The Denver Housing Authority’s Collaborative Resource Facility is located in the Mariposa HOPE VI Revitalization area, and poverty rates are greater than 50% and the unemployment rate is 2.48x the national average. The CRF will co-locate a host of community serving retail and access to goods and services into one central location. The first-floor tenant will be the Mercado, which will be leased and manage by the DHA’s Youth Employment Academy (YEA), and in addition to bringing healthy food options to the area, it will be providing job training for 15 at risk-youth in various positions in retail operations. The Denver Shared Spaces will operate a collaborative nonprofit office and incubator space for 13 offices and 30 desks, which will strategically bring together organizations with missions focused workforce development, job creation, health and well-being. The Denver Housing Authority will offer a host of programs serving over 4,200 public housing households that include Family Self-Sufficiency, Financial Counseling, Career Services, Aging-in-Place, Leadership Training, and Safety Training. The project will create 150 construction jobs, at least 50 new permanent jobs, and will retain 145 DHA jobs. The project will achieve LEED Gold Certification, and at least 20% of the subcontracting opportunities will be awarded to minority- and women-owned businesses.
Urban Action Community Development (UACD) provided $5.5MM in NMTC allocation for the Denver Housing Authority’s (DHA) Collaborative Resource Facility (CRF). The CRF is the capstone project of the DHA’s Mariposa HOPE VI Revitalization that replaced 274 units of outdated public housing with an 800-unit, 9-phase mixed-income, mixed-use development focused on a holistic approach to vibrant, healthy, and sustainable communities. The Collaborative Resource Facility will be the new construction of an 11-story building that will centralize the DHA’s operations and respond to the needs of the surrounding community. In addition to the new headquarters for the DHA (offering such programs as Family Self-Sufficiency, Financial Counseling, Career Services, Aging-in-Place, Leadership Training, and Safety Training to over 4,200 households), the 172k SF project will include a host of uses such as a ground level fresh food market (aka the Mercado) that will provide affordable fresh foods for local residents, office tenants, and transit users; a collaborative incubator and innovation space that will be operated by Denver Shared Spaces; job training facility and community events space; and 178 parking stalls for office tenants and visitors. The Mercado will be managed by the DHA’s Youth Employment Academy, and on an annual basis will provide 12-15 at-risk youth with culinary, service-oriented training in the areas of healthy food sourcing, preparation and packaging, retail sales, and marketing.
