By now, you know Coldwell Banker Commercial Alliance has broken into the Denver CRE brokerage market. We took the opportunity to chat with the two CRE vets tapped to run it: Ben Gilliam and Jon Treter. "I think we're hitting the market at the right time in terms of a market recovery," Ben says, noting overall office absorption last year topped 1.5M SF, including 300k SF in the Denver CBD. And as Jon notes, landlords are now beginning to command higher rents as a result. "We're seeing the market tighten up substantially," Jon says. (The market is trying to get in shape for beach season.)

We also talked spaghetti with them--as in the Old Spaghetti Factory building at 18th and Lawrence streets. The duo have the 37k SF office building under contract with an undisclosed local investor for a cap rate floating between 6% and 7%, Ben says. It's an older Class-B office, but Ben says rents command nearly half what core plus Class-A is earning--around $50/SF. Will it remain an office for long? Perhaps not. Ben tells us the pending owners have the opportunity to develop an 18-story hotel on the site, and local governments have approved.(That hotel will leave pasta and meatballs on your pillow after they turn down the room.)