The Alexan 20th Street Station project in Downtown Denver’s Arapahoe Square district is now under construction.
Announced just a few months ago, this 12-story, 354-residence apartment community by Trammell Crow Residential is located on California Street between 20th and 21st Streets. Here are a few shots of the early stages of site excavation.
View looking south. On the left is the alley side of the parking garage at 21st and Welton, and rising beyond it is One Lincoln Park:
View looking northwest at the Federal Building:
View straight down California Street with two of Downtown’s more prominent skyscrapers, 1999 Broadway and 1801 California, in the center.
Let’s end with a special bonus photo, thanks to DenverInfill reader Tim W.
From his view high above, we can not only see the Alexan 20th Street Station site in the center foreground, but we can also see another infill project under construction: the Renaissance Downtown Lofts at Stout and Broadway on the left with the red fence.
Another surface parking lot has been eradicated in Arapahoe Square!
Whew! Look at that sea of Colotecture in the mid-to-background. A friend in town last weekend asked, after spending much of the day downtown, if we only have one architect in Denver, and it’s sort of starting to feel that way North/Northeast of CBD. Hopefully the new Arapahoe Square guidelines make this the last of its kind in this area.
Funny, I was thinking the same thing when I looked at that panoramic!
Let’s hope! Unfortunately, that tends to be what you get when you have a lot of big corporate developers working in the same area.
Ken – do you know at all if this development is adding any street-level retail? The Alexan in Uptown is also taking up an entire block but adding 0 sq ft of retail, which is a real shame in that neighborhood.
…half-block, rather.
Dan, I’m not sure. I just sent an inquiry on that and will let you know what I find out.
Much appreciated; thank you.
I don’t like to post anything negative on here for the most part, but I do have a serious gripe with Trammell Crow. They have way too big of a presence around here (just a few blocks away is yet another Alexan…go figure), and they are insistent on reusing the same overall design in most cases. This reminds me too much of the Alexan in Uptown and I fear it will be another oversized eyesore with no character and devoid of anything architecturally stimulating. Granted this might be a subjective opinion, but you MUST admit there is way too much of the same played out boring design queues in a staggering amount of new developments here. Furthermore I fear this will end up showing a silly color scheme when it’s actually built (the colors and materials used in the upper half of Alexan Uptown are questionable at best, regardless of which neighborhood it’s in). Our growth will not slow down anytime soon – we can afford to take a step back and come up with more unique architecture… I am no architect but after seeing an urban sea of essentially the same developments popping up all over, you don’t need to be an architect to realize we’re being lazy and cheap.
Agreed, too many Trammel Crow copies.
I don’t disagree with the critiques of this building and of multi-family residential architecture in Denver in general.
This project type is developer driven. Developers answer to their investors – and their bottom line.
There’s a reason so many of these buildings seem ‘formulaic’. It’s because that gets the most number of units on any given site in a way that meets zoning and code.
If you can show me how to convince a developer to forgo profits in the name of nicer materials or more unique architectural moves, then I’m all ears.
Until then, this type of development will continue.
Architectural review panels.
Do you love everything that has been built in LoDo recently?
LoDo has a pretty strict review process, that (IMO) has yielded mixed results.
I like the idea of an arch review panel, but that doesn’t always yield the desired results…