Take a stroll through the heart of downtown, and you'll more than likely pass several stories beneath Kevin Brooks' office.

You'll probably push a cart down the aisles of his wife Valerie's favorite supermarket, grab a steaming mug at the coffee shop where she regularly meets friends, swirl a glass of wine at the restaurant where they made their life-altering decision.

You'll also walk right by their home.

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Former hangout becomes neighborhood

Story by MIKE WIGGINS / Photos by GRETEL DAUGHERTY
GJSentinel.com

WINTER 2008 — The nondescript entrance is set back off the sidewalk, squeezed between the Colorado Housing and Finance Authority office and the space formerly occupied by Readmoor Books.

CLICK TO RING THE BELL
AT THE BROOKSES' LOFT.

But step inside, gaze up the wide, thickly carpeted staircase, up higher at the glass block windows and crystal chandelier, and you quickly realize this home is unlike any you — or Grand Junction, for that matter — have seen.

The couple's 4,200-square-foot loft at 346 Main St. is awash in tile and marble and leather. It's tricked out with automatic lighting, a sound system embedded in the walls and ceiling and panels that control everything from the flat-screen televisions and Internet radio to the video system that keeps watch over visitors at the front door.

The Brookses live on two levels of the Reed Building, primarily the third floor.

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Virtual video tour, third floor

Valerie Brooks leads GJSentinel.com — and you — around her loft in the Reed Building. Scroll over the rooms and click for a short video look at what's inside.

Maps: Robert García, Gretel Daugherty, Chris Froese, Todd Powell

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"Working out downtown for a couple of years, working downtown and traveling back and forth was really obnoxious," Kevin Brooks said. "So it just made so much sense. When we go somewhere, we go downtown. We go out to eat, we go downtown."

Housing developments that have been completed, are under way or planned downtown include the Reed Building at Fourth and Main streets, Two Rivers Condominiums at Second Street and Colorado Avenue and 700 Main Street at Seventh and Main streets. More could come online in the future with the reconstruction of Colorado Avenue between Second and Seventh streets.

"If we take things that are happening in other areas around the country, downtown neighborhoods that provide walkability and access to jobs and access to public transportation and shopping and restaurants and cultural centers and that sort of thing are thriving, And that's our vision here," said Bill Wagner, the chairman of the Downtown Development Authority board of directors and listing agent for one of the two residential units available in the Reed Building.

'SIMPLIFIED LIFESTYLE'

When it comes to staking out new territory downtown, Shane Burton and the Brookses are the pioneers.

VALERIE AND KEVIN BROOKS

In 2003, Burton and his family bought and gutted the Reed Building, which used to house the JC Penney department store and Dinosaur Valley museum and now contains the Brookses' spread and other refurbished units.

Immediately upon buying the loft last spring, the Brookses battled a case of buyer's remorse.

"I had about two weeks where I couldn't sleep at night," Valerie said. "I'd get up in the morning and say to Kevin, 'What did we just do? What happened to our driveway and the little white picket fence thing? What exactly did we do here?' I mean, it was a huge transition, even though we were ready to embrace it. I still had this fear that we were heading down a road that I wasn't sure I could quite dive into myself, even though I wanted to do it."

"And yet as soon as we got here," Kevin said, "it was like, oh my gosh, it was so fantastic. It was even better than we thought it was going to be. The simplified lifestyle that we have, it's just awesome."

The three-bedroom, five-bathroom unit came with white walls — and nothing else. The finished loft visitors gawk at today was the culmination of eight months of design work by Valerie.

She started by buying loft books that illustrated the palette with which she wanted to work. Much of the rest of her brainstorms came from the Internet.

The result: An elegant place where Kevin and Valerie can host a dinner party with 24 members of Kevin's management team and their spouses — like they did over the holidays — just as easily as Valerie can lounge in a window perched at eye-level with Main Street's trees, sip coffee and watch the world unfold in front of her each morning.

"I just tried to take everything out to the edge of design," Valerie said.

The neighboring 2-bed, 2 1/2-bath corner unit listed by Wagner, the real estate agent, isn't too shabby, either. It boasts a wired-in sound system, a six-burner gas grill, granite countertops, his and her walk-in closets and a pine floor.

The 2,150-square-foot condo, on the market since late November, is listed for $649,900. Wagner said two or three parties have expressed "some fairly good interest" in it. Numerous folks have taken the jaw-dropping tour.

Burton may have overhauled the Reed Building, but he didn't abandon its history. In some places in the lofts, the original brick walls have been exposed and the old windows have been installed above bedroom doors.

"I intentionally held open houses on Saturday afternoons because there was a lot going on down on Main Street," Wagner said. "I had great traffic every afternoon. There wasn't a person who didn't walk in and get inside the hall and just look up and go, 'Wow.' I mean, that was probably the most used, descriptive word I heard during all the times I showed it ... because it just completely takes you by surprise how cool this place is."

