Byron Weiss was not a real estate developer. He ran a warehousing supply company called Porta Power that sold forklifts and pallet racks. But when he purchased the sprawling Rock Drill property along 39th Avenue in 1993, he set into motion one of the most significant redevelopment stories in Denver's recent history.

Weiss died on March 17, 2026, at the age of 86. He was born in Denver in 1939, graduated from East High School, and started Porta Power in the 1980s after working in the family record store on 16th Street and in the salvage business with his father. He purchased the Rock Drill site in part because he believed the area would one day be redeveloped.

That belief required patience. RiNo was still a gritty warehouse district when Weiss bought in. The property, originally home to the Denver Rock Drill Manufacturing Company, had been vacant since the 1980s. Over the following decades, the neighborhood transformed around it. The A Line opened in 2016 with a stop two blocks away. Restaurants, offices, and murals filled the surrounding streets. But the Rock Drill site stayed put, waiting for the right plan.

As BusinessDen reported, five separate deals for the property collapsed over a seven-year period. Weiss and his sons Brett and Andy were never willing to hand the site to someone who would not respect its character. The sawtooth roofs, the brick-and-metal buildings dating to around 1910, the old rail spurs threading through the campus. All of it mattered to them.

OliverBuchanan Group eventually became that partner. Naked Denver covered the project's rezoning last summer as it moved through the Planning Board and toward City Council. The plan calls for 700 to 800 residential units, a hotel, up to 150,000 square feet of retail, and over 70,000 square feet of public open space, with several historic structures preserved through landmark designation. City Council approved the rezoning, a development agreement, and tax-increment financing last year.

Construction is still months away from breaking ground. Byron Weiss did not get to see it start. But he saw the approvals come through, and he saw the plan take shape in a way that honored what the site has always been.

Developer Bernard Hurley, who owns nearby land in RiNo, suggested a mural of Weiss walking through the neighborhood, a nod to his famous daily walks that reportedly stretched 17 miles in a single day at age 80, as reported by BusinessDen. It is hard to think of a more fitting tribute for the man who held the line on one of Denver's most important sites.