The panel (held at the Denver Athletic Club downtown) will focus on the corridor and the land use plans, projects, and impacts associated with the new transit line. The tour will then trace the route of the West Corridor line, with a stop and tour of the new St. Anthony’s hospital next to the Federal Center station in Lakewood. The tour will continue on to Golden, where we’ll see many of the great infill projects in Downtown Golden, ending with a reception on a terrace along the banks of Clear Creek.

For more details about the event and to register, please go to this page at the ULI-Colorado website. Tickets are going fast and there are only a few seats left for the tour portion.

By the way, you’ve probably seen all the West Corridor construction activity along Sixth Avenue, with the dramatic bridge over the highway by the Federal Center and the flyover at Indiana Street. But now the construction is closing in on Downtown Denver. Here’s a photo I took yesterday of a new light rail bridge just south of Colfax across from the Auraria West Campus station:

The West Corridor light rail line will open in 2013.

In the first photo above, you can see that six sections of the floor have been poured, bringing the total to date to about 7,000 cubic yards of concrete.  The seventh pour is in progress right now.  As you see in the second photo above, the first two forms for the concrete walls were put in place on Thursday afternoon and more may be added today.  Assembled forms are laying along the side of the hole.  It seems to take a few days to build one form but only a few hours to install it.

Also of note is significant, new work on the light rail passenger platform.  The first photo below shows the platform canopy at the existing passenger station between Wewatta Street and Union Station.  The second photo shows 14 foundations that will support a similar platform canopy at the new light rail station between the Consolidate Main Line (freight tracks) and the bus terminal.  Placement of the station is now obvious for the first time.  About half of it will be in the 17th Street view plane, and the other half will extend behind Glass House.  For the sake of comparison, there are 13 posts supporting the existing canopy so it seems that the new canopy will be slightly longer than the old one.  Here’s a peek at what the new canopy might look like.  From a distance of 200 feet above, it appears that each foundation is about 10 feet square and about three feet thick.  If a bus terminal can float, I guess a light rail canopy can fly; therefore, you need hefty foundations for both.

Please see our Denver Union Station page at JobSiteVistor.com for 20 photos added this week.

The groundbreaking ceremony was held this morning just south of the main terminal (at the site of the future south terminal and DIA rail station) and was very well attended. Dignitaries in attendance included Senator Mark Udall, Representatives Diana DeGette (D-CO) and Ed Perlmutter (D-CO), Aurora Mayor Ed Tauer, Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper, RTD General Manager Phil Washington, as well as a few RTD Board members. Everyone said a few (some more than others) kind words about the project, the process, as well as touted the potential and expectation that the train will forever transform how visitors and residents alike move around our great city.

 
The East Corridor will cost about $1 billion , the most expensive (but not the longest) in the FasTracks network. Construction activities such as utility relocations will be occurring over the next few months along the corridor with major construction activities getting underway about this time next year. The corridor will be open for service in early 2016. As mentioned in an earlier post, the project is expected to create about 5,000 jobs (directly and indirectly) during the height of construction in 2012-2013.

RTD and DTP had a pretty cool setup to avoid the awkward and cliché “golden shovel” routine at groundbreakings – they had 6 backhoes lined up behind and around the main stage to officially kick off construction. That made for a very cool background and photo opportunity as well!

It’s great to see more progress on FasTracks – especially to see the corridor that most people talk about finally get underway. Plans for a train between DIA and downtown were drawn up along with the airport 15-20 years ago - better late than never!

If you were within a mile or two of Civic Center on Sunday morning, you probably heard a very loud bang at about 8:01 AM. That was the explosive “knock-down” (as opposed to an implosion) of what remained of the state’s 1970s modernist judicial building. Over the past month and a half, the Colorado Judicial Building had been undergoing a methodical deconstruction. Rather than ripping the building down outright, the building was “deskinned” of its light gray granite facade panels—part of the project’s recycling plan—which will be used within the new complex’s landscaped plaza areas. Much of the rest of building’s elements were also removed for recycling, leaving by Sunday morning a fragile shell of a building that was poised to be toppled by a few well-placed explosives. Even after Sunday’s explosion, much of the remaining rubble will be recycled.

Here are some DenverInfill photos that document the deconstruction of the Colorado Judicial Building.

July 5, 2010:

July 25, 2010:

Demolition Day minus 1 (that’d be Saturday):

The explosive knock-down Sunday morning, August 15, 2010 (courtesy of CBS 4 Denver):

The aftermath - later Sunday morning about 11:00 AM:

And finally, here’s the latest rendering view from the State Capitol (click/zoom to greatly embiggen) of the future Ralph L. Carr Colorado Judicial Complex:

The Ralph L. Carr Judicial Complex is being funded through user fees backed by federal government stimulus bonds, and not through Colorado taxpayer dollars. The complex is scheduled to be completed in 2013.

The photo below is a close shot of the pouring process.  The vertical, black tube coming down from the center is the hose of the concrete pumper that is behind me.  Notice the worker in the blue hard hat.  He is controlling the movement of the boom with a joy stick on a control panel at his waist.  The panel is supported by straps around his shoulders and back.

Below is a photo of the machine you can see in the photo above.  It is used to spread and level the concrete.  There is a plow of the side opposite the operator.  Notice the two vertical rods on each side of the plow.  At the top of those rods are GPS devices that enable the operator to level the concrete at a precise elevation.

This photo of concrete trucks helps to give some scale to the shoring wall.

