An approximately 66K SF building near the heart of the former Johnson & Wales University campus in Denver is expected to trade hands for $11M later this year.

Denver Public Schools plans to purchase Centennial Hall, located at 1800 Pontiac St. in Denver’s South Park Hill neighborhood, DPS confirmed to Bisnow. The seller is real estate development nonprofit Urban Land Conservancy.

After the deal closes in October, Emily Griffith Technical College will occupy the more than 100-year-old building, according to DPS documents.

EGTC is the public, adult education and postsecondary arm of DPS and is governed by the DPS Board of Education. The DPS board unanimously approved the property acquisition in April.

“We’re trying to think through Centennial [Hall] being the hub for some of our very specific classroom-facing programs that don’t need a lot of facility changes just because the building is move-in ready,” Emily Griffith Technical College President Sarah Heath told Bisnow.

Centennial Hall will also be used for the college’s esthetician programs and community events, such as graduations. It will serve as a hub for EGTC, allowing the oldest public technical college in Colorado to house its student services teams and administrative staff in one location rather than being spread across Denver.

EGTC’s administration team currently offices out of the DPS building at 1860 Lincoln St. The college also has a presence on the Osage Campus at 1205 Osage St.

“It’s going to be an amazing space that our learners, frankly, deserve to have, and it looks like a college campus and feels like it,” Heath said.

The technical college will use its reserve fund and the 2020 bond fund allocated to the college to purchase the building and the approximately 0.73-acre property it sits on, DPS documents show.

Centennial Hall is east of a public quad on what is now called the Mosaic Community Campus. Built in the early 1900s, the building previously housed St. Elizabeth’s School until the private Episcopal school closed in June.

“We’ll be celebrating our 110th anniversary this year, so it’s actually a building that has a similar timeline to the longevity of our college,” Heath said.

Centennial Hall is part of the 25-acre Mosaic Community Campus. Denver-based ULC owns about half of the campus. Its nonprofit purchased the property and buildings with Denver Housing Authority and DPS in 2021, shortly after Johnson & Wales University closed its local campus.

Today, the campus features six affordable housing buildings, nonprofit food business incubator Kitchen Network and a coffee shop. Three buildings on the west side of the campus are for the expansion of Denver School of the Arts High School, DPS Director of External Communications Scott Pribble told Bisnow in an email.

The campus “really gives that sense of community to where students can really connect in a way that they haven’t been able to in some of our more like high-rise buildings in Denver,” Heath said.

Centennial Hall is not the only building on the Mosaic Community Campus that EGTC occupies. It uses Aspen Hall at 18th Avenue and Pontiac Street for adult education classes, Heath said.

EGTC plans to renovate Aspen Hall to host the college’s health sciences courses. The college is working with DPS to build out a “quantum space” at Aspen Hall, too, she said.

Renovations to the building are expected to begin in February 2027 and wrap up that November. EGTC plans to move into Aspen Hall in January 2028.