Before we begin, I would like to thank Nathan Huyler of RNL, Jason Miller of Mortenson, Tiffany Nation of Mortenson, and Chad Grubl of Metro State for making this tour possible for Ken and me.

First we will start off with the courtyard. This will be a common area outside for both students and hotel guests to meet, socialize, and study. The courtyard also will be used for vehicles to get in and out but will not disturb the function of the outdoor space.

Next we will cover parking. This project has 75 structured parking spaces as you can see below. It’s a very simple system as far as getting in and out. There’s one ‘in’ ramp and one ‘out’ ramp.

The connection between the two classrooms is going to host 7,500 square feet of meeting space. This is almost like a bridge over the courtyard entrance.

They may not look like much now but these are going to be the hotel rooms. The Hotel and Hospitality Learning Center includes 150 guest rooms.

When a guest is staying in the Hotel and Hospitality Learning Center, they are going to get some great views of downtown and campus as well. You can stare at the buildings on one side, or watch a baseball game on the other.

This is the lobby of the hotel which includes a meeting area and guest services where you can check in to your room.

Over to the classrooms. The academic program here is going to offer state-of-the-art food and beverage laboratories, classrooms, and faculty offices. This also includes a kitchen, student lounge, restaurant, and even wine tasting all wrapped around in glass.

Here are a couple bonus shots of the project. On the left is a shot looking at the project form the inside, and on the right from the outside.

Last but not least, thank you once again to the crew (and the hiding ones) that allowed us to tour their project.

As far as materials go for the project, they are going to relate to the existing campus’s low-rise, high-density arrangement and clad in brick. This project is also pursuing LEED Silver.

Coming up in the next few weeks there will be more ‘Inside the Infill’ posts of more projects around such as the Ralph Carr Judicial Complex so stay tuned!

First, the Student Success Building. It appears the structure has topped out.

Workers were very busy today. There was constant activity at the site.

From a little bit of a different angle, you can see how long this building is. This will add a lot to the street-scape on Auraria Parkway.

The Hotel Learning Center was very hard to get to. It was blocked off with tall fences on all sides. I was able to zoom in a little and get this from the top of a parking garage. As you can see, there is a red tower crane up and this project is moving forward at full force.

In this bonus photo, you can see DaVita starting to break through the Lower Downtown / Central Platte Valley skyline.

When I was taking pictures on top of an Auraria parking garage, I looked around and counted 12 cranes. That’s a lot of development going on around the city, which I will be covering. Throughout the next few weeks we will be looking at some of the projects that have been regularly updated on here and also some smaller projects in Downtown’s surrounding neighborhoods that have yet to get an update.

The student success building is making significant progress. This is located at 9th and Auraria Parkway.

They have begun to build the steel skeleton for the building.

The Metro State Student Success Building is going to be a 4-story 145,000 square foot building. It is scheduled to open April 2012. Due to the recent name change of the college, the name of the building may be different upon completion.

Over at the Hotel Learning Center site, it looks like the site is being prepared for construction.

As you can see, there is a red tower crane base at the site.

The Hotel Learning Center will have 150 rooms and over 21,000 square feet of classroom space. It is expected to open September 2012.

The proposed combination hotel/academic building is planned for the corner of Auraria Parkway and 12th Street where tennis courts are currently located. Here’s the site from Google Earth:

The hotel portion will be branded as a Marriott SpringHill Suites and will contain 150 rooms, a conference facility with a 350-person capacity, and a fast-casual restaurant franchise. The hotel will be managed by Denver’s Sage Hospitality. The academic portion will include over 21,000 square feet of classrooms, laboratories, and faculty offices for Metro State’s Hospitality, Tourism & Events program.

Here are three images of the project, courtesy of RNL Design:

View of the northeastern side. The intersection in the foreground is eastbound Auraria Parkway (wide street in front) and 12th Street (narrow street heading off to the left):

View of the southeastern side facing the athletic fields and Lawrence Street:

Internal courtyard:

If all goes as planned, the facility will open September 2012.

The new, 4-story, 145,000 square foot structure will be built at the corner of 9th Street and Auraria Parkway, and will represent the first building in the newly designated Metropolitan State College of Denver “neighborhood” within the larger Auraria Higher Education campus. Here’s a post from about a year ago showing the building’s site and its place within what will become the Metro State quad.

Metro State’s Student Success Building will serve as the home for the college’s new “one-stop-shop” registration center, the First Year Student Success Program, the Community Action Theater, the Center for Innovation, and other critical support, administrative, and student-support services. The $62 million project is being financed through federal stimulus subsidized bonds, backed by a special assessment approved by Metro State students in the Spring 2009.

