Our seven-week road trip was fun, but it’s always good to get home. It’s time to get back to business.
In spite of losing about two weeks to cold weather since early January, the Kiewit crew has made amazing progress. In this blog, I will concentrate on the underground bus terminal. Over the next few days I will also post updates on the light rail station, the temporary Amtrak terminal, and some projects on the periphery including the new DaVita building.
In the overall view of the bus terminal below, notice that the gap in the wall through which the crane traveled has been filled in, and the roof is nearly complete. Within a few days, the last of the roof girders will be in place, and the large crane will depart until it returns to work on the other half of the building next year.
The bus entrance and exit ramp is starting to take shape. The green slab in the photo below is rebar. This ramp will connect with 18th Street one block west of Chestnut Place. In fact, 18th Street will dead-end into this ramp. There will be second entrance and exit ramp at the opposite end of the terminal immediately behind Union Station.
There are two interesting things to see in the next photo. Workers are applying water proofing material to the roof of the bus terminal, and three of the eventual seven skylights are visible. As I mentioned several months ago, the grade of the entire project area will be increased several feet using the soil that is staged on site. Comparing the height of the workers with the height of the skylight structures, it appears that the structures are about 10-12 feet high. Once the grade is increased, almost all of the structure will be buried. Renderings of the skylights are here and here on the DUSPA website. And here is a view from the inside.
The most prominent above ground features of the bus terminal will be the air intake and two outlet towers that will be near the light rail station. In the photo below, you can see the foundations for those three towers. Renderings of the finished towers are here and here on the DUSPA website. I took the second photo below on December 16, 2010. It isn’t a great vantage point to see what is under the towers, but it’s the best I have.
I uploaded 19 photos to our Denver Union Station page at JobSiteVistor.com. Several of them will give you a peek at my upcoming blogs that I mentioned above.
Nice to see you back. I had started missing your regular updates!
I always enjoy your photos and explanations of the progress being made. Missed your usual updates while you were gone…welcome back!
David and Carol, thanks. It’s good to be back.