The construction barriers are down, new sidewalks and streetscaping are in place, landscaping has been planted, and the finishing touches are being applied. The main entrance on Broadway is impressive and welcoming. Wide stairs lead up to the front doors, creating a seamless transition from sidewalk to lobby. Zipping past the building in a car at 30 miles an hour, the building’s exterior can read as just plain beige. But inspecting the building up close for the first time, I was pleased at the warmth and the subtle variations of color and texture that meander throughout the beautiful limestone facade.

In Ryan’s Part 1, he included a photo of the lobby and its wood ceiling. The wood used there is beetle-kill pine, an appropriate material to use in a building dedicated to Colorado’s history, and a good local material to use in a building aiming for LEED-Gold certification. The floor of the lobby features a large COLORADO inlaid the terrazzo floor, which itself is rich and warm in color. The almost-golden hue of the interior finishes extends into the stairs as well, with Colorado sandstone walls.

The terrazzo floor continues into the grand atrium where, in the voluminous space above, a cool color palette and a more modernist feel prevails. The four-story glass wall facing 12th Avenue, and skylights above, flood the space in light. The building’s secondary entrance, reserved for large groups like school field trips, leads directly into the grand atrium from 12th Avenue, where a bus drop-off zone is located.

As Ryan mentioned, the top floor facing Broadway features a handsome function space, available for rent. Here, dark bamboo flooring contrasts nicely with the bright light coming in from the west-facing windows. A covered terrace extends this space outdoors, with sweeping views of the mountains and downtown skyline.

Overall, this is a fantastic building and I’m quite impressed. It features many beautiful (and durable) natural materials throughout, and manages to make its interior spaces feel spacious and intimate, modern and warm, at the same time. Congratulations to Tryba Architects for a job well done, and to Hensel Phelps and Trammell Crow for getting the building built on-time and on-budget. I know History Colorado (formerly the Colorado Historical Society) is eager to move into their new home and get it ready for a series of exhibit grand openings over the next year or two.

DenverInfill will be back to History Colorado Center later this year after the huge map of Colorado is installed on the atrium floor!

Finally, I’ll leave you with a time-lapse video, provided by History Colorado, of the building’s construction:

Thank you to Bill Mosher, Fred Schultz, and Tina Lashbrook of Trammell Crow Company as well as David Tryba of Tryba Architects and Rebecca Laurie of  History Colorado for taking us inside this great project.

The entrance to the Broadway side was nearly complete and a lot of landscaping was taking place. There are custom street lamps, lights to project on the building at night and a grand stair case to the entrance, which brings you in to an open lobby as you can see on the bottom right. From the lobby you can choose to go into the museum, the restaurant, or the gift shop.

Once you enter the museum you are brought into an immaculate atrium with a giant screen and what is soon to be a giant map of Colorado on the floor. A unique feature of the map is that one can carry around a ‘time machine’ that will tell you the history of certain regions in Colorado when you stand over them.

Here is just a glimpse of what the staircases in the museum will look like leading to the upper floors and exhibits. This was also a great and rare opportunity to see what an exhibit room looks like before anything is in it.

Also included in the building are offices, a library and plenty of storage.

On the top floor there are also two meeting rooms that you can reserve for your own function. The one on the bottom left, where you can see our tour group, comes complete with an outdoor space. The rooms also come complete with blackout blinds so you can make presentations.

The atrium was a very impressive aspect of the whole project and was very hard to capture in one picture. I’m pleased to share with you a short video that gives you a 360 degree look.

The History Colorado Center will be turned over within the next couple weeks to the state and then to the public Spring 2012.

Since my last update on the museums, the Clyfford Still has been making quick progress and the outer walls are almost complete.

As you can see in this next photo, the colors and texture of the Clyfford Still somewhat blend with the Denver Art Museum. There isn’t much contrast between the two.

A couple blocks up over at the History Colorado Center, the exterior is starting to look complete. It looks like all the glass has been put in and all there is left on the exterior is the roof.

The parking structure is almost complete behind the museum as you can see on the far right of this picture.

