Inter-Ocean Hotel and People’s Restaurant at 16th and Blake Street could be two hot spots from today’s LoDo scene…or they could be downtown successes from 150 years ago when Lower Downtown was about all there was to Denver.

Realtor Rebekah Brock shows the Victorian home that early Denver restaurant owner and territorial legislator Barney L. Ford built in Denver’s Uptown.

Barney L. Ford, who grew up as a slave on an antebellum plantation and escaped to freedom, made enough on those and other enterprises to build a 4-bedroom Victorian you can tour by appointment. more »

Whoever penned the line that “Boulder is 25 square miles surrounded by reality,” couldn’t have been more right about this year: While luxury properties stagger in Denver, some way off their price mark, you can tour a new condo on Canyon Boulevard today, two blocks from Pearl Street, that’s already contracted over half its 22 new homes since grand-opening last year – all full price, one at $2.475 million.

Developer Stephen Tebo shows off The Arête’s eye-catching profile, just off Pearl Street.

“There’s a short window to buy one of these,” says The Arête’s Rick Rippberger, who closed his first home last August and expects to sell out this year. He’ll show you reasons for that success – starting with The Arête’s location, off the primo block of the mall, and nestled between views of the Chautauqua Park and the Flatirons on one side, and of downtown crested by Mount Sanitas on the other. more »

Everything is set for a huge success in Denver’s Lower Downtown — four decades of historic preservation; the big-league sports venues; an amazing nexus of lofts, popular bars and restaurants; and a transportation project in the classic railway station that will put even the international airport within range of a light rail fare.

Denver Union Station Project Authority. Soon-to-be-transformed Union Station in the heart of LoDo has been designed both as a new corporate center and as a multimodal transportation hub that will link to Boulder, DTC and DIA.

The curtain’s going up — but Denver will have to wait a while longer for the opening-night crowd. “The quality is there, but we don’t have the velocity yet; we don’t have the people,” says veteran downtown agent Dee Chirafisi, with Kentwood City Properties. more »