Buyer Found for Historic Hangar 61 in Stapleton

Archive of posts filed under the Historic Preservation category.

Buyer Found for Historic Hangar 61 in Stapleton

Posted by Jared on March 2, 2010

Hangar 61

It seems that a buyer may have been found for what is certainly the coolest remaining historic structure on the Stapleton redevelopment.

The Stapleton Fellowship Church has posted a blog announcing that its members have voted to move ahead with the purchase of the Hangar 61 building. According to the website, the Christian congregation has been eyeballing the the 9,000-square-foot structure, hyperbolic spaceship-looking shell of concrete and glass at 8800 East 21^st Avenue more since December. Currently the church holds services a few hundred yards away at the Denver School of Science and Technology.

There is little that Hangar 61 is better suited for than an event space, with its streamlined roof arching like a clamshell toward an expansive wall of windows. It’s hard to imagine that the building was ever intended as an airplane hanger. It’s even more impressive considering how deteriorated the structure was before state and local preservationists stepped in to save it.

Hangar 61 in 1959

In 2004, I remember sitting in on a meeting of the Denver Planning Board for a reason I can no longer remember. The subject of Hangar 61 came up on the agenda and this guy named David Walter stepped up to the microphone and started talking about why the building needed to be saved from demolition during the crusade to convert the old Stapleton Airport into an upscale, mixed-use dreamscape. Walter is a local artist who co-founded Ironton Studios and Gallery. Walter described how Hangar 61 was built in 1959 by the Boettcher family-owned Ideal Cement Company to house its Fairchild F-27 turbo-prop airliner. The unique structure was designed by Fisher, Fisher, and Davis, and engineered by renowned concrete-shell engineer Milo Ketchum. Plus it just looked cool.

But it had also been vacant for more than a decade prior. It would cost hundreds-of-thousands of dollars to secure the 160-foot, diamond shape concrete arch (impressively engineered without center supports) and necessary environmental clean-up. Plus there was a complex tangle of ownership between the city and private development entities.

In 2004, Hangar 61 faced demolition

Board members voted to kick the issue to the city’s Landmark Preservation Commission. Eventually the statewide group Colorado Preservation, Inc. stepped up with a $200,000 grant to purchase the building and get the rehab process started. Then, last spring, developer Larry Nelson bought the building with the goal of taking it to market.

Nelson’s “620 Corp Inc. has spent about $1.3 million on the project, including constructing a parking lot and adding the frame for a new entryway,” arts critic Mary Voelz Chandler reported for the Rocky Mountain News in last January. “He estimates another $300,000 to $400,000 will be necessary to bring the hangar up to the point at which someone can lease or buy it to use as office space.”

I wasn’t able to get a hold of Nelson or the church, so no word yet on the sale price or if the deal has been finalized.

Filed under Architecture, Denver Neighborhoods, Historic Preservation, Urbanism.

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Saddlery Building Renovation Update

Posted by Ken Schroeppel on February 18, 2010

Last fall I mentioned that the Saddlery Building at 15th and Wynkoop was finally getting its long-overdue makeover, and how amazing the exterior is looking after a good scrubbing. Today I’m happy to provide additional details about the historic structure’s rehabilitation, thanks to Kevin and Nancy from Studio K2 Architecture.

Work continues on the brick facade restoration, with only the 15th Street side remaining to be cleaned. Also of note has been the work on the windows. Many of the windows, particularly the large ones at street level, had been bricked in years ago. Now, the brick has been removed and, while the new windows are not yet in place, it is exciting to see the building’s steady transformation.

The completed project will include retail/restaurant space on the ground floor, office space on Floors 2 through 5, and the addition of two copper-clad residential penthouses at the top. The images below are courtesy of Studio K2 Architecture:

Here’s a perspective of the entire building as viewed from the roof of the Steelbridge Lofts across the intersection:

and the Wynkoop side from ground level:

and the project site plan:

You’ll notice in both images that a new wide sidewalk will be installed in front of the building along Wynkoop Street. Since the building’s construction in 1900, there’s never been a sidewalk along the Wynkoop side of the building given the loading dock’s location there. Speaking of the loading dock, the existing dock will be removed and a new, wider dock will be added that will not only allow for ADA access to the building, but will provide sufficient room for other uses, such as a restaurant patio. While the diagonal parking and narrow sidewalk located in front of the surface parking lot to the north along Wynkoop will continue to inhibit pedestrian movement, the new wide sidewalk in front of the Saddlery will be a huge improvement to the Lower Downtown streetscape.

