Gart Properties, a Denver real estate venture tied to a century-old family business, is entering a new era.

The Gart Companies named Evan Gart, 34, as president of Gart Properties. Gart is the great-grandson of its founder Nathan Gart and has worked at the company for nine years.

The Gart family business dates back to 1928, when Nathan opened a warm gear, fishing supplies and hunting supplies store in downtown Denver at Larimer Street. The Gart Bros. Sporting Goods Company later moved in 1970 to 1000 Broadway — a historic art-deco building now known as the Sports Castle — and became a major U.S. sports retailer thanks to Colorado’s growing ski industry.

For years, skiiers looked forward to the annual and popular “Sniagrab” (“bargains spelled backwards) sale of equipment at the Sports Castle.

The sports company later merged with The Sports Authority, which went bankrupt in 2016 and left the Sports Castle.

The Gart Companies has two separate businesses founded in 1993: Gart Capital Partners with Alex Gart at the helm and Gart Properties with Evan.

The family is moving into what they call “G4,” the fourth generation of the business, Evan said.

“Now it’s Alex and my opportunity to not just continue what the family’s done, but how do we put our own fingerprint on the business,” Evan said. “And that may or may not look the same as it has.”

The changes at Gart Properties come as the company will sell its most recognizable asset Denver Pavilions to the city of Denver and a new sports retailer looks to revive Gart’s former home at the Sports Castle.

Gart Properties acquired the Denver Pavilions in 2008, which is near a sale with the Denver Downtown Development Authority worth $37 million after the owner couldn’t pay back its loans on the property and it was at risk of being taken by the lender.

The mall has struggled since 2019, especially with the pandemic hitting downtown hard and 16th Street’s construction project that hurt many retailers along its 13 blocks. Evan did not want to discuss much of the sale with The Denver Gazette, but said it will have a minimal impact on the company.

“Financially, we will be fine,” Evan said. “It’s a blip and the loss is lost.”

Even though Gart Properties won’t own the property anymore, Denver’s Chief Projects Officer Bill Mosher said the company’s team will stay on to help the DDDA manage the property.

The company’s next biggest asset following Denver Pavilions is the Village Shopping Center in the center of Boulder. It also owns 1600 California located on downtown Denver’s 16th Street, 240 St. Paul in Cherry Creek, tiny homes at the Powderhorn Mountain Resort and shopping centers in Arvada, Aurora, Denver Tech Center and Fort Collins.

While it’s been a long time since Gart occupied the Sports Castle, the family has seen the reports that Evo, a sports retailer based in Seattle, filed permits with the city to open its regional hub in the Gart’s former home of the Sports Castle.

The company’s office still has many nods to its days at the Sports Castle with pictures and mementos of its old store and headquarters displayed on its walls.

“I’ll be honest,” Evan remarked. “There was the word ‘jealous’ thrown around from the family.”

The new company president added he and many members of his family grew up in the Sports Castle, selling skis and fitting ski boots, and they were sad his grandfather passed away after they sold the business.

While bittersweet, he said there’s a lot of admiration to see Evo owner Bryce Phillips’ desire to bring it back to life.

“It’s incredibly cool and exciting that he can kind of extend that legacy and reinvest in the asset,” Evan said. “I can’t wait to be a customer of it. I think it’s going to be super cool.”

FORMER PRESIDENT LOOKS FORWARD TO NEW GENERATION STEPPING UP

Evan was handed the reins from the company’s former president Mark Sidell, who has managed the daily operations of the family’s real estate business for 26 years.

Sidell was named vice chairman of the board and will be responsible for helping the company with its long-term strategic vision.

“It’s been a terrific run with a great family and we’ve had to learn a lot of lessons, some the hard way,” he said.

The outgoing and incoming presidents have worked side-by-side for nine years and spent more time with each other than anyone else, Evan said.

They’re “somewhat opposite” in personality, he added. Sidell is a social butterfly and Evan described himself as more analytical, which worked really well.

Evan has grown a lot since he started at the company as an analyst, Sidell said. He came in with the Gart family’s hard work ethic, humility and intelligence as well as “intelligence that he built on his own.”

He added the new president had been instrumental in helping the company improve its processes and transitioning to a new technology operating system.

Meanwhile, Evan said Sidell was a mentor to him, teaching him the importance of building strong relationships and how to get creative when a business deal is at an impasse.

NEW OPPORTUNITIES OUTSIDE COLORADO?

As the company looks behind its storied past, Evan is looking beyond Colorado for its future.

Gart Properties ethos is based on being the local and family landlord who also knows what it’s like to be a renter, seeking to stand out by having the best expertise on what’s going on around the state. But that’s getting harder as more out-of-state investors have come into Colorado, Evan said.

Big institutions can pay more to acquire properties at a lower capital cost to them, he explained.

“The blessing and the curse of Colorado is it’s an extremely great place to live and it’s totally on the map now,” he said. “So we find ourselves competing with the most sophisticated, largest institutions on acquisitions … and it’s made it especially challenging and competitive for us to be able to really scale.”

He said there’s less competition outside the state and the company is working on a couple of opportunities in Arizona, Kansas City and Omaha.

Evan said he aims to take the company to destinations within a two-hour flight from Colorado, spanning the Midwest and Mountain West region. Locations where the Gart family had history selling skis is also on the table, as they can bring their generational institutional knowledge into those areas.

“Obviously, we have the best relationships and the most knowledge of Colorado,” Evan said. “So it’ll continue to be a primary focus, but we have found a lot of great value outside the state.”