Looking back on 2024: 10 notable deaths in the Denver business community

John Madden Jr. developed numerous office buildings in the Denver Tech Center.

Buz Koelbel was a family real estate firm’s second generation.

And restaurateur and developer Jim Sullivan once compared serving in Vietnam and filing for bankruptcy.

“I did two tours in Vietnam, and Vietnam was lemonade compared to filing for bankruptcy … I never questioned who I was or what I was about when I was in Vietnam,” he told the Rocky Mountain News in 1992.

The three men are among the notable members of the Denver business community that died in 2024.

The 10 individuals we’ve highlighted below also include a chef who passed away weeks shortly before an anticipated reopening, and an attorney who ended up in prison.

Jim Sullivan stands with son JJ and daughter Leigh. (Courtesy Leigh Sullivan)

Jim Sullivan

Jim Sullivan, who developed retail properties and opened restaurants around Denver, and founded the brokerage SullivanHayes during a colorful career, died in January at 74.

He chose to work in real estate in the hopes of becoming wealthy.

Jim Sullivan in 1968. (Courtesy Leigh Sullivan)

“I went through old Fortune and Forbes magazines and looked at rich people and saw that most of them made their money in oil or real estate,” Sullivan told The Denver Post in 2000. “I didn’t know what I wanted to do, but I knew I wanted to be rich.”

Sullivan filed for bankruptcy midway through his career, and closed his life living at the Four Seasons tower downtown. His work can be seen in suburbs such as Westminster and Denver’s posh Cherry Creek.

In the 2000s, Sullivan Restaurant Group concepts included Ocean in Cherry Creek North and Oscar’s, a steakhouse attached to the Diamond Cabaret strip club downtown.

“I’ve been rich and I’ve been poor,” Sullivan told the Denver Post in 2000. “Being rich is better.”

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Developer John W. Madden Jr., left, talks with broker Phil Ruschmeyer in Madden’s Greenwood Village penthouse in 2021. (BusinessDen file)

John Madden Jr.

Longtime developer John Madden Jr., whose emphasis on art and landscaping produced some of the more distinctive buildings in the Denver Tech Center, died last week. He was 94.

Madden, born and raised in Omaha, Nebraska., started in the family insurance business and then carved out his own path in commercial real estate.

The John Madden Co. built more than 10 million square feet of office and mixed-use space in its 60-plus-years history.

“He had a grand life,” his daughter, Cynthia Madden Leitner, said.

Read The Denver Post’s full story here.

David Friedman speaks to a Central Park neighborhood organization about development plans in 2017. (Front Porch Newspaper)

David Friedman

David Friedman, a developer who in recent years developed retail and residential projects in the Denver Tech Center and Central Park, died in February at 61.

Friedman founded D.H. Friedman Properties in 1997. The Greenwood Village-based firm has developed over 750,000 square feet of retail, office and multifamily projects in Colorado and Arizona.

Friedman was born in Denver in 1962 and graduated from Cherry Creek High School, where he excelled in tennis, and the University of Pennsylvania before returning to Colorado to work in real estate. He formed his own firm after working for several others.

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Steve Bachar listens as his attorney speaks during a March 2023 court hearing. (BusinessDen file)

Steve Bachar

Steve Bachar, a former White House staffer and lawyer turned businessman, died in March at the Rifle Correctional Center, where he was serving a three-year sentence for theft. He was 58.

“Nothing is an excuse for my actions. I blame no one else and take full responsibility,” Bachar said at his November 2023 sentencing hearing, calling himself “deeply remorseful.”

It had been a far fall from grace for Bachar.

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Hyde Park Jewelers founders Michael Pollak, left, and Steven Rosdal in 2001. (Courtesy Michael Pollak)

Steven Rosdal

Steven Rosdal, who turned a passion for Native American jewelry into Hyde Park Jewelers, which expanded from Denver around the region, died in April at 77.

After moving to Denver in the 1960s, Rosdal started going to New Mexico regularly to buy jewelry to resell.

“We had a system,” Rosdal recalled in a 2016 interview. “I would take this shoulder bag and about $10,000 or $20,000 in cash every day, go to the reservation, and spend it. I would then go to the Albuquerque airport, pack it all up, and put in on a Continental Airlines jet. They would open the package in Denver and there would be people that were there to buy.”

