CONNECT
This is not unexpected, yet it is still huge news for the success of the FasTracks program:
This federal funding commitment will allow the Gold Line and the East Corridor Line to move forward. Construction is expected to get underway on the East Corridor Line this fall. For more details, check out Kevin’s post at the Inside Lane.
As many know, the 16th Street Mall is currently the centerpiece of an important conversation. A technical assessment completed in the Fall of 2009 investigated the construction and economic viability of the Mall’s existing surface. Phase 2 – an Urban Design Plan focused on imaging the Mall of the next 30 years – is currently on-going… and tonite is an opportunity to see what designers and the project’s Steering Committee are considering.
The presentation will include 3 alternative concepts for the Mall’s functional, operational, and physical future. And as if that weren’t enough to get you excited, Laurie Olin (one of the original designers of the Mall and an internationally-respected landscape architect) will be on had to offer his impressions. The details below:
16th Street Mall Urban Design Plan Public Meeting #2, Thursday February 4 (today)
5:30 – 7:30 pm, Wellington Webb Building, Room 1.B.6 (enter from Court Place)
This one made gave me a chuckle.
Where once there was a planter at the corner of Larimer and 16th, there is now a raised terrace (outside the entrance to the Overland Sheepskin Co.). Seems it’d be a great location for a coffee cart and some seating… or a similar social space. In fact, there is a sign within the terrace advertising just such activities. However, access is a bit of an issue…
Havey Productions, one of Denver’s leading film production companies and producers of several historical and cultural documentaries of significance, will premiere their new film, Denver Union Station: Portal to Progress this Friday, February 5, at the Hyatt Regency Denver – Convention Center Hotel. You are invited!
At Union Station Advocates, we’ve been working for over a year to help raise funds for the film’s production. Along with many other community groups and contributors, we are thrilled that this feature-length movie on Denver’s Union Station is now ready for its big debut. General Admission tickets are $15 and available at 6:00 PM. Patron Level tickets are $100 and include a hosted bar and hors d’oeuvres reception at 5:30 PM. To purchase tickets in advance or to check out a trailer of the move, click here.
Denver’s Union Station redevelopment has been a long time in the making. First, Lower Downtown blossomed in the 1990s. Then, the Central Platte Valley emerged in the 2000. Waiting patiently in between those two vibrant districts has been our historic Union Station and its neighboring parcels, which is now poised to be the star of the 2010s.
The excitement about this project is palpable. This past fall, 800 people packed Union Station for a party the likes of which the old station hasn’t seen in generations. Fundraising is underway to bring back the Welcome/Mizpah Arch to the Union Station site. New projects like the relocation of IMA Financial’s headquarters to the Union Station site are being announced. Design work for the massive project is nearing completion and the project authority, DUSPA, has a new website with all the latest renderings, plans, and diagrams. And now… Denver Union Station-The Movie… is set to premiere. Please join us this Friday to celebrate not only a movie, but the launch of Denver’s most important civic project since Denver International Airport.
Site lighting can be a tricky thing. Too much of it or too little of it can make a place inhospitable or uncomfortable, sterile or scary. Often, the most successful lighting of outdoor spaces is the lighting that is not noticed at all –providing a level of comfort while not being in your face. At other times, light fixtures can be used as an interesting site element – providing sufficient lighting when needed, and visual interest when the sun is shining.
Back in the day (you know, way back in the spring of 2009), lighting of the outdoor spaces of Writer Square was provided by referential gas lamp style fixtures, installed on a fairly regimented grid across the block. During the warmer months overflowing baskets of flowers hung from the light posts, lending color and interest to the different spaces. The grid, however, seemed to have as its origin a line directly along the visual axis of the central corridor connecting the north and south plazas. Because of this alignment, walking through the already-tight corridor was made perceptively tighter. With the adherence to the lighting grid, many of the lights are located very close to building walls and interfere with restaurant patios. And while the flowers were beautiful, I found myself dodging the fixtures so that my thick mane of hair wouldn’t be attacked by overzealous petunias.
In the redevelopment of the outdoor spaces of Writer Square, the referential lighting has (largely) been replaced by a contemporary fixture – triangular and columnar, with visual porosity through the lens area. This fixture recalls the triangular footprint of the light fixtures along the Mall – a nice reference to an iconic design. It appears that the lights have been placed on the same grid, at the same locations, as the previous poles. (The image above on the right highlights the locations of the lights within the current design of the site.)
While it is understandable that the new fixtures would be located at the same place as the old (due to the cost to relocate electrical service, for instance), the effect of the new fixture is to make the lighting appear more prominent. Where the former fixture had a large luminaire atop a narrow pole, the new columnar fixture is 2 to 3 times as wide as the previous post – creating 2 to 3 times the mass in the pedestrian’s frame of view. And when viewed along the axis of movement through the central corridor, divides an already-narrow space.
In certain cases, it appears that the sanctity of the lighting grid trumped all else. For instance, one light along Larimer Street was located so close to an existing tree that it appears somebody had to physically lift a large limb in order to get the pole in place (yes, the branch is resting on the light fixture). In another case, a light serves as the focal point of a secluded seating area – and I’m not sure about you, but if I’m sitting in a secluded area I don’t think I want to be illuminated as if on stage…
I always found the lighting of Writer Square to be comfortable in the evenings, and the new fixture replaces in kind the lighting levels provided by the former pole. But the spaces today are far brighter at night than in the original design, thanks to relatively new technology that allows lights to be placed in handrails. In the previous post, the proliferation of handrails on the stairs of the 16th Street plaza was mentioned – but these do not represent even half of the handrails located throughout the site. And every handrail is equipped with an LED light. The effect is to overwhelm the space with light – and higher light levels do not necessarily equate to higher comfort levels.
The redesign of the Square was an opportunity to rethink the lighting of a public space. A mentor explained to me long ago that lighting should be used to light the edges of a space rather than the movement corridors – so as to illuminate the shadows (and the scary things they may hold) and not the pedestrian. Opportunities abound within Writer Square to use ambient light from retail storefronts to light the edges of the outdoor spaces. Certainly, some level of additional lighting is both necessary and desirable, and the use of light fixtures as visual site interest has much merit. It seems, however, that lighting as an element of interest in this case has perhaps been too-highly regarded.
This morning’s Denver Post has an article about the design of the state’s new justice center, to be officially called the Ralph L. Carr Colorado Judicial Complex. Click here for a PDF of the article.
The project will occupy the entire block bounded by 14th, Broadway, 13th, and Lincoln and contain two buildings linked together: a 4-story, 150,000 sf courthouse for the Supreme Court and Court of Appeals, and a 12-story, 450,000 sf office tower for the Department of Law including the State Attorney General’s office. The project will seek LEED-Gold certification.
Here’s the photograph from the Post article of a model of the new complex (photo by Jason Knowles, Fentress Architects):
The courthouse will include a 4-story glass-walled atrium and rotunda at 14th and Lincoln facing the State Capitol. Demolition of the existing Judicial Building and Colorado History Museum is scheduled for May, with construction beginning on the new judicial complex in September. The project will be complete in 2013. I’ll see if I can get some additional images of the project to share with you.
By the way, Ralph L. Carr was Colorado’s governor from 1939-1949 and was one of the few public leaders in the country who openly opposed the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II and bravely fought to protect their citizenship and rights as Americans—not a popular thing to do during the war.
It is really exciting to see this project becoming a reality. With construction of the new Colorado History Center underway a block to the south of the Judicial Complex site, and with all the new things planned at Union Station, the two ends of Downtown Denver will be busy with construction for the next several years.
