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Archive of posts filed under the Infill category.

#1: Downtown Denver Infill Boom

We have finally reached #1 on the Denver’s Top 10 Urbanism Achievements of the Aughts countdown!  It came down to a toss up between Downtown Denver’s infill boom and the whole FasTracks/Union Station thing, but, in the end, I had to go with what had inspired my website and blog in the first place: urban infill development.

Over the span of a century, we built a city that was urban and dense and thriving.  Then, around our 100th birthday, we lost our way and started abandoning what we had built. We moved on to “greener” prairies beyond the city limits and left behind deteriorated buildings that were eagerly converted into weedy vacant parcels or barren surface parking lots. We were not the only big city in the country to do this, but we were particularly good at it.

Around our 130th birthday, we rediscovered the value of our original urban places. We started restoring and rehabilitating old buildings and renewing and revitalizing old neighborhoods. Old became the new new and places like Lower Downtown and the Highlands were getting hip again. By Birthday #140, we were running out of historic buildings to convert and yet the demand for being in or near Downtown Denver was stronger than ever, so “infill” became the the “in” thing. One by one, weedy vacant parcels and barren surface parking lots were transformed into condos and hotels and offices and apartments and shops and everything in between, and by the time our big Sesquicentennial rolled around, infill was everywhere. Recently the Great Recession has slowed Denver’s infill boom, but most political, demographic, and socio-economic indicators suggest that once the economy picks up again, Denver’s urban infill boom will continue.

So just how big was Downtown Denver’s urban infill boom from 2000 to 2009? As Thomas Jefferson would say, let facts be submitted to a candid world:

1127 Sherman, 1135 Broadway Residences, 1200 Delaware, 1200 Elati, 1400 Wewatta, 1515 Wynkoop, 16 Market Square, 1740 Franklin, 1755 Blake, 1800 Larimer, 1870 Vine Street Townhomes, 1890 Wynkoop, 1900 16th Street, 2100 Uptown Lofts, 2101 Market, 2245 Blake, 24 Walnut, 2428 Champa, 25th & Tremont Townhomes, 2999 Lawrence, 3040 Zuni, 450 E. 17th Avenue, 816 Acoma, 920 E. 17th Avenue, Adair Group Offices, Ajax Lofts, Alexan Prospect, Alfred A. Arraj US Courthouse, Antares Urban Townhomes, Argonaut Liquors, Art House Townhomes, Auraria Science Building, Ayr on 29th, Ballpark Lofts, Bank of Denver Headquarters, Blair-Caldwall Library, Blake 27 Brownstones, Blake Street Apartments, Boulder Street Townhomes, Broadway Plaza Lofts, Brownstones at Riverfront Park, Brunetti Lofts, Campus Village Apartments, Capital Grille, Capitol Heights Apartments, Central Court, Champa Square, Chroma Town Homes, City Park Residences, City View Townhomes, Cityscape Townhomes, Clay Street Residences, Colorado Convention Center, Confluence Heights, Corona Park, Creekside Lofts, Denver Art Museum Hamilton Building, Denver Art Museum Residences, Denver Justice Center, Denver Newspaper Agency Building, Denver Square, DHMC Pavilion, Diamond at Prospect, Diamond Lofts, DMHC Parking Garage, East Village Redevelopment, Embassy Suites Hotel, Emerson Uptown Lofts, EPA Region 8 Headquarters, Fire Clay Lofts, FirstBank at Colfax & Franklin, Flats 15, Flour Mill Lofts II, Four Seasons Hotel & Residences, Franklin Square, Frontview 40, Garden Factory Lofts, Gates Corporates Headquarters, Gilpin Grove, Glass House, Glenarm Place Condos, Golden Row, Grant Park, Hampton Inn Highland, Highland Bridge Lofts, Highland Court, Highland Crossing, Highland Lofts, Highland Square Lofts, Highland Terrace, Highlands Vista, Hilton Garden Inn, Humboldt Gardens, Hyatt Denver Convention Center Hotel, Inca 29 Urban Brownstones, Italianate Townhomes, Jack Kerouac Lofts, Jefferson at CityGate, La Villa de Barela, Lofts at Downing Street Station, Lombard Gate, Luxe Modern Row Homes, Marais Uptown, Merchant’s Row, Metro State Parking Garage, Metroview Urban Living, Monarch Mills, Museum of Contemporary Art, Off-Broadway Lofts, One Lincoln Park, One Riverfront Park, Park Avenue West Residences, Park Place Lofts, Pearl of the City, Pearl Street Victorianan, Piranesi, Portofino, Premier Lofts, Promenade Lofts, Quality Hill Townes, Rail Yark Marketplace, Renaissance Riverfront Lofts, Residence Inn by Marriott, Residences at 1882 Race, RiverClay, Riverfront Tower, Shoshone Heights, Shoshone Lofts, Speer Lofts, Spire, St. Joseph’s Medical Offices, St. Lukes Lofts, State Capitol Parking Garage, Steelbridge Lofts Annex, Strada Flats, SugarCube, Swallow Hill, TAXI, Tejon Square, The Bartholomew, The Beauvallon, The Dakota, The Delgany, The Edge at City Park, The Ellington Lofts, The Gathering Place, The Manhattan, The Mansion, The Metro, The Milan, The Park One Riverfront, The Point, The Proado, The Renaissance, The Station at Riverfront Park, Titanium Lofts, Tower on the Park, Townhomes at Riverfront Park, Umatilla Townhomes, Upper Larimer Lofts, Uptown Apartments, Uptown Lofts, Uptown Square, Urbans @ Curtis, Urbans @ Glenarm, Urbans @ Stout, Urology Center of Colorado, Villa Riva, Villages at Curtis Park, VOA Bob Magness, Walker’s Row, Washington Square, Waterside Lofts, Wellington Webb Municipal Building, Welton Place Townhomes, Wyandot Overlook, Zi Lofts, Zocalo Condos… and many more I’m sure I’ve missed.

