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Archive of posts filed under the Auraria category.

Auraria Update: Hotel Learning Center

Posted by Ken on December 19, 2009
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.

Filed under Auraria, Education, Infill.
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Auraria Update: Metro State Student Success Building

Posted by Ken on December 18, 2009

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.

Filed under Auraria, Education, Infill.
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Downtown Projects Photo Update

Posted by Ken on August 23, 2009
While there may not be many new infill projects being announced these days, there is still plenty of construction going on in Downtown Denver. Here’s just a sampling. Many thanks to Vicki from Uptown for the photos.

Solera (11-story apartments at 20th & Lawrence):

2009-08-23_solera1 2009-08-23_solera2

Auraria Science Building:

2009-08-23_auraria1 2009-08-23_auraria2

Cornerstone (5-story apartments at Park Avenue & Curtis):

21st & Curtis Townhomes (5 units):

2009-08-23_21st&curtis1 2009-08-23_21st&curtis2

Park Avenue Hope VI Block 4:

2009-08-23_parkave1 2009-08-23_parkave2

Filed under Arapahoe Square, Auraria, Curtis Park - Five Points, Education, Infill, Residential, Uptown.
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Auraria Hotel Project Approved

Posted by Ken on June 23, 2008

The proposed hotel located on the Auraria campus has taken another step forward with the Metropolitan State College’s Board of Trustees approving the project at their June 4 meeting. Next in the process is the college issuing a Request for Proposals to the development community for developers to respond with a specific hotel design and secured financing. For more information about the project, here’s an article by Dominic Graziano of The Met Online, the college’s online newspaper.

In a nutshell, the hotel would be 12 stories and about 100,000 SF in size and would be located somewhere on the existing parking lot that faces Speer Boulevard between Auraria Parkway and Larimer (see the aerial photo on the Auraria district page). That site is across Speer from Mr. Geller’s proposed 33-story “Bell Tower” on Block 242/044.

These projects are important in our goal of transforming Speer Boulevard from a wide open automobile-dominated thoroughfare into an urban, pedestrian-friendly boulevard framed by a strong street wall of buildings and lined with a great mix of uses and public spaces worthy of our signature urban parkway.

Filed under Auraria, Education, Hospitality, Infill.
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State Restores Auraria Project Funding

Posted by Ken on March 26, 2008

Good news! If you haven’t already heard, the state announced yesterday that they had found a way to restore funding for the Auraria Science Building project. I’m glad the drama lasted only a few days. For all of the details, here are articles about the new funding plan from the News and the Post.

Also, here are some images from John Rebchook’s blog from last week:

Auraria Science Building site:

Speer Boulevard rendering:

South elevation rendering:

Northwest elevation rendering:

Filed under Auraria, Education, Infill.
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State Yanks Auraria Project Funding

Posted by Ken on March 22, 2008

This is depressing (from today’s Rocky Mountain News): State stuns Auraria, pulls $37.5 million for new science building

On a happier note, this past week DenverInfill world headquarters moved into new digs and the ‘puter is now back up and running, ending the weeklong blog drought! I just wish I had something happier to report.

Filed under Auraria, Education, Infill.
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New Auraria Project: Campus Village – Phase 2

Posted by Ken on March 14, 2008

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!

Filed under Auraria, Office, Residential, Transit, Transit-Oriented.
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Colorado History Museum… What About Auraria?

Posted by Ken on February 5, 2008

A few days ago we learned that the Colorado Historical Society board voted against locating the new Colorado History Museum inside Denver’s Civic Center Park. In case you missed the announcement, here’s an article by the Rocky’s Mary Voelz Chandler about the issue: No Museum for Civic Center.

The idea to relocate the museum inside the park had been floating around since last spring, and debate on the issue appeared to crescendo around the holidays. For as many people excited by the idea of locating the museum inside the park itself, there seemed to be just as many people opposed to the idea for a variety of reasons. Personally, I had mixed feelings about the proposal. Initially, I preferred the Permit Center site at the southwest corner of Bannock and 14th, but over time I gradually warmed to the idea of placing it inside the park itself, and said so in November. Now that the Civic Center Park idea is dead, the question remains: where should the museum relocate to?

