of the project began.
In 2007, a portion of ICDC’s holdings were transferred to Inner City Health Center (ICHC), a private, non-profit, health care facility that provides medical and dental services for low income and uninsured families. ICHC has undertaken additional remodeling and rehabilitation of historic structures on the site, as well as constructing new medical facilities – helping to fulfill its mission of serving the surrounding community, a fitting outcome given the site’s historical role as a medical depot.