2850 Youngfield Street
A four-story Brutalist office building at the junction of Lakewood, Golden and Wheat Ridge has new owners who bought it specifically because it was empty.
Whitney Hake, a Newmark broker who has spent 16 years representing office landlords in Metro Denver, and her husband Nate Farley acquired 2850 Youngfield St. for $2.3 million, roughly $35 per square foot. The building is now being repositioned as dapple*wood, with a full renovation slated for 2027.
Built in 1982, the building totals approximately 74,087 square feet gross and 63,360 rentable square feet across four stories and a lower level. It was occupied by the Bureau of Land Management until 2023 and sat vacant for roughly three years before the sale, which followed loan trouble at the property.
With no tenants in place, the owners can reposition the entire asset in a single pass, without tenant relocations, construction phasing or occupied-building disruption. Hake has said the team underwrote the pessimistic case on the 1982 mechanical systems and covered parking structure before closing, and that the low basis is what makes the renovation budget workable.
At that entry price, a failed mechanical system becomes a line item rather than a reason the deal does not pencil.
The building came with features that are difficult to replicate. The concrete exterior has deep-set window reveals that provide passive shading, the interior includes original exposed glulam timber spans, and existing eight-foot drop ceilings concealed about two feet of additional clearance to the slab above.
The lower level holds a sunken indoor sport court with a basketball hoop and pickleball striping, which anchors the new amenity floor.
The renovation includes a complete overhaul of building systems, new ADA-compliant restrooms throughout, two modernized elevators, a renovated lobby and an atrium replanted as a living herb garden. Tenant amenities include the sport court with locker rooms, a lower-level lounge with a mahjong table, a shared boardroom, a 25-person training room, a podcasting studio, a wellness room, secured bike storage and outdoor seating, and the building will be dog-friendly.
Floors two and three are being built out with roughly 32,000 square feet of move-in-ready spec suites ranging from about 1,700 to 5,000 rentable square feet, and suites can be combined for users that need more room.
The owners are targeting lease commencements as early as March 2027. The ground floor offers up to 11,500 square feet of whitebox space with signage exposure to roughly 30,000 vehicles per day on Youngfield Street and easy loading dock access. On top, a 16,000-square-foot full-floor penthouse takes in 360-degree views of South Table Mountain and Maple Grove Reservoir and offers parapet signage visible to roughly 120,000 vehicles per day on I-70.
Asking rates are $24.00 per square foot NNN with estimated operating expenses of $10.00/sf.
The property offers a 3.16-per-1,000 parking ratio with 152 free surface spaces and 50 covered, reserved executive spaces, along with dock-high loading. Local firms are handling much of the work, including West Consulting, Waring Associates and Golden Contracting, as well as local contractors for the mural, roof, window coverings and structural engineering.
The name references the surrounding Applewood neighborhood and dappled golden-hour light. A building-scale mural depicting barn swallows and a bobwhite quail against Front Range clouds and mountains is planned for the exterior.
Although the address is Lakewood, the building sits where three cities meet: 3000 Youngfield St. is in Wheat Ridge and 2801 Youngfield St. is in Golden. That position along I-70 places dapple*wood between two of the most active development sites on the west side.
Less than a mile north on Youngfield, Evergreen Devco's 110-acre Clear Creek Crossing at I-70 and Highway 58 has steadily filled in since 2021. Outlook Clear Creek's 310 apartments opened that year, followed by Life Time in March 2024 and a Hampton Inn & Suites in September 2025.
This year has added Bonfire Burritos, a Primrose School and Troy Guard's HashTAG, which opened in The Lookout dining district in October. A 118-room Home2 Suites is coming, a Dutch Bros drive-thru is on site, and roughly 550 homes are planned across the district, adding the kind of daytime population and hospitality options office tenants look for.
About four miles west in downtown Golden, AC Development completed The Pottery in October, the 188,600-square-foot first phase of Clayworks, a 14-acre redevelopment of the former CoorsTek ceramics site near Ninth Street and Washington Avenue.
CoorsTek has moved its headquarters and roughly 165 employees into the building, which brings new office supply to the Golden submarket, and multiple letters of intent have been signed to fill the remaining office units. Sweet Bloom Coffee Roasters is set to open on the ground floor later this quarter.
The bet rests on a gap between submarket fundamentals and pricing. Metro Denver office vacancy stood over 30% in the fourth quarter of 2026, though the 3rd quarter also posted the positive net absorption, something not seen since early 2022.
West Denver, by contrast, recorded 11.5% overall vacancy over the same period, supported by steady daytime activity around Denver West and Applewood. With the office construction pipeline effectively empty and new Golden office space already drawing commitments at Clayworks, renovated product in healthier suburban submarkets faces little new competition.
dapple*wood is leasing ahead of completion, reversing the usual sequence in which renovations follow signed tenants. Whether a broker-turned-owner can prove the west side was simply mispriced will likely be answered by how quickly those spec suites fill in 2027.