2830 E. 17th Avenue
The Picerne Group is moving forward on a long-planned redevelopment at the southwest corner of 17th Avenue and Fillmore Street, with a revised concept that boosts the project to 193 apartment units across two five-story buildings on a 1.65-acre site in City Park.
The Newport Beach-based developer, which controls the assemblage through entity FGH Denver LLC, has filed a Site Development Plan modification (SDP Round 10) that supersedes earlier iterations of the project. An initial 2015 plan envisioned a single 135-unit building with 148 parking spaces. The current proposal, designed by SAR Architecture, calls for a North Building and South Building containing a combined 335,612 gross square feet, 220,445 of which is residential.
The unit mix breaks down to 86 one-bedrooms, 76 two-bedrooms and 31 studios, with 10 townhouse-style units woven into the lower floors conforming to the townhome style units across the street at The Pinnacle building. Parking will be provided across two below- and at-grade levels totaling 288 spaces, or roughly 1.50 stalls per unit, plus 50 enclosed bike spaces.
The site sits in the G-RO-5 zone district, which caps building height at five stories and 65 feet. According to the filing, both buildings will reach the height ceiling, with the North Building topping out at 61.75 feet and structure heights for both reaching the upper 65-foot range with rooftop encroachments. The 71,812-square-foot zone lot fronts both 17th Avenue and Fillmore Street and falls one block north of the future Fillmore Street station on the East Colfax Bus Rapid Transit line, which is under construction through 2026 with revenue service slated to begin in January 2027.
The redevelopment will retire four existing structures on the half-block. The largest is the Fillmore Building at 1633 N. Fillmore Street, a 25,087-square-foot 1966 office property. The building was determined to lack historic significance and was denied landmark designation in 2019, with a demolition certificate obtained shortly afterward. Also slated for removal are two converted single-family structures dating back to the early 1900's and a 12-unit, 9,451-square-foot apartment building at 2830 E. 17th Ave. that was built in 1930. That parcels were pre-assembled tbefore the March 2023 purchase, taking title from 1633 Fillmore St LLC and SODAN Development LLC via two special warranty deeds.
The Fillmore Building currently houses a roster of small business tenants, and an active redevelopment filing of this size typically signals a near-term shift in the leasing posture for the property. In situations where ownership has filed an SDP and is moving toward demolition, landlords commonly transition existing tenants onto month-to-month arrangements or short one- to two-year leases rather than renewing on long-term terms. Tenants in the building who have not yet been notified of the redevelopment timeline should expect that flexibility — and the eventual need to relocate — to factor into their next lease conversation.
The project marks Picerne's second major investment on the block. The firm developed Venue on 16th, a 180-unit, 155,000-square-foot luxury apartment community that opened directly across Fillmore in the mid-2010s at 2900 E. 16th Ave. With the new development, Picerne would control most of the west side of Fillmore between 16th and 17th, anchoring a stretch of the corridor that has historically been dominated by low-rise commercial and converted residential uses. BusinessDen first reported the developer's interest in the second site in 2020, when an earlier concept by Davis Partnership Architects called for a single five-story building spanning the same block.
The location places the project within the 80206 ZIP code at the seam of City Park, City Park West and Cheesman Park, with City Park's 330 acres roughly two blocks to the north and the City Park West retail node along 17th Avenue stretching to the west. Proximity to the medical campuses of National Jewish Health and Saint Joseph Hospital — which together anchor more than 10,000 health care jobs — has historically supported the area's rental fundamentals. The forthcoming Colfax BRT, which will run center-running buses with dedicated lanes from Broadway to Yosemite, is expected to add another layer of transit demand to a corridor that already sees roughly 22,000 daily bus riders.
Including the existing Venue on 16th, full build-out of the new project would bring Picerne's combined unit count on the block to 373, materially increasing residential density on a corridor where the next wave of growth has been tied to the Colfax transit investment.
A construction timeline has not yet been disclosed in the SDP modification.