Not too bad for a 1.5-mile radius of Downtown, huh?

The Aughts were a pretty darn good decade for urbanism in Denver. Let’s hope for an even better decade in the Tens… there are a lot of surface parking lots to go!

Colorado Justice Center Design

This morning’s Denver Post has an article about the design of the state’s new justice center, to be officially called the Ralph L. Carr Colorado Judicial Complex. Click here for a PDF of the article.

The project will occupy the entire block bounded by 14th, Broadway, 13th, and Lincoln and contain two buildings linked together: a 4-story, 150,000 sf courthouse for the Supreme Court and Court of Appeals, and a 12-story, 450,000 sf office tower for the Department of Law including the State Attorney General’s office. The project will seek LEED-Gold certification.

Here’s the photograph from the Post article of a model of the new complex (photo by Jason Knowles, Fentress Architects):

Photograph of model of new Ralph L. Carr Colorado Judicial Complex

The courthouse will include a 4-story glass-walled atrium and rotunda at 14th and Lincoln facing the State Capitol. Demolition of the existing Judicial Building and Colorado History Museum is scheduled for May, with construction beginning on the new judicial complex in September. The project will be complete in 2013. I’ll see if I can get some additional images of the project to share with you.

By the way, Ralph L. Carr was Colorado’s governor from 1939-1949 and was one of the few public leaders in the country who openly opposed the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II and bravely fought to protect their citizenship and rights as Americans—not a popular thing to do during the war.

It is really exciting to see this project becoming a reality. With construction of the new Colorado History Center underway a block  to the south of the Judicial Complex site, and with all the new things planned at Union Station, the two ends of Downtown Denver will be busy with construction for the next several years.

Proposed IMA Financial Building at DUS

Here’s a quick follow-up to my post from earlier today.

Thanks to the good people at Union Station Neighborhood Company, here is an official (and high resolution!) rendering of the proposed Denver Union Station “north wing” building—the future headquarters for IMA Financial. Image credit goes to the project architect, Anderson Mason Dale.