The new building was designed by RNL Design of Denver. Here are the latest (and final, I believe) renderings of the new building. View is from the 9th Street and Auraria Parkway intersection looking southwest:

The new Student Success Building is scheduled to open April 2012.

Coming soon to DenverInfill… details on Metro State’s new Hospitality Learning Center, scheduled for groundbreaking February 2011.

First, an aerial view looking north. Auraria Parkway is at the top and 9th Street is on the right. The L-shaped building encloses a pedestrian plaza (as always, click to enlarge):

View from the plaza:

View from across Auraria Parkway looking east:

View from across Auraria Parkway looking west:

View from 9th Street:

View from plaza entry:

The Metro Student Success building will be approximately 145,000 square feet in size and will hold the college’s 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 Spring 2009. The project is aiming for LEED Gold certification.

Construction of the Metro State Student Success Building is slated to begin as early as December of this year with a planned opening of April 2012.

Known as the Community College of Denver Student Learning and Success Building, the proposed structure at Champa and Speer would provide CCD with significant new classroom space and room for other academic and student programs that the institution is sorely lacking.  CCD’s enrollment has skyrocketed to over 12,000 students, yet it continues to occupy just 10 classrooms in Auraria’s South Classroom Building. The institution is so pressed for space that it regularly uses theaters in the Starz FilmCenter at the Tivoli for classrooms and has even held classes outdoors.

The new project would join the list of a new generation of buildings for the Downtown campus. In 2005, the new Metro State Parking Facility at the corner of 9th and Auraria Parkway was completed. Then just late last year, the new Auraria Science Building became the first new Auraria building to be located right up against Speer Boulevard to provide a strong urban form along the campus edge with Downtown. Metro State has two proposed buildings in the works:  the Metro State Student Success Building, a four-story, 143,000 SF structure slated for the other corner of 9th and Auraria Parkway that should hopefully break ground late 2010; and Metro’s Hotel Learning Center, an 11-story hotel/academic building for the college’s hospitality and tourism program that should start construction in 2011 at the corner of Speer and Auraria Parkway.

CCD’s new structure would occupy a highly visible site at Speer and Champa, just across Speer from the Colorado Convention Center. Currently, the triangular site is a surface parking lot. Here’s a bird’s eye view of the proposed location from Bing Maps:

The proposed building would range from five to seven stories in height and would cost approximately $50 million. The Community College of Denver would cover approximately one-half to three-quarters of the cost, with the balance covered by selling bonds that would be paid back with a special fee tacked on to CCD tuition for the next 15-25 years. CCD students will vote next week (April 12-16) on the fee increase for the project. If it passes, the new building could break ground in 2011 and be completed by 2013.

The project architect is Anderson Mason Dale, the same firm that designed the Auraria Science Building. Here are some preliminary images of the project:

From 13th and Champa (left) and St. Francis Way and 10th on the campus (right):

From Speer and Kalamath/Champa (left) and from near Speer and Stout by the Convention Center (right):

I captured these images from the video below, produced by CCD and available on their home page. The video does an exceptional job of making the case for the new building plus, in addition to the exterior shots above, the video also includes a number of nice renderings of the some of the interior spaces. I may be receiving higher quality versions of these images from CCD. If I do, I’ll swap these out for the better ones.

More news after the student referendum April 12-16. If this project happens, it will represent another important step in the transformation of the Auraria campus to a more urban complement to Downtown Denver… not to mention a critical improvement to the quality of CCD students’ education.

I moved to Denver in July 1985 and on one of my first trips to Downtown, my friends and I managed to sneak onto the top 56th floor of Republic Plaza, Denver’s tallest skyscraper (the building was about one year old at the time). The 56th floor was completely unoccupied and was just the core and shell; it was a single open room covering the entire floor offering fantastic views in every direction. Fortunately, I had my Kodak 110 Instamatic with me, and so here are two of the photos I took.

This first one is taken in the same general direction as the 1961 photo, although aimed above Downtown buildings in the foreground. The Auraria Campus was just nine years old and none of the West Campus buildings had been built yet. This shot gives you a nice view of the Larimer and Lawrence Street viaducts. However, if you look closely one block to the right of the Larimer Street viaduct in the Walnut Street right-of-way, out by the industrial buildings you can see several sets of concrete piers that get shorter as they get closer to Downtown. That is the Auraria Parkway off-ramp from I-25 under construction. It doesn’t look like construction had begun yet on any of the at-grade portions of Auraria Parkway, which does a one-block jog, transitioning from a Walnut to Wazee alignment, between 5th and 9th Streets. In the far bottom right corner of the photo is the intersection of what was then Wazee and 9th Street, with the orange-brick historic building where Brooklyn’s is now located on one corner, and the Auraria Campus tennis courts (which were replaced a few years ago with the Metro State College parking garage) on the other corner.

