Evan Almighty

The next step was the Standish Hotel building on California Street, which the Bank of Denver had used as its headquarters until 2004, when it was sold to Mercy Housing. The non-profit affordable-housing developer had hoped to convert much of the structure into low-income units, but construction costs had skyrocketed and funding had fallen through. The owners were interested in selling, but only if the deal somehow contributed to the organization's mission. Such elements weren't usually the stuff of downtown real-estate transactions, but Makovsky was willing to consider it.

And so, in the end, Evan got the building under contract in spring 2006.

With the land he had now, Makovsky could have built a hotel and parking garage on the vacant Orpheum lot and redeveloped the Standish into offices or stores. But he kept going. This was exactly the sort of risky, extended timeline that had scared off developers like Target and Lowe — but Makovsky was willing to be patient.

He next purchased the parking lot between the Standish and the McClintock building from Paradise Cleaners owner Buzz Geller. Like the Dikeous, Geller is a major parking-lot owner, but unlike them, he's always been eager to have his lots redeveloped. "It's a real eyesore," says Geller, who sold his portion of the land for $1.7 million.

Then, to deal with the corner property on California and 15th streets, where a hotel had been torn down to make room for a "temporary" parking lot, Makovsky purchased a third of the land's undivided-interest ownership from a real-estate investor; the other two investors assured Makovsky they wouldn't stand in the way of his plans.

The McClintock building, held by the seventh property ownership group on Block 162, was not needed for Makovsky's redevelopment plan.

That left the Dikeous and the Cooks.

Makovsky can't talk about what happened next, because he signed an agreement swearing not to. He's not allowed to discuss the multi-year negotiations with the Dikeous, for example, or how he tackled the family feud behind the Fontius building. He's also forbidden from revealing the sums of money bandied about, but he admits that the Dikeou holding was the linchpin of his plan all along: "Once all the other pieces fell together, this was the one property that became very important to me.

"There is such a thing as being at the right place at the right time," he adds with a wink. On June 19, the Downtown Denver Partnership publicly trumpeted the news in a press release: "75,000 Square Feet of Contiguous Property in Downtown's Core Changes Hands." Makovsky had acquired nearly every property on the block, including the Colonial. Less than a month later, the partnership announced Makovsky's acquisition of the Fontius building as well.

Not everyone was happy, however. "Our landlord pretty much gave us thirty days to move out, because the guy who bought it wanted immediate possession of the property," says 15th St. Tavern owner Martinez. "The place was our heart and soul. It screwed us financially, and most of our employees are out of a job. We are trying to find a new place right now, but there's a lot of paperwork and red tape.

"It kind of hurts the little people," says Martinez. "But that's just the way city development works."

After all, progress cannot be stopped.

Perhaps the time had finally come for the Dikeou and Cook families to make a deal. As Rock points out, it was only recently that any downtown Denver property owners had considered redeveloping their land: "What has been built in downtown Denver in twenty years? The convention center and its new hotel. The market was not there."

The City of Denver may also have flexed its muscles behind the scenes. "I think the mayor personally talked to the Dikeous to make the pitch that it's time to sell the property," says Elbra Wedgeworth, a city councilwoman at the time who says she had a similar conversation with Gary Cook.

There was also public pressure, in the form of Ken Schroeppel. A Denver urban planner with the Matrix Design Group, Schroeppel is the author of DenverInfill.com, a widely read website and blog devoted to new downtown development and the neglected properties that need it most. His June 2006 posting about the Fontius building triggered several newspaper reports on the subject. Then, in March 2007, he detailed the neglect and decay of the building and demanded a call to action. "The time has come," he wrote, "for the people of Denver to stand up and say 'Enough is enough!'"