Click to embiggen:

Proposed IMA Financial Building at Denver Union Station

Denver Union Station North Wing Building Project Announced

Great news for Denver’s Union Station project: the first private-sector development deal on the DUS site was announced in Sunday’s Denver Post. IMA Financial, a Denver-based firm located in Lower Downtown, will relocate its corporate headquarters to the proposed north “wing building” next to the historic station at the corner of 18th and Wynkoop. The building will be five stories tall and 100,000 square feet in size, with IMA occupying the entire building except for the ground-floor, which will house retail and restaurant spaces. Click here for a PDF of the Denver Post article.

Here’s a rendering of the project obtained by denver-cityscape.com:

Proposed IMA Financial Building at Denver Union Station

I will check with the project architects, Anderson Mason Dale and Semple Brown Design, for additional or higher-resolution renderings and post them when available.

The Denver Union Station Master Plan calls for two buildings at the ends of the historic station’s two wings, one at 18th and Wynkoop, and the other at 16th and Wynkoop. Here’s a bird’s-eye view from Bing Maps of the site where IMA Financial’s building will go:

Bird's eye view of north "wing building" site at Denver Union Station

The two wing buildings are important not only to the financial success of the DUS project (tax-increment financing from the private-sector development will help pay for the project) but also to the success of thepublic plaza spaces planned for in front of the station along Wynkoop. The wing buildings will help define and enclose those public spaces and their ground-floor uses will contribute to activating the plazas.

The DUS project is now very close to closing on its two federal government loans. Once that happens, construction of the transit components will begin. The announcement of the IMA Financial project is another indication that the transformation of Denver’s Union Station is about to begin.

#5: Central Platte Valley Redevelopment

One of the most dramatic transformations in Downtown Denver that occurred during this past decade was the redevelopment of the Central Platte Valley, earning #5 in our Top 10 countdown of Denver’s Urbanism Achievements of the Aughts.

The Central Platte Valley began the decade as a mostly blank slate. By the end of the 1990s, the old viaducts that spanned the Valley had been removed or rebuilt, and the massive rail yard behind Union Station was history. Gone too were the big warehouses once found along Grinnell Court, a street hugging the edge of the Platte River that was also removed. The CPV Master Plan was ready for implementation. As the new decade dawned, construction was underway on Commons Park and Little Raven Street—their outlines can be seen in the first Google Earth image (October 1999) in the animation below.

Central Platte Valley redevelopment animation (1999 - 2007)

Progress came quickly. By April 2003 (second image in the sequence), Commons Park, the Millennium Bridge, the three Riverfront Park condo buildings clustered around the bridge, the Manhattan, and the Archstone Apartments (now The Station) were all completed.

December 2004 (third image), construction has started on the Delgany, the Denver SkatePark was finished, the realignment of Little Raven at 20th Street was complete, and work had started on the Confluence Park Plaza.

By May 2006 (fourth image), a lot had changed. Monarch Mills, Creekside Lofts, and the Townhomes at Riverfront Park were finished and the Glass House, One Riverfront, the Brownstones, and the ArtHouse Townhomes were under construction.

The final image (July 2007) shows everything mostly complete and the Park One Riverfront and the Museum of Contemporary Art under construction. Since that final image, 1900 16th Street has joined the scene on the Union Station side of the tracks.

Despite the remarkable transformation of the Central Platte Valley since 2000, there is still quite a bit of work to go to complete the Riverfront Park Master Plan. The Cosmopolitan Club site at 15th and Little Raven, as well as four other parcels by the Brownstones and the Manhattan, remain as future development sites.

It’s now hard to imagine Downtown Denver without the Central Platte Valley as it is, yet it was only a decade ago that the area was a vast expanse of vacant land. Looking across the tracks, it makes one wonder what the area behind Union Station will be like in 2020. I can’t wait to find out.

Clyfford Still Museum Groundbreaking

Two weeks ago, the official groundbreaking ceremony was held on the new Clyfford Still Museum in Denver’s Civic Center district.  The $29 million museum is planned for the southeast corner of W. 13th Avenue and Bannock Street on the same block as the Denver Art Museum’s Frederick Hamilton building. The Clyfford Still Museum’s presence in Denver is not only a major coup for the city, but its location in Civic Center will further enhance that district’s cultural and architectural appeal.

