The light rail plaza officially opened to the public around 10AM on Friday, May 18^th. Here are some pictures of the celebration Kiewit threw at noon to mark to occasion – which included comments from Councilwoman Judy Montero, music from the band Electric Avenue, and dance performances from a women’s Zumba troop.

The most noticeable change to the plaza over the last couple of weeks has been the completion of the detail work of the pavers and the final landscaping of the plaza, planters, and benches.  Below are close-ups of a couple of planters:

Here are close-ups of the landscaping surrounding the benches adjacent to Chestnut Pavilion

But to truly appreciate the scale and design of the plaza – I took the following pictures from the 8^th floor pool area of the Glass House.  I’m sure you will agree…the plaza is truly stunning!  But I can’t tell if the plaza looks better in the daytime or at night?  What do you think?

Finally, I saved my favorite photo for last. To me, what makes a public space great is not just how it looks, but if the public actually uses it. We have a little while until the plaza will be fully utilized, but for now though, check out this photo of the plaza full of Rockies fans heading to the game on Friday night!

First of all, the station itself is historic. Yeah, it’s 131 years old, but I think the more important part of its age is the people who have traveled through the old building. Of the millions of Union Station’s travelers, I’m sure that the vast majority was ordinary people simply going from Point A to Point B. Many others were soldiers and sailors going to wars, sadly fewer coming home. Still others were going off to and coming home from college, weddings, vacations, meetings, you name it. In the early days, I bet many were get-rich-quick schemers, gunslingers, gamblers, plus those who hoped to tame the schemers, gunslingers and gamblers. Through it all, Union Station welcomed them: the good, the great, and the bad.

Second, it’s big: hundreds of millions of dollars, hundreds of workers, years of work.

Third, it’s nice. The complete project will fill in the only remaining space that was once, well, you know … pretty ugly. A bustling bus station, and shiny, new buildings will be a dramatic improvement.

Fourth, we can see a glorious future. I think it’s fascinating that the old, great station can come back to life with even more ordinary, famous, and infamous characters. The prognosticators predict that 220,000 passengers a day will travel through the station complex within a few years. By comparison, last year, 147,000 passenger a day traveled through DIA which was the eleventh busiest airport in the world.

Fifth, there is probably a personal connection for you. There is for me, and I’m the new kid in town. When Ken Schroeppel and I discussed this milestone posting, he suggested that I had become an “accidental celebrity-blogger.” That put a smile on my face and caused me to think about how it happened. My wife Cini and I traveled to Denver about 15 years ago when we lived in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. We were searching for a big-city downtown to which we could retire when the time came several years later. We stayed at the Grand Hyatt on Welton Street for several days, during which we strolled around downtown. When we came upon Union Station, we wandered in, sat on one of the big benches, and gawked around the train room which was occupied only by a couple of Amtrak employees. We pondered the day when we could live here and ride the train.

Fast forwarded to about 2005 when my retirement was approaching. We chose Denver as the place to live, having rejecting places like Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Chicago, Phoenix, and many other big cities. In anticipation of our move, I wanted to learned more about the city that would become home. I don’t remember how it happened, but I found DenverInfill. After watching the blog for several months, I contacted Ken via email, and he responded. A year or so later, we moved to the 19th floor of Glass House. We had a bird’s eye view of the station and an intense interest in the goings-on in our new hometown. When I joined the board of Union Station Advocates, I finally met Ken.  One thing led to another, and I accepted his offer to write the Union Station blog.

And lastly, I think we like this project because of our collective personal involvement. I am impressed with the rigorous process through which dreamers go to get big things done, and done right. Among the long list of tasks, they seek input from anyone willing to provide it, and they negotiate differences of opinion. In the end, we all become owners of the result, even if it’s a tiny piece of ownership. The process isn’t easy, and it isn’t quick. But when it’s done, it can be magnificent.

So, there you have it. According to your resident blogger, that’s why we like this bus station.

Both photos below show progress of the newest section of the bus terminal.  I took the first one from inside Union Station. Atop the shorter columns with lower beams will be tracks commuter rail and Amtrak.  The taller columns with higher beams are the bases for passenger platforms. As you may recall from earlier posts, there will be eight sets of tracks: one Amtrak, five commuter rail, and two spares.

