A Northfield Parking Lot Just Sold for

The buyer is a Scottsdale homebuilder called BB Living, and this is the part people miss. They are not building houses to sell. They are building houses to rent. And here in Central Park, where a nice detached home with a yard has quietly floated out of reach for a whole lot of families, that distinction matters more than you might think.

What is actually going into that lot

217 townhomes. Three and four bedrooms each, roughly 1,900 to 2,200 square feet, which is real family square footage, not a shoebox with a Murphy bed. Every single one gets a private two-car garage and its own private outdoor space. They sit along East Northfield Boulevard between Verbena and Willow streets, per BusinessDen's reporting.

Here is the model, and it is worth your attention. BB Living does single-family build-to-rent. So you live in it like an owner. You pull into your own garage, you let the dog out into your own yard, you do not share a wall with a hallway full of neighbors the way you would in an apartment. You just never own the thing. You rent it. Forever, if you want.

That is the trade. And honestly, in a metro where the down payment math has gotten brutal, a lot of people are going to take that trade with a smile.

Norris Design is handling the planning and landscape. KTGY is the architect. The amenity list reads like a resort, if you ask me: two clubhouses, a pool, a spa, a fitness center, a dog park, and a playground. So the kids and the golden retriever are both covered.

The plan got bigger, not smaller

Here is a fun wrinkle. The original concept was 105 duplexes. That is 210 units. After the city weighed in with comments, BB Living reworked it into 217 townhomes. So the unit count actually went up a touch, and the format shifted from side-by-side duplexes to true townhomes. That is the kind of thing that happens when a project runs the gauntlet at the city, and it usually ends with the developer sanding down whatever the planners did not love.

And 22 of those 217 homes, which is 10 percent, are income-restricted. Those go to households earning up to 60 percent of area median income under Denver's Mandatory Affordable Housing rules. So this is not just market-rate product dropped onto a parking lot. A slice of it is reserved for people the current Central Park market has mostly priced out.

Why a mall is growing houses in the first place

Back up for a second, because the bigger story is what is happening to the whole 87-acre center.

Avenues at Northfield used to be The Shops at Northfield Stapleton. It is a 1.1 million-square-foot retail center at 8340 E. Northfield Blvd. In 2022, a group called Stockdale Capital Partners bought the place for $71 million, plus about another $8 million for the old Macy's building. And their whole plan is to stop treating it like a mall and start treating it like a town center. Shops, yes, but also places to live, work, and spend a Saturday that does not revolve around a food court.

The site is entitled for the potential of more than 1,500 residential units. Right now it has exactly zero. Not one person lives there today. So BB Living's 217 townhomes are the opening move, the first real residents on a property that has only ever sold you things and then sent you home.

Meanwhile the retail side keeps filling in. Wayfair is opening a store there this month. A Life Time athletic club is expected in 2027. So the vision is a place where you could genuinely rent a four-bedroom, walk the dog, grab dinner, and hit the gym without ever moving your car.

The test underneath all of it

So here is the thing I keep coming back to.

Central Park was built on the old Stapleton airport as a master-planned ownership neighborhood. Front porches, detached houses, the classic American deal where you buy in and build equity. And for years that worked. But the prices did what prices do, and a family-sized house with a garage and a yard became the kind of thing you talk yourself out of.

What BB Living is testing is whether the metro can add that exact product, the house with the yard and the garage, and let people rent it instead. Not an apartment tower. Not a sell-off of condos. Houses you rent.

If it works, you are going to see a lot more parking lots across the Front Range quietly turn into rows of rental townhomes with little playgrounds in the middle. If it does not, it will be a cautionary tale about asking renters to pay house money for something they will never own.

Either way, the asphalt east of the Shoe Warehouse is about to grow 217 roofs. And for 22 of those families, it will be the only shot at living in Central Park they were ever going to get.