The Denver Feasibility Market: SBA, USDA and Its Structural Variables

Data as of June 2026. This companion research post carries the full structural and capital-markets detail behind the Denver feasibility study hub. Every figure traces to a primary source named in the Sources list. MMCG's city briefs use primary and FOIA sources and do not carry commercial rent, vacancy or occupancy figures.

Denver carries its own set of statute and government rooted variables that redefine the underwriting envelope for a commercial real estate, SBA or USDA feasibility study. Each is stated here at the level a primary source supports.

Denver Water, a rate-funded public agency older than the city's modern build-out. Denver Water states that it serves 1.5 million people in the city of Denver and many surrounding suburbs, that it was established in 1918, and that it is a public agency funded by water rates and new tap fees, not taxes, and Colorado's oldest and largest water utility. The phrase that matters in a feasibility model is new tap fees. Where a utility recovers growth through the general tax base, a new project's water cost is an operating line; where it recovers growth through tap fees, a meaningful part of it is a one-time capital charge that lands in the construction budget and therefore inside the loan request. For a water-intensive project, and a car wash is the clearest case in MMCG's asset classes, that means part of the cost of water arrives as a one-time charge inside the loan request rather than as an operating line, and the study asks the utility for the charge at the address rather than inferring it.

A city sales and use tax stacked on the state and two regional districts, plus a head tax on employment. The City and County of Denver publishes a city sales and use rate of 5.15 percent on general merchandise and 4.00 percent on prepared food and drink, levied alongside the State of Colorado at 2.90 percent, the Regional Transportation District at 1.00 percent and a special district at 0.10 percent, a combined general rate of 9.15 percent. It also levies an Occupational Privilege Tax of $4.00 per month from the employer and $5.75 per month from the employee. Two lines of a pro forma move as a result. A restaurant or other prepared-food operator is taxed on its sales at a different city rate than a retailer in the same building, which changes the price point the demand model has to clear. And the occupational privilege tax is a per-head charge that scales with staffing rather than with revenue. The city's own guidance notes that owners and partners owe the employer portion even where earnings are below $500, which is the threshold the employee side turns on, so a part-time or seasonal roster does not carry the tax the way a full-time one does and the line has to be built from the staffing plan rather than from headcount alone.

Nationally, the U.S. Small Business Administration closed fiscal year 2025 having guaranteed 84,400 7(a) and 504 loans for $44.8 billion, comprising 77,600 7(a) loans for $37 billion and 6,750 504 loans for $7.8 billion, per SBA News Release 25-83 dated September 30, 2025. The Denver metro cut below is computed in-house from the SBA 7(a) and 504 FOIA release by county membership across the Denver-Aurora-Centennial, CO Metropolitan Statistical Area, never read from an SBA district total.

In fiscal year 2025 the Denver metro recorded 1,295 7(a) approvals for $668,400,600 and 74 504 approvals for $88,064,000, filed largely through the COLORADO DISTRICT OFFICE. The most active 7(a) lenders in the metro that year, by approval count, were The Huntington National Bank (197 loans); Northeast Bank (128 loans); U.S. Bank, National Association (84 loans); Newtek Bank, National Association (81 loans); JPMorgan Chase Bank, National Association (60 loans); Live Oak Banking Company (58 loans); Readycap Lending, LLC (47 loans); KeyBank National Association (41 loans). The most active 504 Certified Development Companies were B:Side Capital (43 loans, $44,218,000); Mountain West Small Business Finance (24 loans, $33,526,000); Preferred Lending Partners (4 loans, $6,651,000); Pikes Peak Regional Development Corporation (2 loans, $2,283,000); California Statewide Certified Development Corporation (1 loan, $1,386,000).

USDA Business and Industry credit runs on a statutory geography, not a county line. Under 7 U.S.C. 1991(a)(13)(A) the terms rural and rural area mean any area other than a city or town of more than 50,000 inhabitants and any urbanized area contiguous and adjacent to such a city or town. For Community Facilities direct loans and grants, 7 U.S.C. 1991(a)(13)(C) sets the line at 20,000 inhabitants. The Denver urbanized core is therefore out. What remains in this metro is the outer parts of the ten member counties, beyond the urbanized area that runs with Denver, Aurora and Centennial. Because the test turns on the subject address and the urbanized-area boundary around it rather than on the name of the town, MMCG verifies eligibility at the address on the USDA Rural Development eligibility map at intake, before any work on the study begins, and no town is named on this page as eligible on a model's say-so.

A Denver market piece would ordinarily carry submarket rents, vacancy and absorption. Those come from commercial market reports, which MMCG's city briefs do not carry, so they are omitted rather than shown on a weaker source. What remains is the statute, the federal program frame and the SBA record computed from the primary file, which is the part of a Denver study a lender can check.