Here are a couple of shots of workers in a sea of rebar.  The photos demonstrate the depth of the floor and the density of the rebar.  In the photo on the left, you can see dark-colored (raw steel) rebar along the bottom.  The top layer of rebar and the vertical supports are coated with epoxy which makes them green.  Notice in the foreground of the photo on the right how the rebar is tied at the intersections.   That work is done by 8-10 people bending at the waist all day.  (Talk about flexible hamstrings!)

While most of the work is focused on the bus terminal floor, other workers are preparing for the walls.  This photo shows two forms staged along the side of the hole.  Several other forms have been built and are staged elsewhere on the site.  For scale, notice the portable toilet in the background.

Over the weekend, I posted 16 more photos to our Denver Union Station page at JobSiteVistor in addition to four that I posted during the middle of last week.  All of the newest ones were taken from inside the jobsite.

And, finally, here’s a guy who is pretending to be important (me).

Yesterday, RTD issued the offical Notice to Proceed to their selected Eagle Project concessionaire –  Denver Transit Partners (DTP) - for Phase 1 of the Eagle Project which includes the East Corridor, Commuter Rail Maintenance Facility (located near 48th and Fox), new commuter rail train cars, as well as final design work on both the Gold Line and Northwest Rail Electrified Segment (NWES). The Notice to Proceed came following the agreement of a $1.649 billion construction deal. Phase 2 includes the Gold Line to Wheat Ridge and Arvada as well as the NWES to South Westminster at 71st and Lowell. Phase 2’s NTP is expected as some point next year as RTD works to secure Federal funds through a Full Funding Grant Agreement.

Even better news, especially in these tough economic times, the Eagle Project is expected to provide an estimated 5,400 jobs at the peak of construction (2012 & 2013) – this would include direct and indirect employment numbers.

RTD and DTP signed a 34-year contract in which RTD will make annual payments to DTP for their investment in addition to operating and maintaining the corridor(s). For more info on DTP, check out their website at www.denvertransitpartners.com. DTP is lead by the Fluor Corporation of Irving, Texas, and Macquerie Group of Sydney, Australia. Other team members include Balfour Beatty Rail, ACI, and Ames Construction. More information on the Eagle Project can be found at http://www.rtd-fastracks.com/ep3_2.

Groundbreaking on the East Corridor is planned for Thursday, August 26 at DIA.

This is the first pour of concrete for the bus terminal floor.  It is something akin to a practice run in preparation for a larger scale effort on Friday.  As I write this, a second concrete pumper is being set up on the opposite side of the hole.

I expect to get some on-site, ground-level photos on Friday and post another blog around the middle of the day.  In the meantime, you can keep up to date on this week’s activity by checking our Denver Union Station page at JobSiteVistor.com.  I will post more photos throughout the rest of the week.

Multiple flatbed tractor trailers show up each day with loads of rebar.  Much of it is 60-foot long #10.  At 1.25 inches in diameter and 4.3 pounds per foot, each piece weighs 258 pounds.  Now I know why it takes three guys to carry one piece.

After the rebar is unloaded and staged, the crane “flies” it into the specific work spot at a rate of 2.5 tons per flight.  The base level of rebar is the typical steel color.  Vertical pieces of green rebar are shaped like an upside-down V.  Straight, green pieces are tied to the top of the vertical pieces to form a giant three-dimensional grid. The sheets of membrane that are being installed over the mud slab and under the rebar will adhere to the bottom of the new concrete floor making the terminal water proof.  Here are a couple of photos.

Starting as early as next week, concrete will be poured in 15 sections of varying lengths and widths.  Each of the 15 sections will require 100-140 truck loads of concrete to fill it to its full depth of four feet.   That’s about 2,000 trucks of concrete!  The floor needs to be four feet thick so it can bear the weight of the buses and the structure above, and so the bus terminal won’t float once the dewatering system is dismantled and the water table resumes its normal level.  (I guess if you can float an aircraft carrier, you can float a bus terminal.)  Roadways in and around the construction site are being beefed up and dressed, presumably in anticipation of heavy concrete truck traffic.

Construction of the bus terminal walls is expected to start this month.  In fact, in the upper left corner of the close-up photo above, you can see vertical rebar rising above the floor level.

Remember, this is only half of the eventual bus terminal.  Excavation has not yet started on the Union Station side of Wewatta Street.

If you want to express your opinion of the bridge formerly known at Kinetic Plaza, you should attend the Planning Board meeting tomorrow (August 4) at 3:00pm at the Webb Municipal Office Building, Room 4.F.6.  Here is a link to my blog and your comments on the topic.

Please see our Denver Union Station page at JobSiteVistor.com for 12 new photos this week.

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!

And then there’s FasTracks, another one of the most important, strategic decisions Denver has ever made.

Now we find ourselves at a point in time when these two monumental civic ventures come together. Denver International Airport, meet FasTracks. Curt Fentress, meet Santiago Calatrava.

This is the concept for the East Corridor FasTracks transit station at DIA, with a 500-room Westin Hotel on top and an extension of the airport terminal in between. What it also represents is a great step forward for our city and its infrastructure to a world-class level. Image this, along with what’s taking place at Union Station, as the gateways welcoming the world to Denver. Quite profound, if you ask me, and something that I’m happy and proud to support as a Denver citizen.

For more information, check out the cool video animation and all the details about the new South Terminal Redevelopment program at DIA at the airport website.