The Saddlery Building project will be complete later this year.

Filed under Adaptive Reuse, Historic Preservation, Lower Downtown, Office, Residential.

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#7: Downtown Denver Historic District

Posted by Ken Schroeppel on January 22, 2010

If pressed to name an historic district in Downtown Denver, I’d estimate that 98% of Denverites would cite Lower Downtown. In the 22 years since it was designated as an official Denver Historic District, LoDo has transcended from a seedy skid row of boarded-up buildings into one of the largest preserved Victorian-era commercial districts and coolest mixed-use neighborhoods in the country. Its fame is well-deserved. But less well known yet just as important is Downtown’s other historic district, the Downtown Denver Historic District, #7 in our countdown of Denver’s Top 10 Urbanism Achievements of the Aughts.

Unlike the Lower Downtown Historic District, which has relatively simple and straightforward boundaries, the Downtown Denver Historic District doesn’t really have any boundaries at all. The DDHD, designated by the city in 2000, consists of 43 buildings located on 18 different blocks throughout the Central Business District. About half of the DDHD’s buildings are also designated Denver Historic Landmark Structures, but the creation of the DDHD provides additional protection and control to ensure that these buildings will be around for a long, long time.

It is difficult to overemphasize the importance of the buildings in the DDHD to the integrity of Downtown Denver and to the soul of our city. Eleven of the buildings front the 16th Street Mall, and eleven more front 17th Street. These buildings are the core of Downtown. Their distinguished architecture, their impressive yet approachable scale, the craftsmanship and pride that went into them, gave credibility to a fledgling city back then, and give us today an understanding of our heritage as a city. Can you imagine Denver without the D&F Tower, the Brown Palace Hotel, or the Equitable Building? The fact that these buildings are scattered across a relative large area, from Tremont to Lawrence and 14th to 18th, means that you’re never more than a block or two from a building that serves as an historic anchor amid a sea of modernism and surface parking lots.

We lost a lot of great buildings during the second half of the 20th century, but the formation of the Downtown Denver Historic District in 2000 was a partial redemption and an important achievement in Denver’s evolving urbanism.

Filed under Architecture, Central Downtown, Historic Preservation, Upper Downtown.

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Historic 17th Street Bank to Become Hotel

Posted by Ken Schroeppel on December 24, 2009

You may have read about this a few days ago in Margaret Jackson’s article in the Denver Post, but Stonebridge Companies, a major Denver-based hospitality management and development firm, has recently purchased the former Colorado National Bank building at 17th and Champa in Downtown Denver.

The historic bank building, built in 1915, is a contributing structure to the Downtown Denver Historic District. Its neoclassical design was intended to convey a sense of respectability and security that one expects from a bank. In fact, when it opened, the bank’s boast was “the bank that looks like a bank”. The original 1915 structure included only the first three floors. In 1926, an addition matching the original design was added along Champa Street, and then in 1964, an additional three floors were added featuring a design with a modern interpretation of the neoclassical base. On the left is a DenverInfill photo of the building from 2006 and on the right a Bing maps bird’s eye photo (click to embiggen):

For more on the building’s history, please read Shawn’s post over at the Denver History Tours blog. Shawn also has a follow-up post about the building’s beautiful murals inside. Also check out the building’s page at the Historic Denver website.

The building has sat vacant since 2007, and the building’s Champa Street side near the bus stop is particularly shabby looking. Anyway, the good news is that Stonebridge is planning on converting the building into a boutique hotel and adding a few floors in the process. JG Johnson Architects has been given the task of adding a contemporary addition above the 1960s addition which sits above the 1915 original base. That will be an interesting architectural challenge. I have no problem philosophically, however, with adding yet another addition to this building. Buildings, even historic buildings, need to evolve and flex over time to stay relevant and contributing to the vibrancy of the city.

Hopefully this proposal will stay on track and, in a few years, we’ll have a new hotel operating along 17th Street in a repurposed and scrubbed-up and slightly taller historic building that will thrive well into the new century.

Filed under Adaptive Reuse, Architecture, Central Downtown, Historic Preservation, Hospitality.

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