Mercantile Square

The Morey Mercantile buildings date back to the late 1880s when the neighborhood now referred to as Lower Downtown, or LoDo, was the heart of the city and home to the bustling railroad, warehouse, and sales depot for Denver.  One hundred years later, the railroads were gone, and LoDo had come to be known as Denver’s “skid row”.  In 1988, in an effort to both revive the area and preserve the remaining historical structures, the City and the neighborhood established the Lower Downtown Historic District, a 23-square block area bounded by Speer Boulevard, 20th Street, Wewatta Street and the alley between Market and Larimer Streets.

In the mid-1990s a portion the Morey Mercantile buildings were home to the warehousing operations of the Tattered Cover Bookstore, one of Denver’s best known local book stores.  In keeping with the goals set out by the LoDo District, store owner Joyce Meskis and a team of development partners undertook to renovate the Morey Mercantile buildings into a complex of retail and office space with affordable housing units.

To help finance the project, DURA issued $4 million in bonds to be repaid through TIF financing, which, along with an innovative mix of public and private financing mechanisms including low-income housing tax credits and state historic grant funds, enabled the project to be financed despite uncertain market conditions and the high cost of historic renovations.  The project opened in 1996 and the completed Mercantile Square project produced 77 affordable and 17 market rate apartment units, 52,000 square feet of retail space, 18,000 square feet of office space and 115 parking spaces.

One of the earliest and most successful rehabilitation and reuse efforts in LoDo, Mercantile Square was a pioneering project that helped catalyze reinvestment in and preservation of today’s revitalized LoDo.