The ceremony on December 14 involved not so much the breaking of ground, but more the breaking of old walls. Located on the museum site were a couple of small buildings that were ceremoniously wrecked while fireworks went off to launch the museum’s construction phase. I was unable to attend the event, but I finally had a chance to swing by the site the other day. The old buildings are totally gone and the site awaits excavation.

The buildings that were demolished are the ones closest to the corner of 13th and Bannock in the bird’s eye photo (left) of the site from Bing maps. On the right is a picture of the site I took a few days ago:

2009-12-29_csm_aerial 2009-12-29_csm_site

For a short video clip of the ceremony, check out this website.

The new 30,000 square foot building will be complete in 2011. Renderings of the new museum structure are available here.  Finally, here’s an informative press release from the museum that discusses the building’s exterior and interior design. Brad Cloepfil of Allied Works Architecture is the designer.

Having another new museum in the Civic Center/Golden Triangle area is absolutely exciting. But our museum-packed cultural district is still surrounded by ugly surface parking lots that have defied development for several decades, despite their artsy neighbors. As I’ve explained before in a previous post, part of the problem with the ubiquitous parking lots around there is that most of the lots are actually comprised of numerous small parcels owned by different property owners, which makes land assemblage in the area virtually impossible. I’ve heard reports that there is a mid-rise apartment project being planned for around 12th and Cherokee, which is good news, but really… when are we going to do something to break the parking lot log-jam in the Golden Triangle? Something to think about while we celebrate the start of construction for yet another new museum in Downtown Denver.

Auraria Update: Hotel Learning Center

Another project planned by Metropolitan State College of Denver for the Auraria campus is the Hotel Learning Center. I’ve blogged about this project before, but since then, a few more details have emerged.
The Hotel Learning Center will be a full-fledged hotel/conference center and a hands-on academic/training facility for the students in Metro State’s hospitality and tourism program. The development will contain about 180 hotel rooms, 21,000 SF of meeting rooms, and another 21,000 SF or so of academic space. If everything goes as planned, design will continue into 2010, groundbreaking in 2011, and a grand opening in 2012. The project is slated for the southwest corner of Speer and Auraria Parkway at the northern end of Auraria’s Parking Lot R. Here’s a bird’s eye photo of the site from Bing maps:
The project team was also recently announced by Metro State. The hotel operator will be Denver’s own Sage Hospitality. The developer and general contractor is Mortenson, the architects are RNL and JG Johnson Architects, and Studio INSITE is the landscape architect. The project is an innovative public/private partnership. Funding for the academic parts of the project will come from money raised through a capital campaign by Metro State, with the developer responsible for funding the hotel portion. The project is estimated to cost about $40 million. While the Hotel Learning Center building has not yet been designed, a conceptual massing image on the project’s website shows the building could be in the 11-story range.
It’s very exciting that the Hotel Learning Center and the Student Success Building projects are able to move forward in these challenging economic times, with funding coming from sources other than the state’s dwindling general fund. From an urbanist perspective, these projects are equally exciting. It will take a while for Auraria to become a dense, mixed-use, urban campus that’s fully integrated into its Downtown setting, but these projects and Auraria’s new progressive campus master plan are all great steps in the right direction. Kudos to Metropolitan State College of Denver for their vision and determination to expand their presence, both academically and physically, in Downtown Denver.

Another project planned by Metropolitan State College of Denver for the Auraria campus is the Hotel Learning Center. I’ve blogged about this project before, but since then, a few more details have emerged.

The Hotel Learning Center will be a full-fledged hotel/conference center and a hands-on academic/training facility for the students in Metro State’s hospitality and tourism program. The development will contain about 180 hotel rooms, 21,000 SF of meeting rooms, and another 21,000 SF or so of academic space. If everything goes as planned, design will continue into 2010, groundbreaking in 2011, and a grand opening in 2012. The project is slated for the southwest corner of Speer and Auraria Parkway at the northern end of Auraria’s Parking Lot R. Here’s a bird’s eye photo of the site from Bing maps:

The project team was also recently announced by Metro State. The hotel operator will be Denver’s own Sage Hospitality. The developer and general contractor is Mortenson, the architects are RNL and JG Johnson Architects, and Studio INSITE is the landscape architect. The project is an innovative public/private partnership. Funding for the academic parts of the project will come from money raised through a capital campaign by Metro State, with the developer responsible for funding the hotel portion. The project is estimated to cost about $40 million. While the Hotel Learning Center building has not yet been designed, a conceptual massing image on the project’s website shows the building could be in the 11-story range.

