The redevelopment of Downtown Denver’s Market Street Station took a major step forward today with the announcement of Market Station, a $150 million mixed-use project on the site of RTD’s former bus terminal.
Denver-based Continuum Partners has purchased the Market Street Station property from the City and County of Denver for $14.5 million, which had acquired the site from RTD in 2008 as part of the financing mechanism for the Union Station transit project. Continuum teamed with East West Partners to form the Union Station Neighborhood Company to lead the redevelopment efforts at Denver Union Station, where Continuum is currently working on the “Block A” Hotel/Office project next to the commuter rail/Amtrak platforms. Continuum’s other notable urban projects include Belmar in Lakewood, the redevelopment of the former CU Hospital at 9th and Colorado, and 16 Market Square, located directly across the street from Market Street Station.
For some context and orientation, we have a Google Earth aerial showing the site outlined in yellow, followed by a spectacular drone shot from DenverInfill’s own Ryan Dravitz. The historic RTD headquarters building on the block is not part of the project.
Market Station will be comprised of three buildings ranging from 5 to 10 stories.
Building A will face the 16th Street Mall and most of the Market Street side of the block in an L-shaped configuration and will have three main sections: 10-story buildings at the 16th/Blake and 16th/Market corners, and a 5-story building occupying the middle of the Market Street frontage. Building B, at 5 stories, will anchor the 17th and Market Street corner; Building C will also have 5 floors and will occupy the corner of 17th and Blake. Together, the three buildings will include about 370,000 square feet of development, featuring 90,000 square feet of office space, 85,000 square feet of retail/restaurant, and the balance as 225 apartment units. Two underground parking levels will include 350 vehicle spaces for tenants and the public.
Some of the following diagrams are from the project’s development application to the Lower Downtown Design Review Board, which approved the project’s mass and scale at its December 10, 2015 meeting. Several more rounds of review and approval by the LDDRB are still to come, as well as other approvals by the Denver planning office. Consequently, these images represent conceptual designs only and are subject to further modifications and refinement. In addition to Continuum, the project team also includes architectural firms El Dorado and BOKA Powell, and Dig Studio for urban design and planning. The renderings and other exhibits are courtesy of Roger Pecsok at Continuum Partners and Alana Watkins at VOCA Public Relations. Thank you Roger and Alana!
Site massing (16th and Market corner in foreground):
Building program (office=purple, retail=pink, restaurant=red, residential=blue):
Architectural rendering (view of 16th and Market corner):
One of the exciting aspects of the project is the amount of retail. Too often in Downtown Denver, ground-floor retail ends up as ground-floor restaurant. Restaurants are great, but we could really use more quality retail in Downtown and this project offers plenty, featuring over 20 retail spaces facing the 16th Street Mall, Market Street, an interior paseo along the alleyway, and an arcade off of Market Street. The project’s primary restaurant spaces front 17th Street. Here’s the ground-floor plan, followed by a rendering of the arcade from the interior paseo looking toward Market Street:
Next, we have the four elevations:
16th Street Mall:
Market Street:
17th Street:
Blake Street:
Finally, here’s a diagram showing how the proposed underground parking levels will incorporate the volume of the existing RTD underground space (yellow):
Again, these are all preliminary designs that are subject to change over the coming months, but it is great to see the redevelopment of Market Street Station getting started. If all goes as planned, Continuum will break ground on the project in the fall of 2016 with completion in late 2018.
This is an exciting project for downtown that I can’t wait for more news on as the planning process with the city moves forward. There are a few things that I wonder about a little bit looking at these awesome plans & renditions. First, obviously within the city of Denver, Cherry Creek has branded itself as the luxury shopping destination of the city and if you compare retailers that are in Cherry Creek & Downtown, there are very few that are in both locations due to the fact that there’s less than 3 miles the separate the 2 areas. Furthermore, over the years there’s been a lot of discussion amongst city residents about the problems on the 16th St. mall like the large homeless population and other “troubled characters” that you see sometime. With all this development happening downtown, especially around LoDo/Union Station it seems like it’s starting to get a little better around those areas, but part of me wonders with all this retail space in this project, who’s going to fill those spaces? Do you think there will be any overlap with retailers that are in Cherry Creek?
