Barie researches current zoning regulations from Denver Community Planning and Development, demographic and demand trends from Census and ESRI data, commercial and residential vacancy rates, competitive supply from active listings and permit filings, and the development pipeline from Denver building permit records. It delivers a four-pillar feasibility brief with a source link for every data point — not a template filled with placeholder ranges.
Why feasibility studies built from secondary research miss the decisions that matter most
A real estate developer evaluating a site in the River North Art District hired a consultant to produce a mixed-use feasibility study. The consultant delivered a polished 40-page document six weeks later. The absorption rate projections were based on a CBRE market report from Q2 2024. The zoning summary referenced the Denver zoning code section applicable to the parcel but had not checked the City Planning website for the overlay district amendment that had been approved in November 2024 and materially changed what was permittable on that parcel. The competitive supply analysis listed five comparable mixed-use projects currently in delivery but missed three additional projects in the permit phase that had been filed with Denver Community Planning and Development in January 2025 — all three were in the immediate submarket, all three included ground-floor retail, and all three were targeting the same lease-up window.
The six weeks and the 40 pages produced a document based on a zoning interpretation that was already superseded and a competitive supply picture that was incomplete by three projects at the time of delivery. The decisions made from that document were made from the wrong picture.
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Feasibility research accuracy depends on source recency, not source prestige: A Q2 2024 CBRE report and the Denver CPD permit portal both cover the downtown Denver market. One reflects the market as it was fourteen months ago. The other reflects permit applications filed this week. Barie retrieves from the permit portal, the zoning amendment database, the vacancy tracking platforms, and the Census demographic data simultaneously — all at query time. The feasibility brief reflects what is true today, not what was true when the last analyst report went to print.
Your prompt
Task prompt
“Analyse the investment feasibility of a mixed-use development in downtown Denver, zoning, demand, competition.”
One sentence. Five research dimensions. Before a single data point is retrieved, Barie activates five connectors that together cover all of the four-pillar feasibility framework requires.
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Five Connectors Activated
Step 1: Five connectors activated — zoning, demand, vacancy, competition, and pipeline each from its authoritative source
A mixed-use development feasibility study requires five categories of data that live in five structurally different source types. Zoning and regulatory requirements live in municipal databases. Demographic and demand signals live in Census and ESRI geospatial data. Vacancy rates and market-clearing rents live in commercial real estate data platforms. Competitive supply lives in active listing databases and permit filing records. Development pipeline lives exclusively in municipal permit portals and City Planning commission agendas that no commercial data provider indexes in real time. Barie activates all five connectors simultaneously before the first finding is written.
🔬 Deep Research
Retrieves current zoning classification and overlay district designations from Denver Community Planning and Development portal. Cross-references the City Council amendment tracking database for any newly passed amendments approved in the last six months affecting the subject submarket. Retrieves the current Downtown Denver Area Plan policy framework. primary height and setback variance precedents relevant to comparable sites.
Zoning · municipal policy
🕷️ Firecrawl
Retrieves active commercial lease listings and residential rental data for the downtown Denver submarket from LoopNet, Zillow, and local property management sites. Extracts asking rents, vacancy rates, and absorption velocity. Cross-references Denver building permit portal for all permit applications filed in the last six months in the downtown submarket for new build, add/alter, and ground-floor retail projects.
Vacancy · rents · permits
📊 Explorium
Pulls demographic and economic trends for the one-mile and three-mile radius — population growth trajectory, median household income trends, daytime population estimates, employment base dynamics, and retail spending capacity per household. These are the demand-side inputs that determine whether the target use programme is supported by structural demand in the immediate trade area.
Demographics · demand signals
📈 Ahrefs
Pulls organic search volume trends for retail, office, and residential category search in the Denver metro — “Denver office space for lease,” “apartments downtown Denver,” “Denver retail space for lease.” Search data acts as an independent validation of the demand signals from Explorium and serves as a leading indicator of tenant demand trends that precede physical market absorption by six to nine months.
Search demand validation
🌐 Web Research
Retrieves current Denver Business Journal, Denverite, and local CRE news coverage covering major pipeline projects, infrastructure developments, and regulatory changes affecting the submarket. City planning commission agendas are checked for upcoming pipeline projects that have not yet filed permits but will impact competitive supply over the lease-up period.
Pipeline · policy signals
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The permit portal and the planning commission agendas are the two sources that make this feasibility brief different from any existing report: CBRE and JLL reports reflect transactions that have already happened. The Denver CPD permit portal reflects projects that are in process right now. A project that filed for a building permit in February 2025 will not appear in any commercial real estate report until it is under construction — which may be 12 months after filing. Barie retrieves from the permit portal at query time. Competitive supply projects that have not yet appeared in any analyst report are visible in this output.
