Early next year, Zeppelin Station, a 100,000-square-foot “creative workspace and culinary concourse” filled with street food vendors, bars, and a full-service restaurant, will open in Denver. Envisioned as a commercial development with a food hall at its nexus, it’s part of a bigger vision the developer, Zeppelin Development, has to create a more active workspace to attract tenants.
“People want the same things when they come to work that they want when they come home,” says developer Kyle Zeppelin.
A fixture in Denver and the company behind numerous residential and mixed-use projects in the city’s RiNo neighborhood, Zeppelin believes the food hall concept offers a great hook for companies looking to provide the amenity-filled workspaces the younger, more tech-savvy demographic desires. This new spin on the concept also points to the proliferation of food hall-focused development, and the increasing creativity needed to stand out from the crowd.
A rendering of Zeppelin Station, a soon-to-open mixed-use project in Denver featuring a food hall and commercial space. Dynia and Zeppelin Development
Food halls are booming in the United States, with gargantuan new ones anchoring retail districts and neighborhood developments across the country. According to an analysis by Cushman & Wakefield, the number of food halls operating in the United States will exceed 200 by 2019, an increase of 700 percent since 2010 (that means going from roughly 6 million square feet from 3 billion). In Manhattan, there are 16 such projects in operation and more in the works.
Over the last decade, the idea has gone from innovative to expected, becoming a centerpiece of large-scale developments in New York (DeKalb Market Hall), Chicago (Time Out media company is at the helm of one proposed project), Detroit (the rehab of the Stone Soap Building) and Dallas (Legacy Food Hall), among many others