Since our last update almost five months ago, the Country Club Towers have been making great progress and are looking more complete as each day goes on. Before we get on with the update, we have a minor correction to make. In all of our previous posts, we mentioned that the towers were twin 30-story towers when in fact the highest occupied floor is at 32 stories, not including the mechanical penthouse. With that being said, let’s get on to the update and take a tour of the project.
Starting out with some aerials, here are three different elevations looking at the project from the southeast. In these photos, you cannot see the gap between the two towers; however, since the east and west tower are both topped out, you can get a sense of their overall height.
Heading down to the street level, we are going to look at the towers up close and from around the surrounding neighborhood.
Below are street level views from both Downing and Marion Street.
The main entrance to the towers is near completion. This entrance / driveway will be used for garage access, for both vehicle and bicycle, and also contains the main doors for pedestrian access.
Next up, let’s take a close look at the podium starting with two perspectives from Downing Street. The podium integrates some of the original Country Club Gardens structures, with the new structure following the original structure brick pattern.
When up close to the podium, you can see exactly what we mentioned above. The new podium is purposefully made to look like the original Country Club Gardens structures.
A few of you by now might be asking what is with the light blue and orange material between the windows. This is weather proofing material for the white paneling going in between the glass facade. The photos below give a good before-and-after with the completed paneling on the west tower, the right tower in the photos below.
The 558-unit Country Club Towers are currently pre-leasing with the first residents expected to move in later this summer. To think, it was only just over a year ago that the podium was barely taking off.
The looming post-apocalyptic dark towers. Not sure why they even bothered matching and partially incorporating the pre-existing building into the podium. These towers are so unbelievably out of scale (width AND height) for this neighborhood that the podium disappears… People living north of these monstrosities will basically experience nuclear winter from mid-November to mid-February wild low sun angles. These things are even weirder when viewed from afar…like a half-buried dinner plate.
I am all for urban density, but this is the wrong design for the wrong site.
with low sun angles…
Any news on whether or not the eastbound lane of Alameda and Downing will be signaled to allow for left turns? I can imagine there will be lots of cutting through residential streets otherwise.
I’d be really surprised if that ever happened, the traffic “caused” by that would make people lose their minds.
Pretty strange that you can build to 32 stories here but not around Union Station…
Agreed. But that does not mean that this should be lower.
Rather, it speaks to how asinine the height limits at union station are. As a result we get the fetid piles of crap, err, unmitigated travesties of Alta and 1975 18th Street.
The developers of those two projects have done the entire city a disservice and should be ashamed of themselves.
Citizen Kane is right on here.
Seems like they should be housing a casino in the base.
Yeah, looks like it belongs in Reno.
The visual impact is less great than I had expected.
for some reason i really like this structure. its huge!
I agree with Matthew Grizzell. These massive buildings intimidate their neighbors and are a grossly out of scale, out of place apparition on the horizon when viewed from miles away. I can’t believe that this was allowed to happen. My opinion of planning in Denver will never be the same. The long east-west mass of these buildings does indeed foretell pretty tough winters in several blocks to the north.
What a disgusting ploy that the podium mimics the original Country Club Gardens as if that somehow makes it a compatible neighbor to one of the nicest (formerly) apartment complexes in Denver.
So much negativity against these two towers. Don’t forget we do live in a big city and we are going to get towers. To be honest I personally would love to live in this side of town and if I could ever convince my wife I wouldn’t mind one bit living in these towers.
Agreed. The towers are up, so we should be discussing the the exterior and facade at this point. I don’t understand why folks are still griping about whether or not these towers should be here or not – that was only a relevant topic way back on the announcement post.
I don’t agree. The “big city” argument doesn’t mean that we have to settle for grotesquely massed leviathans that diminish the character of otherwise pleasant residential neighborhoods. Houston is a “big city,” too.
This is the first post since the buildings final mass and facade are a constructed reality. I would argue that our (legitimate) gripes are now more relevant than ever.
I have followed this blog for nearly a decade because it presents a forward looking view of urbanism. These towers miss the mark. There are moldering parking lots all over the place in various downtown neighborhoods better suited for towers.
They could build two-dozen more of these and it still wouldn’t satiate Denver’s totally warped housing market. You all DO realize there are more important things than having to shovel your sidewalk in a timely manner, right?
Hey if any of the houses go up for sale south of these towers I would still buy one. Maybe I could even get a small “no sun in winter” discount and still be a half mile from Wash Park??
I love having these towers next to me! It’s super easy to tell people where I live when I can just point to them.