It’s very exciting that the Hotel Learning Center and the Student Success Building projects are able to move forward in these challenging economic times, with funding coming from sources other than the state’s dwindling general fund. From an urbanist perspective, these projects are equally exciting. It will take a while for Auraria to become a dense, mixed-use, urban campus that’s fully integrated into its Downtown setting, but these projects and Auraria’s new progressive campus master plan are all great steps in the right direction. Kudos to Metropolitan State College of Denver for their vision and determination to expand their presence, both academically and physically, in Downtown Denver.

Auraria Update: Metro State Student Success Building

Great things are happening at Downtown Denver’s Auraria Higher Education Center campus.

The Auraria campus was created in the 1970s as a commuter campus for three institutions: the University of Colorado Denver, the Metropolitan State College of Denver, and the Community College of Denver. Located across Speer Boulevard from the Central Business District, the campus has since grown to be Colorado’s largest, with over 40,000 students studying at Auraria.

Despite its prime location, the campus was originally designed to be isolated from the rest of Downtown with inward-facing buildings and broad lawns at its edges. Today, newly adopted Auraria Campus and Downtown Denver master plans embrace each other’s existence and set the stage for a bright future for the west side of Downtown. The new Auraria Science Building is wrapping up construction; its street-edge facade establishes a strong presence along Speer Boulevard that begins to bridge the gap, both spatially and psychologically, between the campus and Downtown.

Two new buildings are in Auraria’s near future. One of those buildings is Metro State’s proposed Student Success Building, the topic of this blog post.

The Student Success Building represents the first phase of the implementation of the new Metro State Neighborhood Master Plan. The plan builds upon the Auraria Campus Master Plan, which designates the Metro State “neighborhood” within the campus as the area between 9th and 7th Streets, south of Auraria Parkway, just west of the historic Tivoli and the Metro State Parking Facility completed in 2005. Here’s a bird’s eye image from Bing maps of the location:

The Metro State Neighborhood Plan envisions this area to include a total of six buildings: five major buildings and a smaller community/commercial building oriented around a landscaped quad. The following images are all from the Neighborhood Plan, prepared by studioINSITE, Sasaki, and Anderson Mason Dale:

The first building, the Metro State Student Success building, is a four-story, L-shaped structure planned for the corner of 9th Street and Auraria Parkway. The 143,000 square foot, LEED-Gold building will house the Registrar’s office, Financial Aid, Student Academic Success, New Student Orientation and other critical support services. The $62 million project is being financed through federal stimulus subsidized bonds, backed by a special assessment approved by Metro State students this past Spring 2009.

RNL Design has been selected as the architect for the building, which is scheduled to begin construction in 2010 and be completed by April 2012. While the design of the Student Success Building is still in progress, here are a few more images from the Neighborhood Plan showing the general massing and orientation of the Student Success Building and the future buildings in the Metro neighborhood:

I’m looking forward to the release of the building’s design by RNL and the start of construction next year. The new Student Success Building will not only serve as a gateway for the Auraria Campus to the north, but will also add a much-needed street wall to the Auraria Parkway edge of the campus.

Convention Center Embassy Suites Update

Construction of the 17-story Embassy Suites project at 14th and Stout in Downtown Denver is progressing slowly but steadily. In case you haven’t been past there recently, here are two photos I took a few weekends ago:


The photo on the right shows how the building is now up to the point where it splits into two sections with the gap in the middle for the glass atrium. Here’s a rendering showing the bottom few floors:

The developer has never bothered to share with the public a rendering of the full tower’s final design. I’ve sent them several requests but they have never responded. They also haven’t even bothered to post a project sign with a rendering on it at the site. Lame. Anyway, in that cool 14th Street video I posted about a month ago, if you look at it closely around the 1:25 minute mark you’ll see a 3D image of the completed Embassy Suites. A quick screen capture later, and here you go (click to double the size):

Let’s assume this is the final design.