The photo also provides a nice view of the original Mile High Stadium, and McNichols Arena. Just like in the 1961 photo, you can clearly see Lake Middle School and its bell tower next to Sloans Lake off in the distance.

This second photo shows the Central Platte Valley behind Union Station. Just right of center is the old 20th Street viaduct (with billboards!) heading off into Lower Highland. One block to the left is 19th Street. About the only building still standing along 19th that appears in this photo is the small yellow building (the Xcel Steam Plant) at 19th and Delgany (now Wewatta). Visible in between the Tabor One and 1225 17th Street towers is Union Station with, behind it, rail yards and a huge industrial/warehouse building where the Glass House and Commons Park is today. On the left edge of the photo is a long horizontal industrial building where Little Raven Street now intersects with 15th Street.

Up next: Denver 1997-ish

There’s so much here to talk about in this photo.

First, obviously, we have a great view of the Auraria neighborhood (originally the Town of Auraria before the consolidation of Denver City, Auraria, and Highland on April 3, 1860) before the Auraria Campus was created. The buildings that survived the demolition of the neighborhood to make way for the campus were the Tivoli Brewery, St. Elizabeth’s Church, St. Cajetan’s Church, Emmanuel Episcopal Chapel (Denver’s oldest surviving church, built in 1876, and now the Emmanuel Gallery), and the historic homes along Ninth Street Historic Park.

What’s also visible in the Auraria area is the old Larimer Street and Lawrence Street viaducts.  As in-bound and out-bound viaducts, they were one of the main ways to get between I-25 and Downtown Denver. They were replaced in the late 1980s by Auraria Parkway; the viaducts were removed and in their place today are mostly broad pedestrian walkways or narrow streets for local access and RTD busses. The street running in front of  the taller historic buildings where Kacey Fine Furniture, Brooklyn’s, and the Auraria Lofts are today—that was Wazee Street.  Behind those buildings, where the Pepsi Center is now located, were more rail yards. We also get a nice view from this angle of the 13th and 14th Street (Speer) viaducts that I mentioned in my Denver 1961 post. What was neat about those viaducts, as you can see in this photo, was that the out-bound 14th Street viaduct didn’t go elevated until about 14th and Wazee, and it ran along the Cherry Creek side of the Acme and Volker Loft buildings. But the in-bound 13th Street viaduct remained elevated until Larimer, and ran along the southwest side of the Acme and Volker buildings. The two streets then did a clumsy readjustment over Cherry Creek to eventually flow into the Speer Boulevard alignment we have today to the south.

Union Station is clearly visible in this photo, with the big boxy blond brick Postal Annex next door (replaced by the EPA Building and 1515 Wynkoop). What you see behind Union Station to the Platte River—yeah, that area has changed a bit, no?  We also see the old 15th Street viaduct (replaced in the 1980s by the current 15th Street which goes under the railroad tracks and features twin red pedestrian bridges), the old 16th Street viaduct (gone entirely), and, off in the distance, the 20th Street, 23rd Street/Park Avenue, and Broadway viaducts—all replaced in the 1990s/early 2000s.  The bright white grain elevator at 20th and Wazee—that’s where Coors Field is today.

Finally, there are a few remarkable changes in the Downtown area to note. Brooks Tower is there, but its companion building (formerly the Executive Tower Inn and now the Curtis Hotel) is not.  However, the black-glass modern Park Central complex on Block 075 is clearly under construction in this photo. Who would have ever guessed from their outward appearances that Park Central is older than the Curtis Hotel tower? In front of the Park Central site at 15th and Arapahoe is the side of the Central Bank building.

The two blocks of parking lots in the foreground of the Brooks Tower… that’s where the Denver Performing Arts Complex is.  The department store around the D&F tower has been torn down, but the Tabor Center is still a decade off in the future; although the Tabor Center’s other block between Lawrence and Larimer has not yet been razed. On the foreground side of 16th Street (pre-Mall, of course) you can see that the entire block where Writer Square is today has been leveled, as has the half-block to the left where The Larimer condo tower is today. Its neighbor, the blank-walled former-Dave Cook’s-now-Office-Depot building hasn’t been built yet. Also visible are the buildings that were there before Market Street Station was built.

The year 1973 was probably an exciting year in Denver. They were on the cusp of the city’s greatest building boom, probably not unlike how we all felt in 2005. In the next twelve years, from 1973 until the date of the next photo I’m going to feature (1985), over forty towers (yes, you read correctly, 40) were built in Downtown Denver. Now that was a building boom!