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PROJECTS IN THE PIPE

One block south and two blocks west, little evidence remains of what was Grand Junction's only topless bar. Contractors are patching together a new brick facade and rebuilding the infrastructure of what used to be Cheers but will soon be known as Two Rivers Condominiums at Second and Colorado.

This project, too, belongs to Burton, who wanted to parlay what proved to be a steep learning curve with the Reed Building into a scaled-back, mixed-use development.

The building will contain four two-story units, with three of the units containing 1,800 square feet of residential space on the top and 1,000 square feet of commercial space on the bottom. The fourth unit on the corner will serve as a stand-alone commercial space.

SHANE BURTON

Burton envisions professional offices occupying the first-floor spaces, with the opportunity for business owners to live upstairs or dangle the two-bedroom, two-bathroom unit to an employee as an incentive.

In attaching balconies on the west side of the lofts and patios on the east side, Burton said he incorporated lessons he learned from the Reed Building.

"Over and over, we've had people say, 'I like the place but I need to have a little bit of outdoor living,' " he said of prospective Reed Building tenants. He also implemented green building strategies, spending $70,000 on geothermal heating and cooling units and $40,000 to $50,000 on solar panels.

Burton said construction could be completed by the summer, at the earliest. He said prices for the Two Rivers Condominiums lofts, though not yet finalized, will be lower than the Reed Building.

"I think it's a little bit of a leap of faith," he said of the dual ventures that have cost his family millions of dollars. "(But) I think the market is out there."

DOUG SIMONS
AND BRUCE MILYARD

Enstrom Candies President Doug Simons and local developer Bruce Milyard think so, too, which is why they have drawn up blueprints to build a six-story, multi-use development they call 700 Main Street.

Conceptual plans call for an underground parking garage, retail space on the first floor, a second parking garage on the second floor to provide a buffer from the retail space and three levels of one- to three-bedroom condominiums. The top floor would feature six penthouse suites.

The project is at the former site of Dave's Downtown Conoco on the northeast corner of Seventh and Main. Milyard and Simons said after removing gas tanks and working through some other property issues, they will break ground sometime next year, at the earliest. They're already fielding inquiries from prospective tenants.

Milyard and Simons said introducing a residential component to the core of downtown could lead to an unprecedented economic expansion to serve those residents.

"Look at what LoDo (lower downtown) has done for Denver," Simons said.

A small group of units also could emerge from the new four-story parking garage at Fourth Street and Rood Avenue. Harold Stalf, executive director of the Downtown Development Authority, said the authority will request proposals from developers to cap the western end of the garage with housing.

FIXTURE OR FAD?

Amidst the growing buzz about downtown housing are some significant hurdles. Prospectors face exorbitant construction costs in that area of the city. Much of downtown is already built out, leaving precious little land on which a new project could be erected. That could place the burden on property owners who may or may not want to redevelop their land.

HAROLD STALF

Stalf, though, sees opportunities.

Colorado Avenue downtown is set to undergo a $3 million face-lift beginning this month. Similar to the redesign of Seventh Street between Grand and Ute avenues and Main Street between Seventh and Eighth streets, Colorado will receive a serpentine design, landscaping and pedestrian lighting. The traffic lights at Fourth and Fifth Streets will be replaced with stop signs for east-west traffic.

Stalf said he believes Colorado has the potential to carry three or four mixed-use developments in the same mold as the Reed Building and Two Rivers Condominiums. He also thinks, as developers seek ways to squeeze the most out of their investments, that housing will create a skyline of sorts for Grand Junction.

"I don't know who's going to be the first person to build a 20-story tower downtown, but I bet it happens in the next 10 to 20 years," he said.

Stakeholders say the move downtown has benefits for the community at-large. More people taking up residence close to shopping and service outlets means fewer cars on the road and less pollution. The Brookses say they now get behind the wheel of their cars once a week, instead of two or three times a day.

Some say the key to making downtown housing a fixture rather than a fad is to incorporate a mixture of luxury and mainstream units that can be both rented and purchased.

Catholic Outreach has begun construction on an apartment complex for the chronically homeless and disabled at Second Street and White Avenue. The Grand Junction Housing Authority and the DDA plan to work together to create workforce housing for downtown employees. Simons and Milyard said they want to include entry-level housing in their project.

"You need all the layers for downtown to grow," Burton said. "You need the high income, the middle income, the low income."

Kevin Brooks said he believes it's just a matter of time before others discover what he and Valerie did when they moved in in December.

"When people really think about the simplistic lifestyle and they don't have children running around and they work in the downtown area, it becomes a 'Wow, I wish I would have thought of that, how can I make that happen?'" he said. "I think downtown Grand Junction, it has just begun. As they develop Colorado Avenue and with what Shane is doing, I think there is going to be a demand for it that can't be supplied."

Added Stalf: "I think it's going to be a dynamite downtown because people like the Burtons and the Milyards and the Simonses are showing us all how it's done. There will be people who will follow them."