The Embassy Suites website states only that the hotel will open in 2010. I’m guessing the 120-room hotel will open for business in September. What do you think?

Wazee Street Office Project Proposed

A few days ago, Margaret Jackson at the Denver Post reported that DaVita, a Fortune 500 company that makes medical equipment, is planning on moving their corporate headquarters from California to Denver and is scouting several locations in the Downtown Denver area for their future home. One of those locations is Block 022 in Lower Downtown, the block bounded by 18th, 19th, Wazee, and Blake streets that is owned by developer Grand American, Inc.



Block 022, you may recall, was the site of the late-1990s “Stadium Walk” project proposed by Grand American and partner Arnold Schwarzenegger that was to include a Planet Hollywood, a multi-screen movie theatre, condos, restaurants, and a grocery store. Of course, that project never got off the ground, but now Grand American is pursuing the DaVita headquarters by proposing a mixed-use office development on their LoDo block. While the program and space needs for DaVita’s future headquarters building is still in flux, the company is apparently looking for approximately 150,000 square feet of office space. Grand American is proposing a 7-story office building of about that size at the corner of 19th and Wazee. This morning, that proposal was considered by the Lower Downtown Design Review Board.

The LoDo design guidelines set the maximum building height for most of the historic district, including Block 022, at 55 feet; however, a building can be approved up to 85 feet in height if it includes residential uses. Grand American is proposing to use the full 85 feet for the DaVita headquarters and to defer the required residential component to a future phase elsewhere on the block. Due to the weak housing market, a requirement to build residential at this time would make the project financially unfeasible. This phased concept was the focus of today’s LDDRB meeting, which the Board did approve, with conditions.

Grand American owns the entire block. Most of the Wazee side is surface parking, along with two buildings that are non-contributing structures to the historic district that could be razed. On the Blake Street side, the two one-story buildings in the center of the block (directly above the words “Blake St.” on the aerial photo) are also non-contributing structures to the historic district. Consequently, Grand American’s proposed project in its entirety is the “T-shaped” site formed by the whole Wazee side of the block and the center one-quarter of the Blake Street side.

Phase 1 of Grand American’s plan would include constructing an underground parking garage along the entire length of the Wazee side of the block and the 7-story office building at the 19th Street and Wazee corner. Subsequent phases to the project would include a building at the 18th Street and Wazee corner—either all office, all residential, or a mix of both—as well as a residential building on the Blake Street parcel that would necessitate, at that time, the demolition of the existing non-contributing buildings and the construction of more underground parking that would connect beneath the alley with the underground parking on the Wazee side. All three buildings would have ground-floor commercial uses. There’s even the possibility that DaVita’s space needs may require construction of office buildings on both halves of the Wazee side of the block in Phase 1, leaving only the Blake Street residential building as a future phase. It’s too early to say at this point what the entire project’s final program will be, but the Board’s approval today of the phased residential deferral concept allows Grand American and their design partner, Shears-Adkins Architects, to continue in their pursuit of landing the DaVita headquarters.

I mentioned the Board gave its approval, with conditions. Several of those conditions were technical in nature which I won’t get into, but one that I will mention involved the question of what to do with the 18th and Wazee corner after the underground parking goes in but before a building is constructed on top of it as part of a future phase, which could be years away. The developer proposed putting in a surface parking lot, edged along 18th and Wazee by some type of artistic/interactive urban design element that would serve as an attractive screen to the parking lot. The Board nixed the parking lot idea (except for one row of parking directly off the alley) and required the developer to identify, instead, something else—a park, plaza, garden, pavilion, whatever—that would serve as an engaging, if temporary, use for the site until it is covered with a future structure.

The next step requires Great American/Shears-Adkins to come back with more detailed plans showing the proposed mass, scale, form and program for all three buildings. This project is still very early in the design and approval process and, of course, if DaVita chooses to go to a competing location, all bets are off. But for now at least, this project moves forward.

I’m thrilled that DaVita appears to be focusing on Downtown Denver for its new corporate headquarters, and equally thrilled that an ugly, parking-lot-infested stretch of Wazee may be developed in the near future.