One thing about this issue that I do not have mixed feelings about: the Colorado History Museum must stay in Downtown Denver. I’m troubled by what I read near the end of the article: “After the vote, board member Frank Kugeler suggested that the committee studying sites for the historical society ‘expand the area of investigation’ to include locations such as Union Station, the Gates redevelopment and Stapleton.” Bad idea, Frank.

Downtown Denver is where the Colorado History Museum belongs. A Downtown Denver setting exposes the museum to the greatest concentration of people found anywhere in the state on any given day. It provides the museum a setting among the greatest concentration of historic buildings and resources found anywhere in the state. It allows patrons to access the museum via the widest-ranging transportation options available anywhere in the state. A Downtown location puts the museum within proximity of the greatest concentration of synergetic governmental, educational, cultural, and entertainment facilities found anywhere in the state. It’s a no-brainer: the Colorado History Museum should stay in Downtown Denver.

But where in Downtown is another matter. A location in the Civic Center area is the most obvious, and all of the sites originally considered were located in the Civic Center/Golden Triangle area. Click here to download (750 kb) a PDF containing selected pages from a larger document the CHM once had on their website about their site selection and evaluation process. Some of those Civic Center/Golden Triangle sites should probably be reconsidered; and, given the ubiquity of surface parking lots in that part of Downtown, I’m sure we could come up with a few more. But perhaps we should consider other locations in Downtown where the CHM could go.

One of the locations suggested by Mr. Kugeler was near Union Station. Anywhere around Union Station in Lower Downtown or the Central Platte Valley would be an attractive option for the museum from a number of perspectives. But given the amount of land the museum needs, I suspect they couldn’t afford it. Land around Union Station is arguably some of the most expensive in the entire city. For a project that needs to maximize its budget, a less costly Downtown site would be advisable.

So, here’s my suggestion: How about on the Auraria campus? More specifically, on the Auraria campus at the corner of Speer and Larimer? As many of you probably know, the State recently completed a major update to the Auraria Campus master plan, and one of the plan’s key features is adding public/private mixed-use urban development in the northwest corner of the campus, between the historic Tivoli and Speer Boulevard and between Auraria Parkway and Larimer Street, as shown in red in this future-buildout illustration from the plan:

There are two main reasons for putting higher density urban development at that corner of the campus. One is to strengthen Auraria’s relationship with the central business district and integrate the campus in with the rest of Downtown. The other is to improve the pedestrian connection between Auraria and Downtown and psychologically shorten the crossing of Speer by placing new buildings on campus right up to the street, reconfiguring and narrowing Speer to create additional development parcels along its edge, and creating visual interest, activity, and destinations along the way. The new Downtown Area Plan also makes these same recommendations. A new Colorado History Museum at Speer and Larimer would advance both plans’ goals as well as the museum’s. Here’s another future-buildout illustration from the new campus master plan that I took the liberty of annotating:

Let’s take a look at some of the advantages of this location:

  • The site is highly visible and offers great pedestrian and vehicular access.
  • Parking could be accommodated underground or as part of a shared parking facility with adjacent private development. Several campus parking garages and the underutilized Pepsi Center parking lots are close by.
  • The Downtown Area Plan calls for a streetcar line along Larimer, so the site has the potential to be right at a future transit stop.
  • The educational uses on campus and the cultural/entertainment uses in LoDo and the Central Platte Valley are natural complements to a museum.
  • The site is only a block away from a historic landmark (the Tivoli) and a block away from Larimer Square, one of the most historically significant places in Denver and the state.
  • The museum would be a visual attractor and destination that stimulates pedestrian activity and interest and becomes the psychological “bridge” for crossing Speer.
  • The museum would create tremendous added value to the private mixed-use development planned for the land around it, and vice versa.

