On a recent morning, Miles Omand stood on a large 16th-floor penthouse balcony at 1000 Grant The Burnsley in Capitol Hill and absorbed the view: to the south, Pikes Peak. Northward, the Front Range heading toward Longs Peak. To the west: snow-dusted Mount Evans.
And at his feet, seemingly all of downtown Denver, from the gilded dome of the state Capitol to the twin spires of the Cathedral Basilica of the Immaculate Conception and points beyond, all dotted with the brilliant autumn leaves of hardwood trees.
Omand was almost giddy.
“It’s such an amazing view, and I just love the central location,” he said. A Canadian businessman here on a six-month assignment, you felt he was missing the place already, and he was still a few days from actually moving into the unit.
The 86-unit Burnsley at 1000 Grant St. opened in April as luxury apartments. The place will be remembered by longtime Denver residents as the Burnsley Hotel, which starting serving guests in 1969. It closed after local owner Joy Burns sold it in December 2012 to RedPeak Properties for $10 million. RedPeak president and CEO Mike Zoellner had sought the building for several years.
“This was her baby,” chief operating officer Mark Windhager said of the prominent businesswoman and benefactor. “She loved this place.”
Joy Burns was married to the late Franklin Burns, whose name adorns the School of Real Estate and Construction Management at the University of Denver’s Daniels College of Business. The campus is also home to the Joy Burns Ice Arena.