DenverInfill Blog

In addition to its 16 Chestnut project, East West Partners is also working on another office development in the Union Station area: 16 Wewatta.

16 Wewatta will occupy the “triangle” parcel at 16th and Wewatta, across the street from the Gates HQ building. For the past several years, the grassy property has served as a temporary sculpture garden/dog-walking park, but its long-term fate has always been as a development site. That time has arrived, with East West currently marketing an 11-story office building for the parcel. Here’s a GoogleEarth aerial image with the site outlined, and a street-level view:

16 Wewatta would include underground parking, ground-floor lobby and retail spaces facing 16th Street, two levels of parking, and eight floors of office space totaling roughly 200,000 square feet. Like its cousin at 16th and Chestnut, 16 Wewatta is currently in the concept design stage. Consequently, the following images, provided courtesy of East-West Partners and their design partner klipp architecture, are very preliminary in nature and subject to change.

The first image is the ground-floor site plan and the second image is the view of the 16th and Wewatta corner of the building:

East West Partners will continue to refine the building program and design while marketing the project to prospective tenants. We’ll post more on this project as it develops.

Coming soon to a Millennium Bridge near you… 16 Chestnut!

16 Chestnut is East-West Partners‘ proposed office tower at 16th Street and Chestnut Place that will anchor the fourth and final corner to Denver’s Millennium Bridge.

Way back in 2000, when Denver’s Central Platte Valley was just beginning its transition from industrial wasteland to hip urban neighborhood, the Millennium Bridge’s dramatic 200-foot tall mast stood alone as a symbol of the area’s potential as Downtown’s newest urban district. Shortly thereafter, the Park Place and Promenade Lofts buildings joined the bridge as neighbors on its western corners, and now the DaVita building is wrapping up construction at the third corner. Once 16 Chestnut is built, the Millennium Bridge’s destiny as an iconic public space embraced by contemporary development will be complete. From an urban morphological perspective, the bridge will go from being the figure surrounded by open ground to being, in a way, the ground surrounded by many figures (that’s for my planner/architect geek friends!). Whatever your perspective, this is an exciting milestone for the Union Station area.

Here’s the scoop on 16 Chestnut:

It’s a 320,000 square foot, 18-story, 240-foot-high office tower located on the rectangular parcel bounded by 16th Street/Millennium Bridge, Chestnut Place, and 17th Street. The site is surrounded by the new Mall Shuttle loop at the Union Station light rail station. Here are two views of the site:

The development is currently in the concept design stage. Therefore, please note that all of the following images, provided courtesy of East-West Partners and their design partner klipp architecture, are very preliminary in nature and subject to change. Nevertheless, these renderings do give you a general sense of the mass and scale of the proposed building.

The general building program includes a level of underground parking, ground floor retail and entry, a second-level lobby that includes a cool walkway that spans across the mall shuttle lane and connects to the Millennium Bridge (a pedestrian bridge to a pedestrian bridge!), a few more levels of parking, and about a dozen or so floors of office space. Here’s a conceptual ground-floor site plan and building section/stacking plan—again, very much subject to change:

Finally, how about a couple of building concept renderings:

First, the view from 17th and Chestnut, showing the building’s unique helical parking garage ramps:

Next, the view from 16th and Chestnut, showing how the building spans across the Mall Shuttle lane plus the pedestrian connection to the Millennium Bridge:

East-West Partners is now actively marketing the building to prospective tenants, and the design will be refined as marketing efforts continue. More information on this exciting addition to Denver’s Union Station district will be forthcoming.

The DaVita Headquarters building is beginning to make its full presence in the area. The crane has been taken down, the facade is climbing up the building day by day, and you can begin to see the real shape of this building (not to mention a nice slanted roof).

Looking directly at the front of the project from 16th Street, you can see the nice seamless glass wall, matching its neighbor building as well as some other buildings in the area. On the other side, facing 16th Street directly, it looks like there will be a complete wall of glass as the facade. Neat!

On to the back side, you have a nice slanted rooftop and a great looking backdrop to the rail tracks. On the right, you can see how DaVita and its neighbor (1900 16th Street) have very similar facades. Having the two buildings so close together prevents any clash and is easy on the eyes. The slanted roof also gives Denver something it hasn’t seen much in the past.

It’s always nice seeing other construction projects around you when taking pictures. From the Millennium Bridge, you can see 2020 Lawrence beginning to poke out. That’s its red crane and a concrete pump. Soon you will be able to see this project from the bridge!