John Rebchook at the Rocky Mountain News has the details right here.
Good luck Buzz!
Archive of posts filed under the Lower Downtown category.
Westword Interviews Geller about Bell Tower Proposal
Joel Warner over at the Westword blog has a Q&A with developer Buzz Geller about his proposed 34-story Bell Tower in Downtown Denver, which I’ve reported on several times here at DenverInfill. Check it out–it’s quite interesting!
Geller’s Bell Tower is Back!
We interrupt our Top 10 countdown for the following news flash: Buzz Geller’s Bell Tower is making a comeback!
John Rebchook has the scoop in today’s Rocky Mountain News. Here’s the article in PDF format. The tower has been thinned by 18% in response to the city’s and the Lower Downtown Design Review Board’s comments that the previous design wasn’t skinny enough.
Mr. Geller’s decision to put the tower on a diet and resubmit it was influenced, in part, by the positive and encouraging comments he received here at DenverInfill, particularly on this post which generated over 60 comments, including one from Mr. Geller himself. Good job everyone!
Getting the tower built will still be a challenge but, with a little luck, it will happen and become a new icon on the Denver skyline. I’ll be editing this post to add some high-resolution renderings of the tower’s new design later today.
AFTERNOON EDIT:
Here are two high-resolution images (courtesy of Fentress Architects and Buzz Geller, by way of John Rebchook) of Geller’s proposed 34-story tower in Downtown Denver. The image on the left compares the “before” and “after,” and the image on the right is the new narrower tower with the proposed low-rise office building and park across the creek.
Unwrapping 1515 Wynkoop
Like a big Christmas present, 1515 Wynkoop is slowly being unwrapped of the scaffolding that has covered the new building for most of this past summer and fall. Being developed by Hines, 1515 Wynkoop is the new 8-story, 300,000 SF office building located next to the EPA Building on Block 013 in Lower Downtown.
1515 Wynkoop is both a companion and counterpoint to SugarCube. Both projects have a scale and form that not only relate to their neighbors, but elevate their entire neighborhood by so successfully providing what had been missing for decades; yet they do so with completely opposite architectural styles.
For SugarCube, it’s all about that 16th Street facade. With the completion in 2001 of the highly regarded 16 Market Square project on Block 042, the corner of 16th and Blake on Block 019—a surface parking lot since at least the early 1970s—left a gap that cried out to be filled. KPMB nailed it the way SugarCube joins 16 Market Square and the historic Sugar Building in completing one of Downtown Denver’s best street walls: the west side of 16th Street from Market Street down into the Central Platte Valley, all the while doing so with a retro-modern design that playfully defies its neighbors’ traditional looks.
Meanwhile, 1515 Wynkoop on Block 013 reconstructs one of LoDo’s best corners that had been marred since the 1950s by the old Postal Annex building, with its massive blank walls and pedestrian-defying loading docks. The other three buildings at the corner: the Steelbridge Lofts (originally, another Great Western “Sugar Building”), the Colorado Saddlery Building, and the Edbrooke Lofts (originally, Spratlen-Anderson Grocers), all contribute a no-nonsense, traditional early 1900s Denver warehouse/mercantile presence to the corner. Hartman Cox Architects came through with the perfect complement to the three corner neighbors in 1515 Wynkoop’s traditional design. 1515 Wynkoop’s look is stately and reserved (but not stuffy or boring) and features brick detailing that honors the trademark element of Lower Downtown’s historic structures. But while it may treat the corner seriously, 1515 Wynkoop still has a little bit of modern fun with its recessed glass curtain wall entry mid-block along 15th Street.
So far, 1515 Wynkoop is looking good and I’m eager for it to be complete; plus, won’t it be nice to be able to walk to 15th along Wynkoop on a sidewalk?
Geller’s Bell Park Project Moves On To Option B
Buzz Geller’s 34-story “Bell Tower” was dismissed as “too massive” by the Lower Downtown Design Review Board at their meeting last week.
You may recall the controversy over the proposed tower, located at the corner of Speer and Market on Block 242 in Lower Downtown. Geller obtained the property in a swap with the city for land Geller owned where the city wanted to build (and is currently building) the new Denver Justice Center. After acquiring the creekside property, Geller lobbied for and ultimately received the right, via the creation of a new Special Review District, to construct one of two project designs: “Option A” being a thin 400-foot signature tower with expanded public open space along the creek and a 55-foot high LoDo-esque companion building on the 14th Street side of the creek, or, “Option B” being two LoDo-esque buildings on both sides of the creek that would cover more of the site. Either plan’s final design was dependent upon the approval of the Lower Downtown Design Review Board.
Option A (left) – Option B (right)
Persuing Option A, Geller teamed with Fentress Architects and eventually arrived at this signature design:
This design was panned by the Board as not being “feather-like” enough so, in response, the design was “pinstriped” by Fentress in an attempt to appear a bit thinner:
Personally, I think the original non-pinstriped version was a cleaner and better design. But anyway, the LDDRB still wasn’t sure if the tower met the Special Review District’s guidelines, so they asked the city for a clarification. The city’s response in late September was that even the pinstriped version of the tower wasn’t “vertical and slender” enough and that “minor tweaks” to the building’s design would not meet with approval.
So, as John Rebchook at the Rocky Mountain News reports in his articles of November 4 and November 7, Buzz Geller let his Option A tower go through the LDDRB process one last time, knowing it would get rejected, which is exactly what happened last Thursday. The board found the tower to be too “massive.” For comparison purposes, the rejected Geller tower design had a footprint less than half that of One Lincoln Park.
With the rejection, Geller is now planning on persuing Option B, the two shorter blockish buildings covering more of the site. That in itself isn’t a bad thing. While I would have preferred Option A, two low-rise buildings with active ground-floor uses at that location will still be far superior to the ugly surface parking lots that exist there now.
But, I have to wonder: A developer is willing to build a $300 million archtecturally striking tower in our urban core that has a footprint smaller than just about any residential tower in this city and a site plan that maximizes views and public access to the creek, but it is rejected over what could be described, at best, as a subjective design nuance. Meanwhile, the city allows another developer to slap up not one, but three cheap beige monstrosities in the Golden Triangle that are architecturally offensive and derided by almost everyone. Does this make any sense?
1515 Wynkoop Update
1515 Wynkoop is an 8-story, 300,000 SF Class A office project under construction by Hines at the corner of 15th and Wynkoop on Block 013.
1515 Wynkoop has topped off and the tower crane will probably be coming down soon. 1515 Wynkoop will be completed Spring 2009 and is pre-certified LEED Silver.
