DenverInfill Blog

Today’s post is a milestone: the 50th update on this important project.  I will devote number 50 to the new light rail and 16th Street mall shuttle stations.

The light rail station is looking good.  Here are views from opposite ends. The first one is from the Millennium Bridge, and the other is from the Union Gateway Bridge.

You may have noticed an odd looking machine on the tracks.  It’s official name is a tamper and is visible in the first photo above. Like the names states, it picks up the tracks and tamps the stones firmly into place under the tracks to prevent subsequent settling and misalignment of the tracks.

This week the overhead catenary system (poles and overhead electric lines that power the light rail) will be installed.  Then, this summer, the new tracks will be tied into the main line tracks on the other side of the Millennium Bridge, and the station will become operational.

The wider white canopy seen on the right side of the first photo covers the new passenger platform for the mall shuttle bus which will also become operational this summer.  Obviously, the mall shuttle route will have to be extended to the new station.  The bus will travel further along 16th Street and turn right onto a rebuilt Chestnut Place.  Then it will turn left onto a new section of 17th Street that will run above and alongside the underground bus terminal.  Finally, it will turn left again and pull up to the new passenger platform. Once passengers board the bus, it will continue forward and turn left onto 16th Street a few dozen feet before reaching the Millennium Bridge.

Once the mall bus and light rail stations are open for business, the old stations will be removed in preparation for digging the other half of the underground bus terminal.

Don’t forget to go to our Denver Union Station page at JobSiteVistor.com for more photos.

Our seven-week road trip was fun, but it’s always good to get home.  It’s time to get back to business.

In spite of losing about two weeks to cold weather since early January, the Kiewit crew has made amazing progress.  In this blog, I will concentrate on the underground bus terminal.  Over the next few days I will also post updates on the light rail station, the temporary Amtrak terminal, and some projects on the periphery including the new DaVita building.

In the overall view of the bus terminal below, notice that the gap in the wall through which the crane traveled has been filled in, and the roof is nearly complete.  Within a few days, the last of the roof girders will be in place, and the large crane will depart until it returns to work on the other half of the building next year.

The bus entrance and exit ramp is starting to take shape.  The green slab in the photo below is rebar.  This ramp will connect with 18th Street one block west of Chestnut Place.  In fact, 18th Street will dead-end into this ramp. There will be second entrance and exit ramp at the opposite end of the terminal immediately behind Union Station.

There are two interesting things to see in the next photo.  Workers are applying water proofing material to the roof of the bus terminal, and three of the eventual seven skylights are visible.  As I mentioned several months ago, the grade of the entire project area will be increased several feet using the soil that is staged on site.  Comparing the height of the workers with the height of the skylight structures, it appears that the structures are about 10-12 feet high.  Once the grade is increased, almost all of the structure will be buried.  Renderings of the skylights are here and here on the DUSPA website.  And here is a view from the inside.

The most prominent above ground features of the bus terminal will be the air intake and two outlet towers that will be near the light rail station.  In the photo below, you can see the foundations for those three towers.  Renderings of the finished towers are here and here on the DUSPA website.  I took the second photo below on December 16, 2010.  It isn’t a great vantage point to see what is under the towers, but it’s the best I have.

I uploaded 19 photos to our Denver Union Station page at JobSiteVistor.com.  Several of them will give you a peek at my upcoming blogs that I mentioned above.