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Four-Pillar Feasibility Findings
Step 2: The four-pillar feasibility findings — each sourced to the document it came from
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Feasibility pillars evaluated
3
Pipeline projects found only in
permit portals
100%
Findings sourced to primary
documents
Deep Research confirms the subject submarket carries a B-8-G (General Business) designation allowing mixed-use development with ground-floor commercial and upper-floor residential or office. Maximum height is 110 feet under base zoning. The CPD amendment tracking database confirms a River North (R-MU) Residential Mixed Use overlay was approved at the planning commission level in November 2024 and is pending full City Council adoption. If adopted before permit application, the overlay would modify the ground-floor commercial activation requirements from 50% to 60% of frontage — a meaningful programming constraint for a retail-anchored ground floor. This amendment is not reflected in any third-party research report published before Q1 2025.
Explorium demographic data shows a 14% daytime population increase in the downtown Denver core since 2021, driven by hospitality and technology sector employment growth. Median household income in the one-mile radius is $112,000, growing at 4.2% annually for three consecutive years. Ahrefs confirms that “apartments downtown Denver” search volume has grown 28% year on year — an organic demand signal that precedes physical absorption. Office demand shows from active listings. Class A new build office commands $42 to $48 per square foot NNN with strong occupancy, while Class B office is experiencing a structural vacancy challenge. Ground-floor retail demand is recovering with experiential and food-and-beverage tenants driving the most active lease-up in the submarket — traditional retail category is flat to down.
Firecrawl retrieves eight mixed-use projects currently under construction or in final lease-up in the downtown Denver submarket, all targeting the same delivery window. Vacancy rates across the competitive set average 8.4% for residential and 14.2% for ground-floor retail. Web Research retrieves three additional projects from the Denver CPD permit portal — permit applications filed January through March 2025 — that are not yet under construction and do not appear in any private analyst report or commercial listing database. All three include ground-floor retail and multifamily residential. If all three proceed to construction and deliver on a standard 24-month timeline, the competitive supply picture is materially different from what the existing analyst reports suggest.
The four-pillar findings converge on a programme recommendation. Residential demand is strongest and absorption is fastest in the submarket. A residential-led tower with ground-floor food and beverage anchors reflects both the demand data and the lease-up patterns across the competitive set. The R-MU overlay 50 to 60 ground-floor commercial activation requirements should be resolved before permit application by confirming City Council adoption status with Denver CPD directly. Class A office is financeable but should be sized modestly given the existing pipeline. 1,000 residential to 300 office programme is better supported by the current observation data than equal mix. The three permit-phase projects identified exclusively via the CPD portal represent the primary risk to the lease-up timeline and should be tracked quarterly.
Step 3: The feasibility brief delivered to your investment and development workflow tools
The full four-pillar feasibility brief with all sources links, the zoning amendment status, the vacancy data, the competitive supply analysis including the three permit-phase projects, and the programme recommendation lands in Notion as a structured investment intelligence record. Airtable receives the competitive supply project list as a database with each project tracked by delivery stage, permit date, and unit mix. Google Sheets holds the demand and vacancy metrics for financial modelling. HubSpot creates an opportunity record for the development site linked to the key investors and partners involved. A Word document structured as an executive summary is available for investment committee. Gmail drafts a summary brief for the equity partner group. ClickUp creates a quarterly CPD permit portal monitoring task. Slack posts the four-pillar summary to the acquisitions and development team channel.
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Quarterly CPD monitoring catches the next permit-phase project before it affects your lease-up: The ClickUp monitoring task runs a Firecrawl re-scan of the Denver CPD permit portal every 90 days. When a new mixed-use permit application appears in the downtown submarket, a Slack alert fires to the development team with the project details. The competitive supply database in Airtable updates automatically. Your feasibility picture stays current through the development lifecycle without a repeat full research session.
The Verdict
The three projects in the Denver CPD permit portal that did not appear in any analyst report were not secret. They were public records, filed with the city, accessible to anyone who looked. The feasibility consultant did not look because checking the permit portal on a live basis was not part of the research workflow. Barie checks the permit portal at query time because the permit portal is in the research stack. The R-MU overlay amendment was not secret either; it was on the CPD amendment tracker, approved four months before the consultant delivered the study. The difference between a feasibility study that captures current reality and one that misses it is not access to better sources. It is a research process that is connected to the sources where current reality actually lives. That is what the five-connector research stack produces.
Barie features used in this task
Feature
ChatGPT
Perplexity
Barie
Live CPD Permit Portal Retrieval — pipeline projects visible before they appear in any analyst report
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✓
Zoning Amendment Tracking — CPD overlay amendment database checked for any updates in the last 24 months
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✓
Ahrefs Search Demand Validation — independent leading indicator of tenant and tenant-demand preceding physical absorption
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✓
Eight Output Connectors — Notion, Airtable, Google Sheets, HubSpot, Word, Gmail, ClickUp, and Slack
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✓
Windows App 
MacOS (sillicon) 