Denver International Airport is looking to lease, and potentially buy, an office building near the Interstate 70-Peña Boulevard interchange

The city-owned airport is asking the Denver City Council to sign off on a 10-year lease of the 43,000-square-foot Gateway Office VII building at 4347 Airport Way to address a “growing need for additional working space capacity.”

The airport would pay $14 a square foot in the first year, with a 2.75% increase each year after that, according to city documents. It also would be responsible for the building’s operating expenses, as is typical in commercial leases. The documents don’t estimate those costs.

The building on 4.3 acres is owned by BL Holdings LLC, which purchased it in July 2012 for $1.6 million, according to public records.

The documents prepared for the City Council state that the airport’s lease would be with Bergner Holdings LLC, a related entity formed by William Bergner.

Comcast previously operated in the building.

The deal calls for Bergner to give the airport a “tenant improvement fund” of $1.73 million and a “tenant improvement allowance” of nearly $872,000 for the build-out of the space, per the city documents.

The lease might not run all 10 years, however. In the first year, the airport would have an option to buy the property for $6.73 million, plus the cost of the tenant improvements — $10.09 million in all, according to the documents.

The proposed lease would start in August.

The building is adjacent to another where Concorde Career College wants to move. Frontier Airlines is headquartered down the street.

— Thomas Gounley, BusinessDen