The next photo is looking down the entrance/exit ramp.  Buses will access this ramp from 18th Street and from the I-25 HOV lane. Recall that there is another ramp at the other end of the terminal with access to 20th Street and 15th Street via another section of 18th Street and Chestnut Place.

Andy posed for the photo below to give scale to the height of the structure. He is standing next to one of the bus terminal walls. From every angle, this bus terminal is big.

In related news, the public plaza surrounding the Chestnut Pavilion will open on May 18. Trees are being planted and lighting is being installed. It will be impressive, especially at night, with lights under the edges of the planter seats, lights shining up through the trees, spot lights on the three ventilation towers, and decorative lighting throughout the area. Andy plans to cover the opening event on the 18th.

Backfilling on the south side of the terminal is nearly complete.  The huge pile dirt is still pretty huge so there may be enough on-site dirt to finish the job.

Andy Vuong and I got an inside look at the project last week. I will provide details of the tour over the next couple of days before I leave on another extended trip.

Today, we’ll start with a peek inside the bus terminal. Here is a series of photos taken of the covered portion of the terminal. The first photo was taken from the end of the terminal looking down one of the two bus lanes toward Union Station.  The bright light at the end of the tunnel is the uncovered, newest section of the terminal. The second photo was taken of the passenger waiting area looking in the opposite direction.  The overhead, natural light comes from the five skylights.

The first photo below is looking up through the air intake tower.  The second is one of three mechanical rooms.

I’ve uploaded 18 photos of the tour to our Denver Union Station page at JobSiteVistor.com.  I will write more about them in this blog tomorrow.

Sorry for the long delay in updating the Union Station project… I’ve been out of the country for several weeks and didn’t have time to take some new pictures for a little while after I returned.

Let’s start by checking out the progress of the pavers near the light rail station and Chestnut Pavilion. At the time this picture was taken, the crew had laid down almost all the preliminary pavers between the station, Chestnut Street, and the 16th Street Mall Ride access road. I say preliminary because cause after the general pattern of varying colors is laid down, the crew goes back and makes the necessary cuts where two or three colors meet to make the curved patterns you see below.

Also, check out the trees that have been added to the large tear drop planters! I counted three large trees in the planter closest to the 18th Street Pedestrian Bridge, and about 15 smaller ones in the planter directly next to it. While the trees were bare when the picture was taken, they have already started to green up a bit since they were planted.

Staying on the same side of the project, work continues on the remaining half of the bus box directly behind Union Station. In our last post, I mentioned that the floor of the bus box was completed–connecting the bases of both halves of the box. Currently, crews are pouring the side walls of the box, with what appears to be about 30% of the work complete at the time of this posting. I wasn’t able to get a good picture of the walls this time around, but will try to get a good shot in the next couple of days.

The other major areas of progress to report are the public works related projects taking place next to and in front of the station.  After installing new pipes and wires, crews have started to rebuild the lane of 16th Street between Wynkoop and Wewatta. Once that section of 16th Street is completed, crews will begin to work on the other side of the street–eventually widening 16th Street in that block to match the width of the street between Wewatta and the Millennium Bridge.

Unfortunately, I was not able to get a good picture of the work being completed on 18th Street. The street, which formerly ended at Wynkoop, is being extended into what was part of the parking lot next to the Ice House lofts. This will allow for car access to the upcoming IMA Financial building that will flank the Station, as well as bus access to the underground bus terminal.

Finally, crews have started to excavate a large section of land in front of the Station entrance. This will eventually house a water overflow tank that will collect water from around the station during a heavy rainstorm–reducing the chance of any sewage overflow issues.

Andy Vuong is a management consultant who lives and works in the Union Station neighborhood and is an avid proponent of urban density. Andy will be providing updates on the Union Station project as a back-up to Rick, our regular Union Station project blogger. DenverInfill’s Andy Vuong is not the Denver Post writer of the same name. 

