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:
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:
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:
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.
Real estate investor Jon Cook recently announced plans to build a major urban redevelopment project called The Lumberyards near South Broadway and West Jewell Avenue in Denver’s Overland neighborhood. The site is across South Santa Fe Avenue from Overland Golf Course and includes the former Shattuck Chemical property. The project would potentially begin in 2011 with an 8-story building and would be developed over a number of years as the market allows. At full build-out, the Lumberyards project would include approximately 1,000 residential units, about 250,000 square feet of office space, and 150,000 square feet of retail. For more details on the project including a site map and conceptual renderings, please read this article from the Denver Post.
Here’s a bird’s eye view of the site from Bing maps:
The southwestern corner of the project area is a quarter-mile from the Evans light rail station on the Southwest line; a bit far to be considered a true Transit-Oriented Development (TOD), but close enough for it to be considered “transit proximate”, and certainly a selling point for the project overall.
The Lumberyards will have to compete with the other big TODs that didn’t get very far along during the last boom, like the Gates project just up the road at Broadway and I-25 and Continuum’s project at I-25 and Belleview. When the next boom finally arrives, TOD may be king of Denver development, with Downtown Denver serving as the biggest Transit-Oriented Development site around.
Overall, this is a good project and one that will hopefully succeed in offering additional housing opportunities for people who may want to live in a denser, urban environment, outside of the Downtown area.
The rebirth of Denver Union Station has been marked by hundreds of steps in a long march over the course of the past decade. The complexity, the sheer magnitude of the project can be difficult to appreciate. So with any big undertaking like Union Station, it is important to periodically look back and take account of the progress made to date. We’ve been in need of that retrospective on this project.
Thanks to Westword’s Joel Warner, we have been given not only an outstanding description of the journey so far, but also a comprehensive breakdown of the myriad issues confronting the project and a glimpse of the profound impact the completed Union Station will have on Denver’s future.
I’ve been following the Union Station project since the beginning and can say that Joel’s account is remarkable: he gets all the complicated facts and figures straight, he touches on the big and small hurdles the project has encountered along the way, he gains insight from all the key players, he presents a balanced perspective to all the various controversies, and he frames the project within a sweep of time that spans most of the city’s existence. It’s an exceptional effort, and a must-read for anyone who cares about our historic train station and its role in the ongoing renaissance of Downtown Denver.
Joel’s story, “Union Station may become Denver’s gateway again — if it stays on track” is in this week’s issue of Westword.
Hargreaves Associates, the firm hired to design the public spaces at Union Station, presented last week their proposed public space design “framework” for Denver Union Station–i.e. not the design itself, but the organizing features and themes on which the design will be based. I was very impressed with their concepts and I think we’re off to a good start. In a few days I hope to be able to post their presentation here at DenverInfill as well as on the Union Station Advocates (USA) website, which I manage as part of my duties as a member of the USA board.
Over the next few months, the design of the public spaces at Union Station will be determined. This moment has been years in the making, but I’m glad it’s finally arrived. The public realm at Union Station has the opportunity to give Denver an extremely special public place that could become the heart of Downtown and the region, and a must-see place for visitors. As part of the design process, the Union Station project team will hold several general public meetings in addition to their Land Use/Urban Design “break out group” meetings which are also open to the public.
As a complement to those efforts, Union Station Advocates is planning on hosting several of our own meetings to further engage our membership in the public space design process. For example, starting next Monday, August 18, we will kick off our first Union Station Roundtable, a meeting just for USA members at which we will discuss as a group a particular topic related to the design of the public spaces and formulate specific ideas and recommendations that will be conveyed to the Union Station project team. We plan on having these Roundtable meetings every two weeks throughout this critical design phase.
Not a member of Union Station Advocates? This week we’ve got a good deal going on. On Thursday, we’re holding our first Union Station Advocates picnic! Members can join their fellow Union Station enthusiasts for Brothers BBQ, wine, beer, and music. Cost of the picnic is just $10 for members… and for non-members, if you join this week, you’ll get free admission to the picnic with your new membership! Check the Events page on the USA website for the picnic details. You can join up on the Membership page.
Over the next six months, a lot of important decisions are going to be made relating to the Union Station project. Now is the time to get engaged.
Back in 2002, the site at the corner of Colfax and Osage in Downtown Denver’s La Alma/Lincoln Park district was rezoned to allow for a multi-family residential project to be called the Wellington Apartments. Since then, however, nothing has happened…until now.
An active development case is currently under review with the city for the Osage Apartments project at the same site. The project, proposed to include 288 rental units in a four story building, is being developed by Carmel Partners. Construction may be underway by late summer.
Good to see this project finally moving forward. The site’s proximity to the Colfax at Auraria light rail station makes it a particularly good development site. I’ll try to round up a rendering.
The first phase of Campus Village Apartments, completed in late 2006, provides 685 beds in 230 dorm-like apartments in a 5-story building located adjacent to the I-25/Auraria Parkway interchange just west of the Auraria campus. The project was developed by Urban Ventures, LLC (Highland Bridge Lofts, Monarch Mills, Fire Clay Lofts). For a fact-packed PDF summary of the project, click here. Also, here is the site plan and a photo of the completed Phase 1:
Big plans are in the works for Phase 2!
The second phase will be located south of Phase 1 and will cover all of the land west of 5th Street and south of Larimer Street extended. Phase 2 will include nine buildings ranging from 4 to 14 stories in height.
As part of the West Corridor light rail line construction, the Auraria West Campus station will be relocated slightly north of its current location and a section of the Central Platte Valley light rail line will also be realigned. Campus Village Phase 2 will be located on the west side of the new Auraria West Campus station. It is also possible that future development could span over the light rail tracks! Here’s the Phase 2 site plan and an annotated aerial photo I created to help you get oriented:
Now for some renderings. Here’s a view of the whole project looking northeast along the Larimer Street axis. The existing Campus Village Apartments Phase 1 is in the lower left corner:
Note that this image shows not only the light rail trains coming from underneath the buildings, but it also shows a street car running down Larimer, a recommendation from the recently completed Downtown Area Plan. In the background are some other improvements included in the recently completed Auraria Campus Master Plan, such as the relocated athletic fields and the extension of Larimer across the campus. Here’s an image from the Auraria Campus Master Plan (credit: Sasaki and StudioINSITE), also looking northeast down the Larimer Street axis, that shows the Campus Village development in the foreground and how it relates to the rest of the campus. The building configurations for the Campus Village Phase 2 shown in the Auraria plan are a little different than the actual Campus Village site plan, but conceptually they are consistent with each other:
Here’s an artist’s view looking southwest along Larimer at the plaza where the street car line and light rail interface:
and here’s a view looking down Lawrence:
Campus Village Phase 2 is still in the early planning stages and a specific construction timeline has not yet been finalized. However, RTD plans to have the West Corridor light rail line (and the new Auraria West Campus station) completed by 2012, so the plan is to have the buildings that span over the tracks, as well as the buildings located west of the tracks, completed by then. Some of the other buildings shown in the site plan are conceptual at this stage and the land where they are shown is not owned by the development team.
Credit for the plans and renderings shown above go to: Mithun, AR7 Architects, and Dennis Allain Architecture Design Illustration LLC.
Along with the new Auraria Science Building currently under construction and some other projects in the works, the future for the Auraria campus as a true urban campus and an integrated downtown district is looking great!
