The first phase of Campus Village Apartments, completed in late 2006, provides 685 beds in 230 dorm-like apartments in a 5-story building located adjacent to the I-25/Auraria Parkway interchange just west of the Auraria campus. The project was developed by Urban Ventures, LLC (Highland Bridge Lofts, Monarch Mills, Fire Clay Lofts). For a fact-packed PDF summary of the project, click here. Also, here is the site plan and a photo of the completed Phase 1:

Big plans are in the works for Phase 2!

The second phase will be located south of Phase 1 and will cover all of the land west of 5th Street and south of Larimer Street extended. Phase 2 will include nine buildings ranging from 4 to 14 stories in height.

As part of the West Corridor light rail line construction, the Auraria West Campus station will be relocated slightly north of its current location and a section of the Central Platte Valley light rail line will also be realigned. Campus Village Phase 2 will be located on the west side of the new Auraria West Campus station. It is also possible that future development could span over the light rail tracks! Here’s the Phase 2 site plan and an annotated aerial photo I created to help you get oriented:

Now for some renderings. Here’s a view of the whole project looking northeast along the Larimer Street axis. The existing Campus Village Apartments Phase 1 is in the lower left corner:

Note that this image shows not only the light rail trains coming from underneath the buildings, but it also shows a street car running down Larimer, a recommendation from the recently completed Downtown Area Plan. In the background are some other improvements included in the recently completed Auraria Campus Master Plan, such as the relocated athletic fields and the extension of Larimer across the campus. Here’s an image from the Auraria Campus Master Plan (credit: Sasaki and StudioINSITE), also looking northeast down the Larimer Street axis, that shows the Campus Village development in the foreground and how it relates to the rest of the campus. The building configurations for the Campus Village Phase 2 shown in the Auraria plan are a little different than the actual Campus Village site plan, but conceptually they are consistent with each other:

Here’s an artist’s view looking southwest along Larimer at the plaza where the street car line and light rail interface:

and here’s a view looking down Lawrence:

Campus Village Phase 2 is still in the early planning stages and a specific construction timeline has not yet been finalized. However, RTD plans to have the West Corridor light rail line (and the new Auraria West Campus station) completed by 2012, so the plan is to have the buildings that span over the tracks, as well as the buildings located west of the tracks, completed by then. Some of the other buildings shown in the site plan are conceptual at this stage and the land where they are shown is not owned by the development team.

Credit for the plans and renderings shown above go to: Mithun, AR7 Architects, and Dennis Allain Architecture Design Illustration LLC.

Along with the new Auraria Science Building currently under construction and some other projects in the works, the future for the Auraria campus as a true urban campus and an integrated downtown district is looking great!