Ken & Ryan, you’ve done an incredible job highlighting a lot of the development happening around the city including some of those Arapahoe Square projects for the homeless and hopefully that improves both the local experience as well as the out of state tourist who ventures around downtown and the 16th St Mall. Anyway, just wondering everyone’s thought’s?
This is exciting, it will dramatically enliven and activate this area. This site is a (dark at night) hole in the 16th St Mall. The quantity of retail planned is welcome along with the alley format to draw you in to explore. With this super prime location wish they were able to crack the code of for sale residential.
All the talented Architects here in Denver, and this project is outsourced to KC and
Dallas. Sad!
Agreed! Such a shame.
This is so great. I’m particularly excited to see the mid-block connections. Denver’s blocks aren’t particularly large, but I think these connections (along with the ones in Dairy Block) will really make a next-level ped experience.
Thanks for such a detailed post!
Love the paseo and arcade pass thru from Market to Blake. Only thing is I thought the city retained an easement to preserve a small courtyard in front of the historic building and some of the mature landscaping. Not seeing that on this plan. Not a big loss, just trying to remember where I heard that.
I’m sorry, I find it uninteresting and mediocre, just like many of the buildings in Denver.
The large amount of retail is exactly what this site called for. You will now be able to spend an entire day exploring just LoDo. A while back I heard the parking lot at 17th and Blake had plans for redevelopment. Ken, can you share any info on that site? That parking lot has always irked me since. It is a hole in nice historic fabric of that stretch of 17th.
Corey, I haven’t seen anything yet on that but I too am hopeful that parking lot will be developed.
The small scale of the retail is important. The pedestrian friendly aspect too. Brilliant. This will change downtown for the better.
I’m kind of conflicted about the overall scale of the project. On the one hand, it’s so much more than what’s there now — basically a hole in the urban fabric. But Ryan’s aerial shows so well what words fail to fully convey.
The scale of what’s along 17th Street, as it projects into LoDo across the hi-rise “border” of Larimer, makes the project seem diminutive from the bigger, taller towers flanking on two sides. The massing quickly diminishes the project into the 5 and 10-story max of zoning on the western and northern sides. I understand that the project’s over-all mass and height totally respects the LoDo profile.
However 17th, the “Wall Street of the West,” feels very uptown and business-like, compared to the abrupt Old Town profile of LoDo, and I’d like to see a more stepped-down transition from the 35-story buildings on just the other side of Larimer. In other words, how about a taller tower along 17th, of around 25 stories, stepping down to 10 stories into the historical district? The main tower along 17th ought to be about equal to the mass of the 15-story office building directly across 17th Street.
Looks like the developers have diminished the total size of the proposal to an easily acceptable mass and height for approval, by cutting down the potential residential height and scale.
On the other hand, the commercial ground-floor design is terrific, and I look forward to experiencing this block on the pedestrian level, as a shopper along the mall.
You bring up an interesting point Nash on your comments about mass and scale. I know from a LoDo historic district standpoint that the maximum height is 13 stories and the dividing line between downtown & LoDo is the alley between Larimer & Market. in the 16M building caddy corner from this site, that’s clearly a 13 story building and it makes you wonder why don’t they go higher especially along 17th that has some older higher buildings. That’s a really good question for the city right there about going from 30+ story buildings on larimer to 13 story new construction buildings between Market & Union Station?
17th Street is the axis linking Union Station to the Central Business District, and too much deference to the LoDo historic district’s height limitation kind of “cuts off” the Downtown, as it approaches Union Station. A few point towers, with several setbacks that address the historic architecture along 17th, would fill in the Downtown profile to the northwest.