There are a lot of projects going on in and around Downtown Denver. Don’t forget to stop by and even take a walking tour of the largest project going on right now, Denver Union Station! Next up, we will be taking a look at 1099 Osage and see how far it has been coming along.

The History Colorado Center is located on 12th and Broadway. Here are some current photos of this project underway.

As you can see, they’ve engraved ‘History Colorado’ in the brick. This is the Broadway side of the museum.

Here’s the museum on the 12th Avenue side.

On the Lincoln side it looks like some finishing touches are being done.

Behind the History Colorado Center, a parking structure is being constructed as you can see here.

Three blocks away right behind the Denver Art Museum, the Clyfford Still Museum is making nice progress.

A lot of projects have taken off around the downtown area. Next we’ll take a look at 1099 Osage.

The Museum recently released images of the final design of the building. The 30,000 SF minimalist-inspired structure, with its earth-toned concrete walls and horizontal massing, provides an appropriate and welcome counterpoint to its next-door neighbor, the titanium-clad crystalline-entity Hamilton Building of the Denver Art Museum. Here are a couple of photos:

Or, check out this video animation tour of the future museum:

Details about the new building are available at the Clyfford Still Museum website.

Good things are happening in Downtown Denver!

According to Law Week Colorado, efforts are underway to find a new home for the mural.  Potential destinations being kicked around in what is described as “information gathering at this point” include DIA and the law schools at both the University of Colorado and the University of Denver.  There is even a suggestion that the space-intensive mural may be divided and placed at multiple locations.

The executive director of the Colorado Bar Association, Chuck Turner, is collecting suggestions for the ultimate home of the mural via email (cturner@cobar.org) and will pass them on to those in charge of the decision.  Something tells me DenverInfill readers may have some thoughts…

The ceremony on December 14 involved not so much the breaking of ground, but more the breaking of old walls. Located on the museum site were a couple of small buildings that were ceremoniously wrecked while fireworks went off to launch the museum’s construction phase. I was unable to attend the event, but I finally had a chance to swing by the site the other day. The old buildings are totally gone and the site awaits excavation.

The buildings that were demolished are the ones closest to the corner of 13th and Bannock in the bird’s eye photo (left) of the site from Bing maps. On the right is a picture of the site I took a few days ago:

For a short video clip of the ceremony, check out this website.

The new 30,000 square foot building will be complete in 2011. Renderings of the new museum structure are available here.  Finally, here’s an informative press release from the museum that discusses the building’s exterior and interior design. Brad Cloepfil of Allied Works Architecture is the designer.

Having another new museum in the Civic Center/Golden Triangle area is absolutely exciting. But our museum-packed cultural district is still surrounded by ugly surface parking lots that have defied development for several decades, despite their artsy neighbors. As I’ve explained before in a previous post, part of the problem with the ubiquitous parking lots around there is that most of the lots are actually comprised of numerous small parcels owned by different property owners, which makes land assemblage in the area virtually impossible. I’ve heard reports that there is a mid-rise apartment project being planned for around 12th and Cherokee, which is good news, but really… when are we going to do something to break the parking lot log-jam in the Golden Triangle? Something to think about while we celebrate the start of construction for yet another new museum in Downtown Denver.

Here’s the new Colorado History Museum, now under construction at 12th and Broadway. Images courtesy of Tryba Architects and the Colorado Historical Society. As always, click on the image to view in full resolution:

For a description of the new Colorado History Center’s building program and other details, I’ll refer you to the excellent article on this topic by Westword‘s Michael Paglia. He covered all the bases nicely.

History Center-Justice Complex Project Financing a Success
Project will create close to 2,000 jobs in next four years

Denver- The successful financing of over $338 million in Certificates of Participation earlier today to build the new Colorado History Center and the Ralph L. Carr Justice Complex completed one of the largest sales of Build America Bonds to date, announced State Treasurer Cary Kennedy, and will directly create nearly 2,000 jobs.

“Colorado’s strong credit rating and sound financial policies allowed us to finance this project in what remain extremely difficult markets,” said Kennedy. “Investors continue to find Colorado an attractive place to invest their funds.”