Not to mention, just down the street is the History Colorado Center which is another huge part of the new Lincoln / Broadway streetscape. Kudos to these two projects in making the gateway into downtown just that much better.

UPDATE: The hoist elevator has also come down on the office tower and they are starting to seal it up. This is a great step in the visual completion of this development.

Most of the orange panels are gone and you can now see what this project is all about. With the jagged edges and blue reflective glass, it looks very futuristic and sports having the title of a crime lab. This is one of the more cutting edge developments Denver hasn’t seen until now as far as design and architecture go.

The back doesn’t look like the front, the east side doesn’t look like the west side which gives this project a very unique look. It breaks up the boring old symmetry that we see in a lot of modern day projects along with catching the eye making you want to see every angle of the building when you are passing by.

This LEED-Silver project is a dedicated crime lab for the Denver Police department which is expected to open next month.

I’ve been trying to focus on one section of the Union Station development with each update, but Kiewit has been working so fast I can barely keep up! So, for this update, we’re going to hit two areas: the bus box and the 17^th Street Gardens.

First, we now have one continuous floor for the regional bus facility! Crews recently made the final concrete pours and connected the floor of the Union Station half of the bus box to that of the light rail half. All together, that’s one continuous 4-foot-thick slab of concrete approximately 940 feet long and 140 feet wide! This picture was taken through a window in Union Station a couple of weeks ago. You can see the crew and the concrete pumper hose in the upper left of the photo pouring a segment of the final section.

Second, check out the new structures that have popped up along the 17^th Street Gardens. The two structures sit to the left of the skylights (when facing Union Station from the light rail station) and will house the emergency egress stairs and the fire command controls.

Andy Vuong is a management consultant who lives and works in the Union Station neighborhood and is an avid proponent of urban density. Andy will be providing updates on the Union Station project as a back-up to Rick, our regular Union Station project blogger. DenverInfill’s Andy Vuong is not the same person as the Denver Post writer of the same name. 

A new Public Transit Center that will accommodate the end-of-line station for RTD’s East Line—a 23-mile rail transit connection between DIA and Union Station in Downtown Denver—currently under construction and scheduled to open for service in January 2016.

A new 500-room Westin Hotel & Conference Center that will be located immediately south of the existing Jeppeson Terminal and above the Public Transit Center.

A new 60,000 square foot Public Plaza that will connect the Jeppesen terminal with the new hotel.

Gensler is the principal architect of the entire South Terminal Redevelopment program at DIA, with Anderson Mason Dale working on the Public Transit Center. Here are some new renderings of the project, courtesy of my friends at Gensler’s Denver office. You have two options to view the renderings: click on an image to view a larger version of it, or use the link below an image to open a giant-sized version in a new window. Here we go:

View (looking north) at the Public Transit Center and Westin Hotel, with the existing terminal complex beyond:

(extra-large version)

View (looking northwest) of the Public Transit Center and Westin Hotel:

(extra-large version)

View (looking southeast) of the Public Plaza in between the existing Jeppesen Terminal and the new Westin Hotel:

(extra-large version)

View from the train platforms inside the Public Transit Center:

(extra-large version)

View of the entry to the hotel from the Public Transit Center:

(extra-large version)

View looking southwest from the Public Plaza, with the existing Jeppesen Terminal on the right and the Westin Hotel on the left:

(extra-large version)

For a few additional renderings, visit the project’s page on the Gensler website.

Today’s update is all about pavers! We have lots of progress on the walkways that lead away from the light rail station and surround the tear drop planters. The pavers not only look nice, but are also easier to maintain due to how they are installed. For the walkways, several colors of pavers (beige, grey, and red) are being used and will form a series of shapes and angles that will break up the space nicely.

It’s taken about 6 weeks to get to the progress shown in the picture above, so we can probably expect the pavers to continue to be laid down for another couple of months. How many pavers do you think it’s going to take to complete the entire walkway?

Andy Vuong is a management consultant who lives and works in the Union Station neighborhood and is an avid proponent of urban density. Andy will be providing updates on the Union Station project as a back-up to Rick, our regular Union Station project blogger. DenverInfill’s Andy Vuong is not the same person as the Denver Post writer of the same name.