Developer Mickey Zeppelin has been called daring and visionary, his projects edgy and off-center. The same has been said of his son and partner, Kyle, who joined him 12 years ago.
Many people raised their eyebrows when, in 2000, Zeppelin Development began focusing on a tangle of rail yards, stockyards, cement plants and flour mills near Brighton Boulevard along the South Platte River — an area that had been off the development radar.
The results of their effort can now be seen at Taxi.
What once was a gritty piece of real estate on the west bank of the river has become the centerpiece of the growing River North — or RiNo — neighborhood.
A sixth building in Zeppelin’s 20-acre Taxi complex is scheduled to open Nov. 1. Called Drive, the four-story structure has 38,000 square feet of office space, includes a salon and two restaurants and is fully preleased.
It will increase Taxi’s total space — office, retail and residential — to 210,000 square feet.
“All of it is occupied,” said Mickey Zeppelin, 75, now in his 40th year as a developer in urban Denver.
The transition is less surprising when one considers that Zeppelin is the same urban pioneer who, in the mid-1970s, began reviving lower downtown before it was LoDo, and then, when LoDo became too trendy for his tastes, helped turn the Golden Triangle into a hot spot.