What’s becoming of Denver’s former Sears and Kmart stores?

At a time when many real estate pros, market analysts and American shoppers view some big-box department store chains as dinosaurs lumbering toward extinction, the bones of Kmarts and Sears stores are piling up around Denver.

Once a giant that shaped its environment with its own in-house development company, Sears Holding Corp. operated about 4,000 stores in 2012. By the time it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Oct. 15, 2018, that number had dipped below 900.

Colorado today hosts two Kmarts — one in Pueblo and one in Loveland — and 19 Sears locations, mostly of the smaller-format “hometown” store variety, according to the brand’s websites. Just four of those stores are in the metro area.

The spaces the companies left behind aren’t going to waste. As demonstrated by the recent $10.5 million purchase of the Kmart store at 2150 S. Monaco Parkway that sat vacant for more than six years, there is plenty of demand for the territory these big boxes occupy, if not for the boxes themselves.

Below is a look at five former Sears and Kmart stores in the Mile High metro and what’s planned for their futures.

Courtney of Kephart

A rendering of the Price Development Group’s apartment project under construction now at Broadway and South Cherokee Street. The company has yet to name the building, but is considering branding now, according to development manager Justin Berry.

Kmart in the Broadway Marketplace

363 S. Broadway, Denver

Officially the last Kmart operating in Denver proper, this former big box is long gone. The first in a trio of planned apartment buildings is now sprouting in its place.

The store sold its last pair of slacks in the spring of 2017. The building itself, completely vacated after some neighboring tenants in the larger strip mall were moved to other areas in the surrounding Broadway Marketplace shopping center, hung around a bit longer. Its 5-acre parking lot served interim uses including hosting the main stage for the 2017 Underground Music Showcase festival before demolition work began in May 2018, according to Dan Cohen, development partner in D4 Urban LLC.

D4 is leading the redevelopment of what it calls Broadway Park, a collection of some 70 acres of property north of Interstate 25 and south of West Alameda Avenue between Broadway and the rail lines to the west.

The company’s ownership group acquired the Broadway Marketplace shopping center in 2004, Cohen said. Having previously worked with RTD to build the Alameda Station light rail stop and mixed-use Denizen Apartments project, D4 was keen to bring more residents to the area once Kmart made its exit.

“We’re right across the street from a light rail station and rather than replacing that with another big-box retailer, we are focused on bringing density to an area where it is appropriate and where it has been planned in conjunction with community interests going back many years,” Cohen said.

Density there will be. Price Development Group is at work now on a 354-unit apartment building at the corner of Alameda and South Cherokee Street. The project will be delivered in phases, a five-story piece expected to be done by the end of 2020, and a seven-story piece due in mid-2021, said Justin Berry, Price’s development manager in Denver.

“We really love the location. We love the feel of South Broadway just in general in that corridor. It has some real authenticity to it,” Berry said. “The overall design and master redevelopment of that area, we are really interested in.”

Another large apartment project with ground-floor retails space east of the Price project is in the planning phases now, Cohen said. That building will be developed by AMLI Residential. Work is expected to begin next year.

When it’s all said and done, the northwest corner of the Broadway Marketplace will be home to three residential buildings — including a 12-story tower D4 is looking to build with a partner — and a nearly 3/4-acre public square D4 is calling the “mercado.”

“So you had a 110,000-square-foot single-story box and acres of parking which is now being replaced by about 1,000 multifamily units, structured parking, and a variety of ground-level retail uses in the range of 20,000 square feet,” Cohen said.

Hyoung Chang, The Denver Post

The vacant former Kmart at East Evans and Monaco in southeast Denver is pictured on Nov. 20, 2019.

Kmart at Monaco and Evans

2150 S. Monaco Parkway, Denver

Glendale-based Forum Real Estate Group was the buyer that shelled out $10.5 million for this ghost of a department store in September. It had been eyeing it for a while prior to purchase, said Kristen Link, Forum’s development senior manager.

The building sits on a big piece of property, 13 acres. That means big opportunity. In announcing the sale earlier this fall, real estate services firm Cushman & Wakefield wrote in a news release that Forum was looking to build more than 300 units of housing on the land. Link rolled things back a bit last week.

“We’re actually just beginning the land entitlement and planning process now,” she said. “We’re still working through several options with multi-family residential being among them. We don’t have an official or concept plan at this point. We’re doing our due diligence, our homework.”

