Matt Joblon is quick to dismiss himself as inexperienced and naive.
Yet when the founding partner and chief executive of BMC Investments first landed in Denver more than 15 years ago, those two self-proclaimed qualities helped him join in on a buying and development boom for what's now considered one of the toniest real estate pockets in the city.
BMC set the stage for the Cherry Creek of 2026 with the Steele Creek Apartments, a luxury multifamily development that marked the first in the company's portfolio that now exceeds $1 billion. Those properties, a mix of high-end apartments, hotels, office buildings and ground-floor retail, have been able to command multiples of the Denver area's average rents. The firm's CEO attributes the feat to his willingness to push the boundaries on the neighborhood's potential.
That bet started in 2010 when Joblon moved to Cherry Creek from Los Angeles.
"I just remember thinking that I must be missing something," Joblon said. "I technically wasn't a developer then, but started looking at the demographics, and they were incredible, with the average household [income] at one of the highest in the country.
"There were so many smarter people with deeper pockets, so there must be a reason other developers were ignoring the area," he added.
Turns out, he said, there really wasn't.
Breaking into the market
In the years after attending boarding school and graduating from Babson College on the East Coast, the Massachusetts native headed west to work with a private real estate firm in Los Angeles. While he originally thought he'd grow up to run the family company, which creates prints and dyes fabric for military gear outside Boston, it was his first deal on Beverly Hill's famed Rodeo Drive that ultimately laid the runway for the rest of his career trajectory.
"Let's be clear, we didn't make a neighborhood here, it had already been one for 30-plus years," Joblon said of his role in Cherry Creek's staggering development. "But because I saw everything that was happening in Beverly Hills, that context and experience meant that when I first started exploring Cherry Creek, it felt just like it. I was like, 'this is the Beverly Hills of the Midwest mountain region, just without the pretentiousness.' I could see it."
From the walkable blocks to the higher-end retailers to its reputation as one of the safest pockets in Denver, Joblon started looking for ways to break in.
"Back then zoning was really tough, and since lots of attorneys lived there at the time, they knew how to mobilize and would just sue over any effort to build anything," the CEO said. "I was 30 years old when I moved here and was young, naive and inexperienced. I just figured I could do it and not knowing anything about it."
Lessons learned
The first opportunity landed in 2012 when a broker called about a piece of land at the intersection between Steele Street and East First Avenue. He didn't realize it at the time, but Joblon and his partners ended up paying a record amount for what would ultimately become the Steele Creek Apartments, a 218-unit multifamily development with a $100 million-plus price tag.
"We knew the demand was there and knew people wanted to live there, but there was no supply, so I figured it would be easy for me," Joblon said. "We put that deal together but, when we went to raise the capital, no one would give us the money. One guy said to us, 'I'm not sure this kid could complete a Lego set, let alone a $100 million building.'"
Everyone was focused on looking at Cherry Creek in Denver as it had been, not going forward, the CEO said. So when Joblon and BMC stepped in with pricing expectations that would shatter records and a willingness to introduce a new level of luxury to the neighborhood, that "fresh perspective" meant the CEO was able to see its potential and where the area was ultimately heading.
"Being the naive outsider ended up helping," he said.
Bumps along the way
That isn't to say it has been a smooth ride. Joblon said the firm's first Cherry Creek project ended up missing the mark, with renters demanding larger units with even nicer finishes. But the lesson helped dictate the multitude of office, ultra high-end apartment, retail and hotel projects the developer has completed over the past decade that have catered to Cherry Creek's ongoing transformation.
Fast forward to now, data shows Cherry Creek is Denver's priciest and best-performing neighborhood across many real estate sectors. Apartment rents at the St. Paul collection, BMC's second stab at Cherry Creek multifamily development, average more than $5,370 a month, according to CoStar data. By comparison, rents across Greater Denver have fallen to average just shy of $1,800 per month.
And against a backdrop of depressed office demand and leasing, tenants are clamoring for any available space in Cherry Creek, pushing preleased rates to 100% long before projects are expected to wrap up construction.
BMC's willingness to look beyond the norm has also set the stage for a panoply of other projects developers have kicked off in recent years.
Cherry Creek will soon be home to not only a Waldorf Astoria-branded condominium tower, but also one emblazoned with the ultra-lux Four Seasons name. Demolition began last month on a former Bed Bath & Beyond to transform the 13-acre site into an expansive mix of more than 1,200 apartment units; 800,000 square feet of premium offices; upward of 150,000 square feet of retail; and plenty of open spaces and parks that will link directly to the nearby Cherry Creek Trail.
Local real estate firm Broe Development this year kicked off the second phase of its Cherry Creek North project with the groundbreaking of a 175,000-square-foot luxury office building at 250 Clayton St. that is expected to finish construction in 2028. The Denver-based firm said the performance of the project's first phase, along with its quick lease up, provided the confidence it needed to move forward with the rest of its plans for the site.
While Joblon is quick to say he'd never start an office project on a speculative basis, the demand he's fielded for the two developments BMC currently has underway in Cherry Creek is already pushing him to put together plans for the firm's sixth office property.
"We've made a lot of mistakes, but we've been fortunate to have a good market that has covered up a lot of them," the CEO said. "I know the pendulum always swings and that nothing goes up forever, but we're constantly thinking about potential risks and how things could go wrong. That way we can identify any problems and build our own solutions for them."