Lower Downtown is clearly the hot spot for new office development in Denver. This week we’ve had formal announcements of two major infill office projects in LoDo: 1515 Wynkoop by Hines, and 1400 Wewatta by Opus Northwest (see blogs below). Today, the Denver Post‘s Margaret Jackson breaks the news that Kennedy Associates is planning a 300,000 SF office building just a few short blocks from the Hines and Opus projects at the corner of Delgany and 15th in the booming LoDo/Central Platte Valley area. Here’s the article (LoDo Getting Three More Office Buildings).
The Kennedy project would be located across Delgany from the Gates HQ building, and across 15th from the ArtHouse Townhomes and the new Museum of Contemporary Art/Denver site. Kennedy Associates purchased the entire block bounded by 15th, Delgany, 16th, and the railroad tracks earlier this year. I covered the news in my blog of January 20. The proposed office building will cover a portion of this block, with the remainder reserved for another office tower, ground-floor retail, and a major parking garage.
As the article notes, these three proposed office projects total approximately 860,000 SF of space. If you add in the 250,000 SF currently under construction in the new EPA Building and the 50,000 SF of office space planned in the proposed Sugar3 building, that totals about 1.1 million SF of office space planned or under construction in LoDo/CPV, about as much space found in Denver’s tallest skyscraper, Republic Plaza, or almost the equivalent of two of the never-built 42-story 1100 15th Street tower, pictured below:
So, which would you prefer: Two, 40-story office towers built on undeveloped lots in, say, Upper Downtown at 17th & California and 17th & Welton, or the LoDo/CPV office projects discussed above? I say give me the LoDo/CPV projects, because five parking lots removed is better for our Downtown than just two.
