My last post about the Cosmopolitan Club, the 7-story assisted-living senior housing project planned for the corner of Little Raven and 15th in Downtown Denver’s Central Platte Valley, was back on November 26, 2006. At that time, the developers were announcing a February 2007 groundbreaking. February has come and gone and the project never started construction. The reason? The neighbors in some of the adjacent condo buildings were upset about the fortress-like nature of the project’s design, particularly where the new facility would come within 20 feet of the existing Riverfront Park condo buildings. The neighbors made their concerns known to the Denver Planning Board, which ultimately voted against approving the project. For more details, here’s an article by the Denver Post‘s Margaret Jackson from January 4: Planning Board Says No to Project Design
The developer agreed to work with the neighborhood and refine the project design to address their objections. At a neighborhood meeting last week, the developer revealed a massing model of the new design. Here’s a photo (left) of the model presented at the meeting, courtesy of the Urban Brain website. On the right is a rendering of the original design:
The new design eliminates the building “bridge” over Bassett Circle closest to the existing condo buildings (the building bridge over Bassett Circle along Little Raven remains), along with some additional building stepbacks. The two white building models with the blue stickies on top are the existing Riverfront Tower and Promenade Loft buildings. In the background on the left is a model of the original design.
The redesign seems like a good compromise to me. The elimination of the building bridge closest to the existing buildings creates a slightly larger and more friendly open space in the interior of the block. Bassett Circle becomes a public “room” surrounded on all sides by development, with that development consisting of not only the Cosmopolitan Club, but the two existing buildings as well. The original design framed that interior open space exclusively with Cosmopolitan Club buildings, blocking the Riverfront Tower and the Promenade Lofts from visually enjoying the sunny interior open space, and casting Bassett Circle in between them in a perpetual shadow.
From what I’ve heard, the redesign concept was well received and will probably allow the project to receive approval in the future. Several months will be required, however, for the architects to revise all their drawings, pushing construction back to the end of the year.
Speaking of the Urban Brain… if you haven’t checked out this site yet, you should. It’s an interesting blog and wiki run by a guy named Mike who lives in the Central Platte Valley area. Not only does he cover urban development issues, but restaurants, entertainment, and other happenings in Downtown Denver as well.
