In Denver’s Cherry Creek North, the streets were busy with Tesla Cybertrucks, joggers wearing Lululemon and construction workers donning their neon orange vests on Friday morning.

The sounds of drills and metal clanking filled the air, as cranes cast their shadows onto the ground.

A sidewalk sign read “Construction chic is the new look” as parking spaces on one side of the block were mostly covered by fencing next to a rising eight-story tower.

On almost every block, there’s signage reading “Coming soon.”

Cherry Creek, one of the best-performing markets in the U.S., is booming with development of new luxury condos branded under the Ritz Carlton and Waldorf Astoria names and office buildings fetching rents above the market average.

The neighborhood located in the area between Cherry Creek, Colorado and University Boulevards, has eight projects under construction, three of which are office buildings set to be completed this year, according to a new report released Friday from the Cherry Creek Alliance. The organization represents the neighborhood’s businesses. There are another eight projects in the pipeline, bringing more offices to another three sites.

It’s a stark comparison to downtown Denver, which hasn’t seen any office construction in nearly two years.

“We’ve got a lot of development happening but what you’ll see over the next 12, 18, 36 months is going to be revolutionary,” said Andy Boian, chairman of the Cherry Creek Alliance.

There are plenty of projects coming to transform the area before Cherry Creek West, the mixed-use district on the old surface parking lots on the west side of the Cherry Creek Shopping Center, is set to finish its first phase in 2029.

Yet, the biggest sign of Cherry Creek’s boom is also a challenge for the neighborhood.

Boian mentioned available parking spots have become more of a hot commodity these days and cheeky signs poking fun at the construction is part of a wider initiative to ease the public’s burden with dealing with the effects.

“Construction is difficult and it’s a little dusty in the neighborhood right now, and that is part of the price we paid for success here,” said Nick LeMasters, president and CEO of the Cherry Creek Alliance. “There’s no doubt about that, but we’ll get past that.”

The huge boom is affecting Cherry Creek’s small businesses, he said. Though LeMasters told The Denver Gazette he doesn’t expect Cherry Creek to get hit in tax revenues as the projects coming out of the ground will bring in new businesses and more money for the city.

LeMasters also said the neighborhood is keenly watching the city’s recent efforts to potentially bring Bus Rapid Transit to Colorado Boulevard, saying the alliance has some “concerns” about the impact on car traffic and the area’s retail experience.

“Whether it’s Glendale or whether it’s Cherry Creek, these areas were built to accommodate the automobile,” he said. ”We can’t ignore that.”

Show of Hands, a gift shop selling artisan goods in Cherry Creek for nearly 50 years, was one of the businesses affected by the construction of the eight-story office building at 201 Fillmore St.

Outside the shop, there’s a sidewalk sign with an arrow pointing to Show of Hands saying “happy place” and another arrow pointing at the construction saying “real life…”

Store owner Katie Friedland said it helped to keep open lines of communication with PCL Construction, which is leading the project, to work out what days of street closures would impact her business less. The contractors helped make signs pointing to her business around the block and bought gift cards for their employees during the holidays that helped her weather this period, she said.

With the end in sight this year, she said she’s not going to look back on the troubles and looks forward to seeing the tower open.

The project is set to bring Denver’s publicly traded natural gas company Antero Resources and its workers to the block and a new restaurant The Henry from Fox Restaurant Concepts when the building is set to be completed before the end of the year.

“I want to support the new buildings, I want to support the old, because this is a beautiful, thriving neighborhood and I want us to all be successful,” she said.

The construction hasn’t had much of an economic hit across the entire neighborhood as seen with 16th Street Mall’s reconstruction and the Colfax Bus Rapid Transit project, which has pushed dozens of businesses to seek financial help due to its impact.

The neighborhood generated nearly $120 million in tax revenues in 2025, according to the annual “State of Cherry Creek” report released Friday, up by 3.9% from the previous year. Its retail vacancy rate, already at a record low, grew by 0.4% to 1.9% in 2025.

But as the neighborhood rapidly changes with new projects coming to life, LeMasters said Cherry Creek is starting a process this year to begin rethinking what the future of the shopping corridor’s aesthetic will be like for the next 20 years.

He mentioned Cherry Creek isn’t really seen as an entertainment hub yet and wants to see activity last longer into the night.

“The neighborhood is, I guess we could say, becoming a little more corporate,” LeMasters said. “To that end, we want to make sure that we do our part to keep it, to make it softer, to make sure that the pedestrian experience is one that people really enjoy, and safety is, of course, paramount.”