The Denver Post
Cherry Creek site a U.N. of commerce Building's tenants hail from many lands

Developer Don Oberndorf's corner of the world in Cherry Creek North has a distinctly international flavor.

The French bakery, the Swiss sausage-maker, the Indian New-Age gift dealer and the Canadian cabinet installers stand side-by-side in Oberndorf's building at 250 Steele St., comprising a small part of a mini-United Nations he has convened in the tony shopping district.

The range of tenants reflects the changing face of Colorado as more people from around the world move to the Rocky Mountain region. The building's 100 percent occupancy also shows that small tenants wield clout in metro Denver's soft real estate market.

Oberndorf added that the Cherry Creek North area appeals to smaller tenants - boutique retailers and small professional offices - so it has avoided the sharp downturn gusting through the southeast and northwest suburbs.

"The reason Cherry Creek outperforms the market has been the small tenants," Oberndorf said. "Boutique firms have not suffered the cutbacks that telecommunications and high-tech tenants have."

The group in Oberndorf's building includes a small pharmacy run by Yelena Kleyman, who emigrated from Kiev, Ukraine; a bistro owned by Adde Bjorklund, a native of Sweden; and a technology firm managed by a Japanese executive."You can wander from store to store and hear a different accent," Oberndorf said.

"You can wander from store to store and hear a different accent," Oberndorf said.

Michel Coumes, owner of Le Delice, corrected Oberndorf: "We don't have an accent; we just speak differently."

Coumes, who had worked for a chemical firm in France, moved to Colorado nearly four years ago when he bought the restaurant.

Oberndorf owns five buildings in Cherry Creek and the surrounding area, totaling about 60,000 square feet of space - an amount equal to about two floors on an average suburban office building.

"This is not a Donald Trump empire by any means," Oberndorf said.

Small tenants bring bigger responsibilities for the landlord. Oberndorf works constantly to keep his buildings filled and negotiates frequently with new and existing tenants.

This summer, one of his buildings dropped into the roster of nearly 150 empty buildings scattered throughout metro Denver. But Oberndorf found a new tenant less than a month after the building became empty.

Continental Deli has been a tenant at 250 Steele since construction was completed in 1986.

Ursula Gutknecht, who owns the store with her husband, said she sells the company's sausages at the store along with a host of hard-to-find favorite foods typically found in European shops.

"There are only about 100 Swiss families here, but our customers are Germans, Dutch, Czech and Poles," Gutknecht said. "There are close to 50,000 Russians here. Close to 90 percent of our customers are foreign."

The mix of foreign-born tenants in Oberndorf's building was accomplished more by happy accident than by conscious design.

Filling the space wasn't always easy, Oberndorf conceded. During the last prolonged real estate recession in metro Denver, Cherry Creek North suffered with the rest of the city.

"It has been a bit of a roller coaster," Oberndorf said. "The 1980s were dreadful, but the late '90s were wonderful."

Oberndorf and other landowners expected the Cherry Creek mall to lure away shoppers from the Cherry Creek North district. Instead, the areas work together.

The Cherry Creek mall primarily offers large national merchants, while Cherry Creek North has continued to offer a mix of small and locally owned businesses.

In Oberndorf's case, he has assembled a group of local merchants from around the world - a feat he hopes to celebrate by hanging flags of the native countries of some tenants outside the building.

October 31, 2002
Section: BUSINESS
Page: C-01
Mark P. Couch Denver Post Business Writer