The Flour Mill and Main Street apartments in Steamboat Springs have sold to Birge and Held, a company that provides real estate investment, property management and construction services to a wide range of clients.

“They bought it for housing, that’s what they do,” Jon Sanders said of the new ownership, which is based out of Indianapolis.

Sanders is chief executive officer and founder of Ski Town Commercial and SwedProperty Group manager.

“They’re investing in multi-family, workforce housing assets throughout Colorado and beyond,” Sanders said of the new owners. “They have a lot of properties in Colorado and in the Rocky Mountain region.”

According to the Routt County Assessor, the Flour Mill sold in December 2015 for $2.65 million and paid $2.5 million for the Alpiner Lodge in 2018 before investing in extensive renovations and rebranding the property the Main Street Apartments.

Sanders said that property is deed-restricted for workforce housing, so the new owners, Birge and Held, are not anticipating that to change.

“At Birge and Held, we focus primarily on workforce housing within our local communities,” said Chris Brennan, the company’s senior vice president. “Flour Mill and Main Street Apartments will continue to support the workforce housing need in Steamboat.”

He continued by adding Birge and Held manages similar communities in Aspen, Dillon and Georgetown and is excited to have a presence in Steamboat.

“Our strategy is to preserve and create workforce housing solutions in a positive manner for the community,” he said.

According to Sanders, during the time his group owned the Flour Mill apartments, they worked to revitalize the buildings that were in sore need of some improvements.

“We took the Flour Mill to about 90%, and I think (Birge and Held) have plans to take it to about 110%,” Sanders said. “There are some older units that haven’t been fixed up there, but I understand that they’re planning on fixing those at some point.”

Sanders said the two properties that sold have 89 units, including two small retail spaces in the Main Street Apartments. He said that renovations in those apartments were complete.

These days Sanders is focusing on new projects, including the Ski Town Apartments — former Hampton Inn & Suites — and the Storm Peak Apartments — the former Fairfield Inn & Suites.

“The Fairfield will get a bunch of work starting May 1, and the Hampton is a little bit more of a face project because there’s already kitchens in a lot of those units,” Sanders said. “We are trying to get as many as we can to stay occupied to help the town out while we’re in construction — that’s a tricky thing to do.”

Those two workforce housing projects in which Sanders has partnered with a new group include 152 units.

“That (workforce housing) was really important to us,” Sanders said. “That’s what (the new owners) are doing, that’s what their business is and that is the business model. They do it on a larger scale than we do, so we figured now is a good time to turn it over for them to do more with it.”