DenverInfill Blog

A new project on Colfax is coming to the Uptown district.

Renaissance Uptown Lofts is a 5-story mixed-use project planned for the northwest corner of Colfax and Pearl featuring ground-floor retail and 98 residential units on four levels, broken down as follows: 92 one-bedroom, 3 two-bedroom, and 3 studio apartments. The project is being developed by the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless and will serve as new housing for lower-income persons and transitional housing for the formerly homeless. The project is modeled after CCH’s successful Renaissance Off Broadway project in the Arapahoe Square district and the Renaissance Riverfront Lofts project under construction in the River North district.

For much more information on the project, including an interesting description of how the façade of the small historic structure currently at the site will be incorporated into the project, please read this article by Vanessa Martin in the current issue of Life on Capitol Hill.

This is the image shown in Vanessa’s article. The project architect is Humphries Poli Architects.

Renaissance Uptown Lofts is located along a stretch of Colfax that has seen little investment in many decades. It’s nice seeing that trend is starting to change.

Back in November 2006, I blogged about a new hotel proposed by Barrons Development for the corner of 18th and Sherman on Block 034-B. The project, now being developed by Sherman Properties, is slated to be residential. The developers are seeking a variance from the City Park view plane to allow the project to penetrate the view plane height restriction by approximately 90 feet. For the whole story, here’s an article, 18th & Sherman Developers Seek View-Plane Variance, by Vanessa Martin of Life on Capitol Hill (which is now available online!). Here’s a slightly larger version of the image from the article (courtesy of Cahen Architectural Group) showing the conceptual view plane variance:

Personally, I am in favor of the requested view plane variance. I certainly would be if I lived in the Portofino! Anyway, while I am generally in favor of view planes, I think this one from City Park need to be rethought. If a new building that would violate the City Park view plane height limit, such as the proposed 18th & Sherman project, does not block any view of the mountains but blocks, instead, only the view of taller buildings behind it, then I think it should not be considered to be a violation of the view plane.

The argument used in support of enforcing the City Park mountain view plane for a building that would block only a taller building behind it is that if, someday, those taller buildings to the west, like Republic Plaza or the Qwest tower, were removed, then the shorter buildings that were exempted from the view plane would then block the views of the mountains. While that may be true, I think we’ve got bigger things to worry about than mountain views if our Downtown skyline’s tallest buildings are going away and not being replaced. Besides, if you extend that logic, we should ultimately eliminate the entire Downtown skyline so that none of the view of the mountains is blocked from City Park.

To me, it is the view of the skyline (with a mountain backdrop) that makes the City Park view so special. The growth and evolution of our Downtown skyline should not be held hostage to a mountain view restriction from one particular site, when there are dozens of places all around the city where one can get an unobstructed view of the mountains. We must allow our Downtown skyline (and the view of it from City Park) to evolve over time, including every so often the construction of a “new tallest” that would perhaps block a bit more of the view of the mountains from City Park, but make our Downtown more dense, engaging, and dynamic as the premier urban center in the Rocky Mountain West.