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Housing complex

DENVER

Five Points, a vibrant residential and commercial district in Denver, is home to Welton Street, the only predominantly African-American owned commercial strip in the city. Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, Lionel Hampton, and other jazz greats played there. The annual Juneteenth festival, which started as a block party in 1965, has attracted over 100,000 revelers in recent years.

Twenty-five years ago, however, Five Points was a shadow of its former self. During the 1960s and 1970s those who could afford to move to the newly integrated suburbs had done so, and those left behind faced abandoned buildings, vacant lots, drug dealers, and crime spilling over from dilapidated housing projects in the neighborhood.

It has taken years of effort to make Five Points a thriving marketplace once more.

In 1980, a not-for-profit community development corporation called Hope Communities, Inc., began buying and renovating low-income properties, some for rent and some for sale.

In the 1990s, Hope was ready for bigger things. Joining forces with the Five Points Business Association, it set about developing a large commercial and residential project on Welton Street. In 2003, Hope and its business partners completed “The Point,” a mixed-use, mixed-income project featuring both rental housing and condominiums for sale.

Five Points is beginning to hum once more. Stores are opening, people moving into the attractively renovated homes, and commercial spaces are gradually filling despite Denver’s slow economy.

Living Cities added several million dollars to the effort through the Enterprise Foundation. HUD’s HOPE VI program replaced the Curtis Park housing project, and the City of Denver built a light rail line linking Five Points to fast-growing downtown Denver.

The bottom line for investors? A rigorous analysis of property values in Five Points shows improvements of a magnitude that simply would not have been achieved without the intervention of Hope Communities, Inc., and the public and private sector investors who stood alongside it.