“These projects will help energize our economy and create jobs,” Gov. Bill Ritter said.

“The Recovery Act provided us with financing tools like Build America Bonds, and these tools will be critical to leading our economy forward and putting Coloradans back to work.”

Build America Bonds, or BABs, lower costs to public entities on financing because the federal government subsidizes 35% of the interest paid on the project. BABs will cut the costs of these projects for Colorado’s taxpayers nearly $77 million from traditional tax-exempt financing.

The Build America Bonds program is one of several financing programs created by the Recovery Act to help government agencies move capital construction projects forward while saving hundreds of millions of dollars. Other major sales are planned for coming weeks.

The financing will pay for the costs of two new buildings, the Ralph L. Carr Justice Complex, which will consolidate the Colorado Supreme Court, the Colorado Court of Appeals, the Attorney General’s Office, the administrative offices of the court, the public defender, and other justice related entities into one location. The current building housing the Supreme Court and Court of Appeals has significant maintenance, ADA, security and life-safety issues.

The second building will house a new Colorado History Center to replace the existing Colorado History Museum. The current museum serves nearly 1 million people annually through a variety of programs, but has extensive maintenance issues and limited space.

The new Justice Complex is being funded with Judicial Court user fees and rental payments from building occupants. The History Center will be funded with allocations from state gaming revenues.

Rep. Don Marostica, a member of the Joint Budget Committee, said that the COP sale would be greatfor the local economy. “Our timing getting into the market was ideal,” said Marostica. “We are able to get a great interest rate for the state, save the citizens’ money, and keep people working.”

“We are very excited to begin construction on the new History Center, which will serve as an important statewide hub and educational resource for residents and visitors,” said Ed Nichols, the President of the Colorado Historical Society.

The Center should break ground before the end of August, with the Justice Complex to follow next year. The History Center is scheduled to open in Fall 2011 at 12th and Broadway, one block south of its current location. The Judicial Complex will start construction in 2010, with completion in 2013.

Jerry Maroney, State Court Administrator for the Colorado Department of Justice, noted the longterm savings of the project. “Ultimately, we’ll save an estimated $60 million in rent payments and efficiencies over the next 30 years as we consolidate offices into one location.”

The underwriting firms of George K. Baum & Co., Piper Jaffrey, and RBC Capital Markets managed the sale of the Certificates of Participation. The firm of Trammell Crow is the project construction manager.

The certificates were sold over two days (Tuesday and today) at an “all-in” interest rate of 4.24 percent. A COP offering is similar to that of a bond, with the most significant difference being that repayment is dependent on an annual appropriation.

Senate President Brandon Shaffer, Senate Minority Leader Josh Penry, Speaker of the House Terrance Carroll and Rep. Marostica sponsored Senate Bill 08-206 which authorized the sale of COPs and the construction of the History Center and Justice Complex projects.

Kennedy worked with Speaker Carroll and Senate President Shaffer to pass House Bill 09-1346 this past legislative session. The bill allowed Colorado to take advantage of specific financing mechanisms within the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

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Hopefully, we’ll see a final design of the History Museum and a preliminary design for the Justice Center soon. I noticed the other day there’s construction equipment already on new Museum site.

In February, 2008, the site for the new Museum was selected after a somewhat controversial proposal to locate the new museum inside Civic Center Park.

Here’s the full press release issued just minutes ago:

“Gov. Bill Ritter today signed legislation that green-lights a new state judicial complex, to be named after former Gov. Ralph L. Carr, and creates a new home for the aging Colorado History Museum in downtown Denver.

Senate Bill 206 (Shaffer & Penry/T. Carroll & Marostica) authorizes the financing to construct the Ralph L. Carr Justice Center on the block currently occupied by the Colorado Supreme Court and Colorado History Museum. The 615,000-square-foot complex will consolidate into one location the Supreme Court, Court of Appeals, Attorney General’s Office and several other judicial and legal offices now located across multiple sites. The History Museum will be relocated to a new 200,000-square-foot facility one block south.

The new museum site will be a public-private partnership, jointly developed with a private office tower.”