Denver Place Achieves Mile-High Success with BOMA 360
By Tanner Johnston
This is the first in a series of articles exploring the six different categories in the updated BOMA 360 2.0 criteria for the BOMA 360 Performance Program.
Denver Place is such a remarkable property that commercial real estate professionals have traveled all the way from China to learn more about how it is operated.
Located in, as one might guess, Colorado’s capital, Denver Place is one of the largest commercial office properties in the state. Boasting multiple event spaces, two restaurants, a fitness center, a large bike store facility, a Montessori school and more, the property boasts nearly one million square feet of rentable space and covers two and a half acres of downtown Denver. The LBA Realty property team has to be exceptionally well-organized so every visitor to the massive property has a great experience.
To help ensure they are maintaining the highest standard of building operations and management, the team at Denver Place earned the BOMA 360 designation back in 2011.
"What I like about the BOMA 360 designation is that it takes a very detailed, industry-specific look into what it takes to manage a building to a superior level," says Sandrena Robinson, LEED Green Associate, general manager with LBA Realty. "BOMA 360 truly is an owner’s best tool to analyze the building operations and identify opportunities to create new value."
The team’s focus on critical—but sometimes behind-the-scenes—details is part of what made Denver Place particularly excel in the Building Operations and Management section of the BOMA 360 criteria, which covers everything related to foundational operational best practices, from insurance to financial reporting.
Lorrie Brown, a 19-year veteran with LBA Realty and property manager at Denver Place, oversees the building’s many day-to-day activities. "We have a lot of moving pieces here at Denver Place, and with tenants and customers as sophisticated as ours, the expectation is excellence," says Brown.
For the past nine years, the LBA Realty team has leveraged the framework in the BOMA 360 Performance Program—and other BOMA resources—to help meet these expectations. Robinson credits LBA Realty Chief Operating Officer Perry Schonfeld and Principal of Operations Melanie Colbert with further championing the BOMA 360 designation as an essential aspect of the company’s entire portfolio of properties.
The resulting success of Denver Place has given it a global reputation. In the summer of 2019, Denver Place hosted a 12-person delegation from BOMA China for a two-day event to share operational best practices, complete with a building tour. Robinson says the LBA Realty team wanted to pull out all the stops to give their Chinese colleagues a "Denver Welcome." The event featured a full schedule of programming and presentations tailored to their guests, and the governor of Colorado even made an appearance.
"We were absolutely thrilled to host BOMA China, particularly because it was an opportunity to share our experiences and our management best practices with each other," said Robinson. Delegates from China were happy to hear more about their experiences with the BOMA 360 program, which has gained a global reputation for fostering excellence with Shanghai Tower in Shanghai and the Sino-Ocean Office Park Tower C in Beijing both recently earning the designation.
Exemplary buildings like Denver Place also helped to inform updates to all six BOMA 360 criteria categories to reflect the latest industry best practices, resulting in the January launch of the new BOMA 360 2.0 designation. Robinson, Brown and the rest of the LBA Realty team are excited to use the framework of BOMA 360 2.0 to continue their legacy of building operations and management excellence.
"BOMA 360 truly is an owner’s best tool to analyze building operations and identify opportunities to create new value."
— Sandrena Robinson, General Manager, LBA Realty
This article was originally published in the January/February 2020 issue of BOMA Magazine.