There will be opportunities for people living in Goldsmith and the surrounding neighborhoods to share their opinions on the corner’s future in the coming months, Link said. Details about the project and public input will be shared at monacoevansdenver.com.

In the short term, the Kmart building will remain the host site for the Denver Santa Claus Shop. The volunteer-run nonprofit, now in its 89th year, collects toys donations for kids ranging from infants to 11-year-olds and gives them to families in a pop-up store setting. Having used the Monaco and Evans Kmart as its shop for the last four years, board member Danny Lindau was grateful when Forum Real Estate agreed to allow the charity to return for a fifth year in 2019 rent free. The first day qualified families will be invited to come shop this year will be Dec. 13, Lindau said.

Streets at Southglenn Sears

7001 S. University Boulevard, Centennial

Shut down for good earlier this year, this more than 130,000-square-foot store is at the center of a controversial redevelopment effort covering the larger Streets of SouthGlenn shopping center.

Developer Northwood Investments acquired the Sears in a multi-parcel deal for $15 million in 2017, Arapahoe County records show. The store continued to operate for a while under a sale-and-lease-back deal, but now sits empty.

Northwood, which also owns former Sears properties in Cambridge, Mass., and Pittsburgh, is working with Alberta Development on an effort to change the zoning covering the Streets at SouthGlenn to allow for much more residential development. Alberta owns the remainder of the mixed-use SouthGlenn development and the property occupied by the Macy’s store, which is still in business.

The two firms and city officials held a packed-house public meeting about the proposal Tuesday night at a middle school. Per a presentation delivered at that meeting, Northwood is seeking to increase the maximum building height allowed on the Sears property to 75 feet up from 50 feet and the right to build up to 698 residential units there.

While the proposal had some support at Tuesday’s meeting, a majority of those who spoke were adamantly opposed to the changes, citing issues including traffic and parking. One person asked why another big-box retailer like Target couldn’t be brought in to take over the former Sears.

“We can’t find someone to lease 131,000 square feet of retail from us,” Northwood associate Brian Cleary said. “It’s not a fact of ‘we don’t want to.’ It’s ‘these are the market conditions’ and we’re trying to adapt to that.”

Bill and Debbie Brigham live near the Streets at SouthGlenn and share the concerns of many of their neighbors.

“Retails is dying, obviously. Big boxes are dying,” Bill Brigham said. “So apartments and people can go in there, but it’s the number of apartments (in this proposal). It’s high density.”

City officials are expecting Northwood and Alberta to formally submit their rezoning proposal next month.

Kmart at Belleview and Broadway

 200 W. Belleview Ave, Englewood

The transformation of this gargantuan store has already begun, though it is much less dramatic than what’s happening a few miles north at Broadway and Alameda.

This 146,000-square-foot building operated as a Kmart from 1974 until it shut down in 2017, according to city documents. A Chuze Fitness gym opened on the south end of the building in June, and now the table is set for the rest of the shell to be filled out.

The William Warren Group, a California company that owns the StorQuest brand of self-storage facilities, submitted a rezoning request to Englewood earlier this year seeking to clear the way for a StorQuest center on the property. The developer is calling the project the Hive on Broadway.

With the understanding that the self-storage space would be confined to the rear of the building, the Englewood City Council voted 4-2 to approve that rezoning on Sept. 16, meeting minutes show.

With 60,000 square feet of storage anchoring the property, the William Warren Group is expected to divide the rest of the building into smaller commercial spaces. Those storefronts, on the north and east sides of the building facing Broadway and Belleview Avenue, will be rented out to retailers and restaurant tenants, per a vision laid out by architecture Galloway and Co.

Sears in Cherry Creek

2375 E. First Ave. Denver

Sometimes the wheels of progress turn more slowly than others. That’s the case with the Cherry Creek Sears store, just one cog in a broader development known as Clayton Lane.

The store closed in January 2015 after more than a half-century in business. Developer and property owner OliverMcMillan submitted concept plans with the city of Denver in 2016 that called for a major redevelopment of the shopping center. Those plans included the demolition of the former Sears and the Whole Foods to make way for six new buildings, including residential space, atop a major parking structure. Those plans have been withdrawn, according to city officials, but the project concept is still alive.

Brookfield Properties acquired OliverMcMillan and now manages Clayton Lane. The vision for mixed-use redevelopment remains the same, according to spokeswoman Hilarie Portell. That said, “development is not imminent,” Portell wrote in an email last week.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.