It’s hard to say if the big hole in the ground at 14th and Stout is still the demolition of the old Motor Hotel Garage foundation, or if excavation for the foundation of the new 17-story, 403-room Embassy Suites hotel has begun. Let’s hope for the latter. But, as we wait for some kind of official announcement that construction has indeed begun (emails I’ve sent to the developer have never been acknowledged), I thought I’d post a rendering of the base of the building. This comes from Denver Cityscape:
Boy, that’ll be a tight corner there for pedestrians and light rail. Fortunately, RTD rarely, if ever, has used the short segment of emergency track that would allow a southbound train on Stout to loop back onto 14th Street to become a northbound train again. Pedestrians at that corner should still easily see a train approaching them from the Convention Center station.
Despite concern for vehicle/ped/train conflicts, this area is slowly starting to evolve from a parking lot wasteland into an intensive urban setting appropriate for a downtown. The Spire and the Embassy are the first wave. Hopefully, the two remaining empty lots facing the convention center at Stout and California will be developed in a second wave once the current economic turmoil settles down.
Hate to spoil it Ken, but those are still Alpine vehicles down there. Some strange demolition that takes nearly a year! They must have found the entrance to the lizard men lair or something.
Every week I look out and see the Spire add a floor. And the pit across the street do nothing.
Compared to the old rendering, this building seems a bit nicer and more varied at street level, which I'm getting more and more convinced is the most important thing a building can have. I wish they'd push it a little bit more and break up the street-level space to a greater extent, even if it was at the expense of the building's symmetry. Hopefully they don't leave awful barren areas in the back and sides of the building like at the Hyatt. All of these hotels are great, unless they completely ignore the street like half of the Hyatt does.
Also, is this building a lot smaller than in the old rendering? The previous iteration seemed gigantic while this one seems half the size… hmm.
As long as I don't get hit by a train when I walk by it three years from now, I really like this building.
Ryan that's what happens when a building takes up an entire city block.
As far as the hole, I believe it is still demolition and it looks like the hole has gotten deeper and wider.
Saint – You are correct, however, they appear to be about to begin digging caissons. I can't quite figure them out – they have a lot of rebar in that hole.
On Sunday I rode my bike down the alley behind the hole (if you can call it an alley, with just one building on it and everything else flat asphalt) and not only are the old foundation walls of the garage still there, but the hole is still just garage-sized–there's no extension of the hole to the 14th Street end of the block.
On another note, I'm awfully glad for this rendering, because it shows that the red parts are brick and not stucco. Synthetic stucco is wrong for downtown buildings–it looks suburban.
I really like the design and color scheme of that rendering. And it's always fun when a light rail train whizzes close to a building, though it can be dizzying at the same time.
I went by yesterday and it looked like they had started to dig it out a little bit. There are two caisson drills on site (which I can't imagine are demolition related).
It sure looks like a full on construction site to me.
Nick, those drills have been sitting there for about a month. Every now and then they raise up, then go back horizontal. This has got to be the strangest demo/construction project downtown. It looks like they're searching for Hoffa's body more than trying to demo or build anything.
I was thinking of how cool it would be if they found Jimmy Hoffa's body there. Imagine "Hotel Hoffa" or "Hoffa Suites" by Hilton/Embassy.