Have you seen Block 162‘s Steel/Fontius/Sage building lately? It’s looking great. The building facade on the upper floors has been cleaned, repaired, and restored, and the leaky old windows replaced. Now, work is progressing on the ground floor, where decades ago the original exterior had been removed and replaced with “modern” storefronts.

Developer Evan Makovsky and the architects at klipp researched old drawings and photos of the Steel Building to learn what the original storefronts looked like, and the new ground-floor exterior is being built to match the original as best as possible. Here’s a look at the new storefronts going in (photo courtesy of Brice):

There’s a new (and wider) sidewalk along the Welton side of the building too.

Speaking of new sidewalks, the Urban Enthusiast over at the LiveDowntownDenver Blog did a post recently about the completed streetscape project along California Street in front of the Denver Dry building. I checked it out myself the other day and it looks very nice. With this streetscape project and the additional planters recently installed by the Downtown Denver Parntership, the walk between the Convention Center and the 16th Street Mall is about as spruced up as it can get, considering the several undeveloped lots still along the way.