As promised, I traveled over to Auraria to go check out how things are coming along. If you recall in my last update, there are two projects on the campus: The Metro State Student Success Building, and the Hotel Learning Center.
First, the Student Success Building. It appears the structure has topped out.
Workers were very busy today. There was constant activity at the site.
From a little bit of a different angle, you can see how long this building is. This will add a lot to the street-scape on Auraria Parkway.
The Hotel Learning Center was very hard to get to. It was blocked off with tall fences on all sides. I was able to zoom in a little and get this from the top of a parking garage. As you can see, there is a red tower crane up and this project is moving forward at full force.
In this bonus photo, you can see DaVita starting to break through the Lower Downtown / Central Platte Valley skyline.
When I was taking pictures on top of an Auraria parking garage, I looked around and counted 12 cranes. That’s a lot of development going on around the city, which I will be covering. Throughout the next few weeks we will be looking at some of the projects that have been regularly updated on here and also some smaller projects in Downtown’s surrounding neighborhoods that have yet to get an update.
This is great, thanks for the update.
Do you know if final renderings were ever released of the Student Success building? Also, if you look at the third photo (the one where the building looks long) it appears that a giant part of it on the far left side of the building cantilevers out from the building. Is that an optical illusion in this photo, or is that part of the plan for the building?
Ryan, it’s not an illusion. Here’s a link to a previous blog showing the latest designs: https://denverinfill.com/2010/05/metro-state-student-success-building-design.html
Awesome, thanks Ken — I don’t know how I missed seeing those renderings.
The building seemed pretty controversial among Denver Infill readers, but I think the building will be a nice addition to the campus. I like that the Auraria campus is really following through on their relatively aggressive plan to fill in the somber and sometimes desolate campus of old. We may not love all the buildings individually, but this is a great thing for the city, if only for two things:
1) Converting the commuter campus into a more traditional college campus, attracting a different type of student.
2) Pushing toward Speer to better connect to the city, and to create an urban wall along Speer. If city-side Speer-facing projects like the expanded Boettcher Concert Hall ever come to fruition, driving (or walking) along Speer will be a drastically different experience than it is today.