National developer Mill Creek Residential is moving forward with its latest residential project in the Downtown Denver area: Modera Capitol Hill. Mill Creek is very active in the city, recently completing The Casey and The Douglas, currently constructing Modera River North and Modera River North Arts, and recently proposing Modera LoHi.
Modera Capitol Hill is located at the northeast corner of East 12th Avenue and Grant Street, two blocks south of the Colorado state capitol. Until just recently, the site was occupied by the Colorado Association of School Boards in a three-story, 14,854 square-foot building constructed in 1992 that covered 15% of its 34,623 square-foot lot with the remaining 85% as surface parking.
The images below from Google Earth show the Modera Capitol Hill site and the former office building:
Modera Capitol Hill includes 197 homes in an eight-story brick building and two underground levels holding 227 automobile parking spaces, according to a recent BusinessDen article. Amenities include a fitness center, conference area, and an outdoor pool deck. The ground floor along Grant Street features walk-up townhome units.
Here is a rendering of Modera Capitol Hill courtesy of Davis Partnership, the project architect. This rendering may not reflect the final design and should be considered subject to change.
Demolition of the small office building on the site occurred last week. Here are a few photos from last weekend showing what was left of the concrete-block structure:
Modera Capitol Hill provides additional housing in one of Denver’s most walkable and transit-accessible areas, and is a significant improvement over the former parking lot-dominated use.
This project has been added to our DenverInfill Project Map.
Does the project include desperately needed retail?
Capitol Hill is dense, walkable, has the population to support thriving ground-floor retail, and even NEEDS retail… developers still haven’t picked up on that?
Even more important, though, is retail density. Just one-half block north of this site lies a retail hub stretching for a minimum of five blocks along 13th Avenue. Many storefronts face the sidewalks along this stretch of 13th. The retail space that housed a national chain restaurant is currently empty. And I suggest that space on some of those blocks can be put to greater use to increase their retail density. This could create a more successful critical mass of retail along that corridor that wouldn’t be possible–given the anecdotal population increase trends for the neighborhood–by scattering the retail options over a wider area.
Is it me, or does every new announcement of an apartment building look exactly the same, this design has become so overdone and boring, it is almost not even exciting to seem them announced. Such a shame that there is no (or very little) diversity in design with these giant U shaped buildings. Infill or not, the building a parking lot before this one had some design, it would be nice to see something different like the Denver Rock Drill.
I get that this is fairly ordinary, but cities have lots of plain buildings. Besides, this is a preliminary rendering. I have a tough time saying that the previous building had some design – this one has just as much of it. I still argue it’s exciting, because this is a significant upgrade. At the pedestrian level, this building will be far more interesting to walk past, as it changes four times as you walk past it, rather than being a wall of cinder blocks and a parking lot.
Hey! The Capitol has been Photoshopped and Photoshipped to a new location!
Really? it looks correct to me. Two blocks from this site just to the left.
I was thinking along those lines as well.
BTW, I know it’s not downtown but Mill Creek also built Modera Observatory Park arriving Spring 2017 and now leasing units.