1031 Exchange in Aurora, Colorado

The Anschutz Medical Campus at the former Fitzsimons Army base has grown into one of the largest medical employment centers in the Rocky Mountain region, and demand for medical office, research flex space, and nearby multifamily housing has followed. Investors exchanging into Aurora medical-adjacent product are tapping into one of the most recession-resistant employment bases in the metro.

The campus's continued expansion has also created a pipeline of construction and support-services activity that ripples outward into surrounding Aurora neighborhoods, adding a secondary layer of retail and service-tenant demand beyond the medical office space closest to the campus itself.

Buckley Space Force Base supports steady rental demand in surrounding Aurora neighborhoods, similar in character to the military-driven demand seen farther south in Colorado Springs, though on a smaller scale. Housing and service retail near the base have historically shown low vacancy tied to that consistent employment base.

Investors comparing Buckley-adjacent Aurora property to Colorado Springs' larger base-driven submarkets should note the scale difference — Buckley's footprint supports a smaller but still meaningfully stable demand pocket rather than an economy-wide driver the way the Colorado Springs installations do.

Aurora's eastern reaches near Denver International Airport have become a magnet for logistics, hospitality, and distribution development as the area sometimes called the Aerotropolis continues to build out. Warehouse and flex space here benefits from direct airport access, and 1031 investors targeting last-mile or air-cargo-adjacent logistics increasingly look to this corridor first.

Hotel and hospitality development has followed the same airport-adjacency logic, giving investors an additional replacement-property category in this corridor beyond straight industrial, though hospitality underwriting carries its own operational considerations that differ meaningfully from a triple-net warehouse lease.

The Southlands open-air retail center anchors southeast Aurora's suburban retail base, drawing a mix of national tenants serving the area's fast-growing residential population. Retail centers in this part of Aurora have generally outperformed older, more centrally located Aurora retail that hasn't kept pace with newer rooftop growth.

We track the gap between southeast Aurora's newer retail performance and the older, more centrally located centers closely, since that gap has occasionally created value-add opportunities for exchangers willing to reposition an aging center to better match current resident demand.

Aurora is large enough — and its submarkets different enough, from Fitzsimons medical to DIA-adjacent logistics to Southlands retail — that we treat it almost like several distinct markets under one city name when building an exchanger's identification strategy.

That size and diversity is also an advantage for exchangers with a specific property-type target, since Aurora is one of the few south-metro suburbs where medical office, industrial, hospitality, and retail replacement options can all realistically be found within the same city.