999 17th Street is moving right along. With hardly any underground work, the apartment structure, 1776 Curtis, is already up three stories in a mere two months. This includes the parking structure, which takes longer to build.
Before we begin, we finally have some final renderings of the 27-story apartment building, courtesy of Davis Partnership Architects, the project’s architect. As we can see from the renderings, there will be a shared six story parking deck with ground floor retail and an amenity deck on top. Final designs for the office building have not yet been released.
The apartment building is built right to the corner of 18th and Curtis Street taking away a huge hole in Central Downtown.
Let’s check in on the progress. In the first photo we can clearly see 999 17th Street’s neighbor, 1001 17th Street. So what does a 1970’s era building have to do with this project? The apartment tower (315-feet) and 1001 17th Street (330-feet) will be roughly the same height. This gives us a great idea of how much impact this building will have at both a street level and skyline perspective.
The apartment building will be a single structure between the residential units and parking deck. Right now, it is indistinguishable between the two uses.
The office building, which will be just taller than the Hotel Monaco next door, has not yet started but will be completed in the same time-frame as everything else. This will also fill in a gap and help complete the street wall along 17th Street.
999 17th Street is going to be a fun project to watch due to the fact it is going up in the densest part of Downtown Denver and filling in one of the largest holes in the Central Downtown urban fabric.
“So what does a 1970’s era building have to do with this project? ” they look like they were built the same decade.
Can they hide that parking garage a little better? looks awful from the street.
I really hope they put in some screening or something like 1401 Lawrence.
OMG this thing got value engineered in the worst way. The loss of the balconies along 18th, loss of the pedestrian level brick treatment at 18th/Curtis, practically zero detailing around flush windows, zero attempt to hide the parking structure, and they somehow even manged to make the retail along Curtis look like a stip mall. The best thing this project has going for it is that its in a decently dense area and should fade into the background. Fingers crossed that this somehow turns out better in real life than what I’m imagining.
Agreed. VE really hurt this building.
It’d be nice to see how renderings/design changes throughout these projects. It’s really interesting to see how much they cut out from the initial designs.
On the plus side, it’s a surface parking lot turned into hundreds of apartments, putting people in the neighborhood past 6:00pm. On the minus, it’s another background building, nothing noteworthy, part of the glue that holds cities together between landmarks.
So, why only 27 stories?
Could be twice that height.
Huge difference between the 2014 Rendering and today’s rendering. Literally took any ‘fun’ that was in the initial images out.
they should through a bar in there next to the pool
Why, if this is the densest part of downtown, why is there a 6 story parking garage? While I am a strong supporter of infill, I regret that DenverUrbanism considers removing a surface parking lot and replacing it with monuments to parking to be a positive development. 46% of downtown Denver residents use public transportation. Therefore, rather than 1:1 parking to unit ratios, shouldn’t it be closer to 1:2? I don’t know about you, but when I think of urban areas like New York or Chicago, I don’t think of entire blocks dedicated to parking. What about the fact that this project could have buried a considerable amount of parking beneath the footprint of the entire building? Of all the projects downtown, I am curious to see how many stories are dedicated to office/residential and how many are dedicated to parking. I bet we would be surprised. I am pro-infil and urbanism, but if this is the future, I would rather have blank lots so as to have hope for what might be rather than to lament what could have been.
I was very disappointed to see them not dig out this project. I suppose it is cheaper to build above ground parking, but I agree that these large above ground parking structures are an eyesore.
Seems like the norm for all of the new buildings going up or planned in Denver to have above ground parking at the base of their towers. At least most are putting some retail on the first floor. I agree that the ratio should be closer to 1:2 to promote public transportation. I also agree that they should be required to cover up the parking levels better if they are above ground. I blame city government as much as I do the builders though. They review the initial drawings and have the power to influence their design prior to start of construction.