Michael Pollak was a junior at the University of Denver when he met Rosdal, who was seven years older. He started working for Rosdal’s wholesale business Turquoise Trading Co. and was eventually made a partner in the company.

Interest in Native American jewelry eventually faded, Pollak said, and he pushed Rosdal to reposition the business. In 1976, the pair founded Hyde Park, which offered more traditional fine jewelry.

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Amos Watts, left, and Justin Brunson met in 2003 when Watts worked at Jax Fish House and Brunson was a regular there. (Courtesy Justin Brunson)

Amos Watts

Denver chef Amos Watts, owner of The Fifth String, died in April at 43, weeks ahead of his acclaimed restaurant’s planned reopening in a new location.

Watts grew up in Nebraska and found his way to Denver to go to culinary school at Johnson & Wales University. After a stint working in California, he returned for good in 2011, working at RiNo’s Acorn and LoHi’s Old Major. He opened The Fifth String in 2020 where Old Major had operated.

“He mentored quite a few young cooks that have gone on to open their own places or be executive chefs,” said local chef Caroline Glover, of Annette and Traveling Mercies. “I think that speaks to the type of chef that he was.”

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Steve Leonard (Courtesy Leonard family)

Steve Leonard 

Steve Leonard, an investor who bet big on Denver real estate as the region struggled following the 1980s oil crash, and profited handsomely when he sold nearly everything and moved back to California within a decade, died in June. He was 69.

Leonard began investing in Southern California, where he lived. But in 1989, he and his wife moved to Greenwood Village, and Leonard, then in his 30s, started buying — largely industrial buildings at first, but also retail and office holdings as the years progressed.

By 1997, Leonard believed the Denver market had fully recovered. While others thought it had plenty of room to grow, Leonard told the Wall Street Journal the following year that “trees don’t grow to the sky.” 

His firm sold nearly all its local holdings, and he moved back to California.

“He would tell us, put all your eggs in one basket, but watch that basket,” his daughter said.

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Donald Sturm died on Aug. 17 at age 92. (Courtesy ANB Bank)

Donald Sturm

Donald Sturm, a University of Denver law school graduate whose already-impressive wealth grew exponentially when he returned to the Mile High City at an age when many would retire, and whose local philanthropy led to the law school being named in his honor, died in August. He was 92.

“Business was his vocation and his hobby,” said Stephen Sturm, one of four children.

Sturm had a background in tax law when he went to work for Omaha-based Peter Kiewit Sons, a large construction and engineering firm. He worked there for 28 years, pushing the company further into the energy industry. According to Forbes, his stock was worth $160 million when he left Kiewit in 1991.

That’s when Sturm, then nearly 60 years old, returned to Denver. He bought Bank of Cherry Creek that year and later rolled it and his other bank holdings into ANB Bank, which is still based in Cherry Creek.

In 1999, Forbes estimated Sturm was worth $3.2 billion, although he wasn’t included on billionaire lists in recent years.

“I used to play Monopoly as a kid,” Sturm told Forbes in 1998. “I’m still playing it.”

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John Logan, center, at a NAIOP Colorado event. (Courtesy NAIOP Colorado)

John Logan

John Logan, an extroverted attorney specializing in real estate who was intimately involved with the industry’s local trade associations, died in August at age 66.

Logan was a partner with Cherry Creek law firm Laff Bennett Logan.

“John was just a joy to have in the office — unfailingly good-humored — and had vast real estate experience,” Laff Bennett Logan partner E.J. Bennett.

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Denver developer Buz Koelbel (Courtesy Koelbel and Co.)

Buz Koelbel

Buz Koelbel, who led his father’s Denver-area real estate firm for nearly 40 years before stepping down from the top job earlier this year, died in September. He was 72.

He acquired his nickname early on, thanks to his toddler older sister’s mispronunciation of “baby brother.”

“My sister couldn’t say Walter and she called me her little baby buzzer — and it just stuck,” he told the Villager newspaper in 2017. “When I was learning cursive in first or second grade, I looked at it and thought it sounds the same with one ‘z’ as two.”

Koelbel stepped down from day-to-day responsibilities at the company in the spring, handing the title of president and CEO to son Carl Koelbel and taking on the title of chairman. His other sons, Walt and Dean, are also executives at the firm.

“We’ve all got what my dad calls the dinner-table DNA,” Carl Koelbel told the Villager in 2017. “It was growing up and hearing my dad talk about real estate. It just got embedded within us.”

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