The owner of The Denver Post must pay the city of Denver $13.5 million and take the newspaper’s name off 101 W. Colfax Ave. under the terms of a settlement to cover back rent on the high-profile building that hasn’t been paid since August.
City of Denver officials announced the settlement Tuesday, resolving a protracted dispute with DP Media LLC over the curved, white building at the corner of Broadway and Colfax Avenue.
Despite the name on the outside, The Denver Post newsroom has not been in the building since 2018. The newspaper moved its editorial employees eight years ago to its printing facility in Commerce City.
But the company continued to hold the master lease on the property and leased several floors to the city of Denver.
When the city acquired the building in 2024 for $88.5 million, the city became landlord but still remained a tenant.
In August, DP Media stopped paying its $650,000 monthly rent to the city and hoped to end its lease. In May, DP Media was in default of approximately $6.5 million owed to the city, plus late fees amounting to about $32,000 a month, according to the notice of default from the city.
Denver officials vowed to recoup the money in what was an ugly, public dispute between the city government and the city’s legacy newspaper.
“When we said we would recover every cent owed we meant it,” Mayor Mike Johnston said in an emailed news release Tuesday. “This agreement is a great deal for Denver, and we look forward to forging a new future for the property that serves the city and preserves this building’s iconic place downtown.”
According to a spokesperson for the mayor, no final date was set on when the sign is coming down. But DP Media’s lease will end June 30. DP Media officials have not responded to a request for comment.
Once the DP Media lease ends, the city can collect rent from other tenants, plus parking revenue. According to city spokesperson Laura Swartz, the city stands to gain another $8.4 million from parking revenue and rent from two office tenants — Enova and T-Mobile. The city also will no longer have to pay rent, a total of $6.8 million through October 2029.
“This tenant and parking revenue, …not having to pay for our own lease there anymore, and the ability to now pursue new revenue opportunities is how we get to break even,” she said in an email.
The 11-story building opened in 2006 and was originally home to both The Denver Post and The Rocky Mountain News, newspapers that competed against each other to cover the news but were run under a joint operating agreement that combined some business activities, such as advertising sales. The Rocky, owned by E.W. Scripps Company, closed in 2009.
The building was not owned by either of the newspapers, but by Media News Group, which owns The Denver Post.
The Denver Post reported that the settlement is 40% of what Media News Group would have had to pay the city under its original lease, which would have continued through 2029. That total would have been $34.5 million, the newspaper said.