Urban Ventures is an active player in developing projects that facilitate the link between human health and the built environment. We create places that promote healthy eating and active living to help make the healthy choice the easy choice. We design our projects with transit, walkability, bikability, physical activity and healthy food access in mind. This is most evident in, Aria Denver where we, entered into a partnership with Regis University on a project called Cultivate Health, to support the health and wellness of residents in the surrounding neighborhood by promoting an active lifestyle, increasing access to healthy food and offering integrated health services.

From its inception in 1998, Urban Ventures has approached each project with the surrounding neighborhood’s social, economic, and environmental resiliency in mind. Our projects seek to capitalize on existing community assets, such as local entrepreneurship and history, and promote equity by strengthening job and housing opportunities for residents. Raices Brewery – which means “roots” in Spanish– is Denver’s first Latino-owned and operated brewery and hosts Latino focused arts, food and cultural programming within Sun Valley adjacent to Empower Field and the future Meow Wolf.  On the same campus with Raices Brewery, in the 65,000 sq ft renovated STEAM Warehouse, Bold Beans Café is operated as a social enterprise coffee business owned by Girls Inc. of Metro Denver.

Urban Ventures is deeply committed to building quality projects that address the rising demands for affordable housing. Many of our projects blend market rate and affordable units with the goal of creating vibrant urban places for people of varying incomes while securing local jobs and increasing access to public transit. Aria Denver includes 191 affordable housing units and an intergenerational co-housing community that encourages interaction among people of different incomes, ages, and backgrounds.

Urban Ventures recognizes the enormous opportunity that lies in the rejuvenation of historic sites. We see adaptive reuse as a practical, sustainable solution that creates a sense of place and identity through the preservation of rich, historic character.  STEAM on the Platte resides on a site that was originally settled in the 1880s by Colorado’s first Russian Jewish immigrants. Until 1965, the site’s industrial warehouse — which now houses STEAM Warehouse — was operated as a rag baling business, and run by a Rabbi. The original rag baling machine still sits at the center of the warehouse, and other pieces of industrial machinery – rather than being removed – have been placed throughout the building to reflect on the site’s historic character.