Northeast Park Hill- Dahlia Square

Constructed in the early 1950s on the site of the former Ferry Brickyard, the Dahlia Square Shopping Center was the commercial and community hub of Northeast Park Hill for more than two decades. The supermarket-anchored center featured locally owned shops, restaurants, and a roller skating rink among other amenities. For a period, the center was the largest African-American-owned shopping center in the U.S.

But as regional shopping patterns shifted in the 1970s and 80s toward larger centers located on major thoroughfares, Dahlia Square struggled. By the 1990s the center was dilapidated and less than 15 percent occupied. In 2001 DURA and the City created the Northeast Park Hill Urban Renewal area to help effect redevelopment of Dahlia Square, as well as the nearby Holly Shopping Center.

Plans at the time called for a new commercial center that would front Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and a mix of new housing units. But predevelopment due diligence revealed that many of the abandoned mining pits (left over from when Ferry was mining clay for bricks) contained landfill material and the project, no longer economically viable, was halted.

DURA and the Denver Office of Economic Development worked with community leaders for more than two years to identify the resources necessary to remediate the site and develop a vision for the area. DURA issued a request for proposals and in early 2005 selected the local team of Brownfield Partners and ARCADIS to acquire, abate, demolish, and remediate the numerous environmental issues hampering the site. The more than $7 million project to ready the site for development was funded through a mix of federal and local grants and loans.

Denver Health and Hospital Authority had been leasing space for its Park Hill Clinic at Dahlia Square since 1994. In 2007, Denver Health purchased property for a permanent location at Dahlia Square. By 2009, Denver Health’s new 12,000 square foot Park Hill Family Health Center became the first completed project at the new Dahlia Square.

In 2008, a homebuilder acquired the site from Brownfield Partners and fully repaid the outstanding HUD loans on the project, but with the slowing of the economic climate, the property was sold again, this time to McDermott Properties, LLC and the Mental Health Center of Denver.  McDermott Properties, LLC approached the Northeast Park Hill Coalition in early 2010 and announced it was applying for financing to build an affordable senior housing complex at Dahlia Square. After working with DURA to obtain private and public financing, McDermott Properties constructed the Dahlia Square Senior Apartments in two phases. Phase 1 provided 88 affordable apartments available to seniors 62 years of age or older earning 30-50 percent of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Area Median Income (AMI) for Denver County. Demand for the apartments exceeded availability. In 2011, the Dahlia Square Senior Apartments garnered praise as a Development of Distinction in the category of “Project That Best Reflects Market Success in Overcoming Significant Obstacles.”

In 2012, McDermott Properties secured low income housing tax credits from the Colorado Housing and Finance Authority for Phase II of the project which provided an additional 40 housing units and was completed in 2014.

In 2016, The Mental Health Center of Denver completed construction on the Dahlia Campus for Health & Well-Being on a four-acre site at 35th and Dahlia. The facility is 46,000 square feet of indoor classroom, play, community and therapy space to support the surrounding Northeast Denver neighborhoods. Outdoor amenities include play areas, counseling gardens and an urban community garden geared toward year-round production.