All of those are positive advantages for locating the CHM at Speer and Larimer on the Auraria campus. But one of the biggest advantages is… the State already owns the land! And it’s not just the State that owns the land, but specifically the Colorado Department of Higher Education, which oversees the Colorado Historical Society and the Colorado History Museum!

During the debate over the various Civic Center sites, it was noted that land acquisition costs could be as high as $10 – $15 million, which made the site inside Civic Center Park so attractive. With the State not having to pay a dime for the Auraria site, the money saved can be put into making the new museum bigger and better.

The only downside to the Auraria site is that it is not adjacent to the Capitol and the other State government and cultural resources in the Civic Center area. But since the Colorado Historical Society board is already considering looking beyond Civic Center anyway, then moving the museum down Speer Boulevard a few blocks shouldn’t be a big deal. Auraria is still a lot closer to Civic Center than Stapleton!

Rather than relying on the Colorado History Museum to help activate and revitalize Civic Center Park, instead, let’s use the museum to help solve the Auraria / Downtown connection problem, while still providing the museum a fantastic location in the middle of everything–with no land acquisition costs!

What do you think?

Filed under Arts & Culture, Auraria, Infill.
26 Comments

Denver’s Elitch Gardens: Don’t Raze, Urbanize!

Posted by Ken on September 23, 2006

In my last blog entry, I opined that the Elitch Gardens amusement park should not be demolished and redeveloped into condos; rather, the surface parking lots surrounding Elitch’s and the Pepsi Center should be developed with structured public parking wrapped by mixed-use development. This would allow for not only the addition of plenty of residential and other uses to balance out the all-or-nothing single-use aspects of these major venues, but also the establishment of a walkable, engaging, pedestrian environment that integrates the entire area into the Downtown grid and maximizes the utilization of the adjacent light rail stations.

Below are two images I’ve prepared to help convey this concept. The first is the area’s existing conditions, showing the sea of asphalt that surrounds Elitch’s, the Pepsi Center, and the Auraria Campus. When looking at this image, its clear to see how good of a job we’ve done in siting numerous major institutional, cultural, and entertainment facilities in this one part of Downtown. What’s also clear is how we’ve failed to relate them to each other and to the rest of Downtown in an urban manner.

The second image is my conceptual plan for the area. This is something I just whipped up since yesterday, so please accept it as a general vision for the area and not necessarily a literal plan. I’ve done no traffic analysis, design studies, or financial assessment of this. There are dozens of variations along this same theme that could be envisioned for this area; this is just a quick take on one of them. What’s important right now isn’t the details, but that we as a community start to think of this part of Downtown in a different way.

Click on the images to see the full view.

Existing Conditions:

Central Platte Valley South – Conceptual Reurbanization Plan:

The dashed purple lines represent pedestrian-only or pedestrian-priority travelways that form the backbone of this concept plan. 9th Street, already a strong pedestrian axis within the Auraria Campus, would continue as such across Auraria Parkway into the valley. Featured along this new 9th Street Walk would be the main entrance to the Pepsi Center; a new permanent outdoor amphitheater and lawn; the light rail station and pedestrian bridge; a grand new public space featuring gardens, picnic grounds, and a major public plaza over underground parking; the main entrance to Elitch Gardens; Centennial Gardens; a new pedestrian bridge over the river; and the Downtown Aquarium.

The other main pedestrian corridor would run through the heart of the new mixed-use developments that wrap around structured public parking facilities. The Wewatta Promenade would head past the new outdoor amphitheater toward the Mile High Stadium light rail station, and feature ground-floor shops and restaurants with outdoor patios and other pedestrian amenities.

If we can transform the abandoned railyards on the north side of Cherry Creek into the remarkable Riverfront Park area we enjoy today, we can achieve something similar on the south side of Cherry Creek. If you agree, then you ought to let the power-that-be know that you’d like to see something like this be a part of the new Downtown Area Plan.

Filed under Auraria, Infill, Urbanism.
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