But so many special zoning and view plain districts have the effect of putting a height and density “lid” over ‘way to much of the city — which wants to go higher around the center of Downtown. Denver was already a fairly cosmopolitan city a hundred years ago, without vast sprawling suburbs.
One reason so much development was pushed out of the central city in the Post-War era was urban renewal bulldozing of much of Downtown, making the explosion of mid-rise growth in the Tech Center more attractive, with cheaper ranch land along a new interstate highway.
Now the Millennials want to live Downtown, and there’s definitely a place for some 25-30 story point towers along 17th in LoDo towards Union Station — which actually has a 250-foot height ceiling, twice that of LoDo. But you are dealing with a “slow-or-no-growth” mentality that continues to resist Denver becoming a big city.
There are so many forces that want to hold back growth in denver so that it remains frozen, because they fell in love with denver when it was a certain way or a certain size and are afraid of losing that. I think we can grow and remain who we are and sometimes it feels like refusal to build up also means that we’ll just continue to add to the sprawl. For this building, i agree that a better transition could be achieved along the 17th side.
I don’t think the scale of this project has anything to do with an anti-growth philosophy, but simply that due to the site’s location within the LoDo Historic District, the building heights are kept down simply to maintain the context of the surrounding historic buildings. Also, while they could have gone up to 10 stories on the 17th Street side, that would have required X amount of additional parking which must be accommodated underground (above-ground parking is not allowed in LoDo). Since they are using the existing underground floor/walls of the RTD station, adding another level or two of parking below would have required a major re-excavation of the entire site, adding substantially to thee cost. So in other words, they are putting in as much development as the existing volume of space for parking will allow. That’s my hunch anyway.
Perhaps the developers could move the 4-story upper portion of the 16th and Blake corner to the 17th and Market corner. That would make it six and ten story buildings along 16th and nine and five story buildings along 17th St. I think that would make the frontages along both streets much more interesting.
Overall, I think this is an exciting project. I am, however, confused about why there are curb cuts on both sides of the existing historical building. Maybe I don’t understand the development completely, but having big gaps on both sides of the historical building seems contrary to the whole intent of making this development blend in with its surroundings… I’m trying not to be hyper critical, and I think overall this will be a great development for the area.
Love the look and massing…am surprised the height is not on the 17th side, but that’s minor stuff.
I can’t stand this paseo….it’s not a useful alley, and it’s not a public courtyard…and it removes pedestrians from where we need them – on the sidewalks and interacting w the city.
Sure hope the Planning Board and other Deciders read this blog, as the commentary raises several important points.
One thing I am disappointed about is that this site could be a perfect park. Filled with trees and maybe an iconic art piece. The Triangle building took out a perfect green space. It needed some work, but this section of the 16th street mall would have been great to add some shopping as planned and re-imagined public open space. I think Downtown Denver is missing a beautiful iconic park. Granted with a park comes issues with homelessness occupying the site and keeping people from utilizing the site. Otherwise this is a great addition and I like the shopping and alley way ideas in this plan. I hope they plan it out right to give it a mini European feel traveling through the space. It would give it a unique character and hopefully can attract some Cherry Creek retailers. I don’t shop at Cherry Creek and it would be way more convenient for it to be downtown where in my opinion would be more accessible.
I agree. There’s something inherently cozy about the open space that it is now, assuming it could be better designed. Adding a group of boring (based on the design) apartment buildings just crowds that whole area.
Would have rather them build on the open parking lot next to the RTD building, along with both open parking lots across the street and the open area where the shuttle used to stop.. Then get rid of those former escalator greenhouses and put elevated greenery spaces in their place. Add in some large art pieces and better, more intricate, lighting and you really have something.
Losing this open area’s potential is really going to hurt the feel of that whole area. Always thought the historic RTD building was a perfect place for a large brew pub with that open seating area outside.
south facing building is an attempt but perhaps not well thought out to mirror the Market Street block in place. This COULD be another Larimer if done right. Not suggesting exact replicas but a modern rendition of the facing buildings would be helpful starting with like materials or colors and texture, facade nuances, boutiquish designs.