In an effort to give lower-income families an opportunity to own property and stay in Denver’s Cole neighborhood, a plot next to the Tramway Nonprofit Center will become home to condominiums that are within reach for families being priced out the area.

The Urban Land Conservancy, a Denver-based real estate nonprofit, owns the Tramway center at 3532 Franklin St. and the neighboring plot. Mark Marshall, the Urban Land Conservancy’s vice president of real estate, said it’s in a neighborhood where people are less and less able to stay because of rising housing costs.

The complex was once owned by the Denver Tramway Company, which was founded in the 1880s and ran trolley lines and later buses. When the Urban Land Conservancy demolished a long-vacant and derelict warehouse adjacent to the Tramway center in 2018, it said affordable housing would likely be in the lot’s future. In its request for proposals from developers, the conservancy noted that the annual household income in Cole had increased 68 percent from $29,170 to $49,051, while the total neighborhood population decreased slightly from 4,651 to 4,600 residents.

While it’s too early to put numbers on the Urban Land Conservancy project, they hope to price the condos to be affordable to people making 70 to 80 percent of the area median income. Currently, the AMI for a family of four in Denver is $78,500. In real estate circles, a home is considered affordable if the mortgage or rent takes up no more than a third of a family’s income.

Construction on these condos isn’t slated to start until 2022, but if you’re interested in checking out Cole or other surrounding neighborhoods, give Metrowest a shout – we’d love to show you around!