A new hotel is coming to Downtown Denver’s booming Union Station district.
Denver-based Focus Property Group is planning to build a 12-story Hilton Garden Inn on their property at 20th Street and Chestnut Place. The new hotel will have an L-shaped footprint that wraps around the historic Denver Hose Company No. 1 building that will be fully restored and incorporated as part of the project. Here’s a Google Earth aerial on which I’ve outlined the approximate location of the new hotel development:
The floors in the tower’s base will contain the lobby and registration areas, banquet and meeting rooms, a fitness center, and other hotel amenities. The tower’s upper floors will contain approximately 200 hotel rooms. Parking will be accommodated on two underground levels, and the hotel will also include a swimming pool and a rooftop lounge. Here is a rendering of the preliminary design, courtesy of JG Johnson Architects:
A really exciting component of this development is the restoration of the historic Denver Hose Company No. 1 building, which sits right at the corner of 20th and Chestnut. Built in 1883, the small 3,224 square foot structure served the Denver Fire Department until the early 1920s, after which it became a print shop and later on a welding shop. The building has been vacant and deteriorating for years, but in order for a full restoration and reuse to be economically viable, it had to be included as part of a larger project. Fortunately, that time has finally arrived. The Hilton Garden Inn’s restaurant will make its home in the historic building.
Here are a few photos from my recent tour of the site, thanks to Josh from Focus Properties. First, the outside of the Hose Company No. 1 building:
The Denver Hose Company No. 1 building is a designated Denver Historic Landmark, so the city’s Landmark Preservation Commission must give its approval to the project. So far, the LPC has approved the mass and scale of the new tower, with additional approvals for both the new construction and the restoration of the historic building still to come. The inside of the old building is currently kind of dark and scary, but one day in the near future it will be a beautiful, light-filled restaurant space.
A non-historic building, currently occupied by Home Run Self Storage, is also present on the site. The part of this non-historic building next to the historic Hose Company building will be demolished to make way for the new Hilton Garden Inn and its porte-cochere, while the part closer the middle of the block will remain on an interim basis and be leased as office space. Focus Property Group, which owns the entire block except for the Xcel Energy electric substation and a few slivers of right-of-way owned by the city near the railroad tracks, will ultimately build three projects on the block, all facing Chestnut Place. After the Hilton Garden Inn, the second project would occupy roughly the middle third of the block and would replace the remaining part of the non-historic building. One concept for the second project that Focus is considering is to build another hotel that could share the porte-cochere with the Hilton Garden Inn. The third project, perhaps an office building, would occupy the larger rectangular site at the 19th Street corner.
The proposed Hilton Garden Inn project schedule calls for the (partial) demolition of the Home Run Self Storage building this coming spring 2015, with construction on the hotel and restoration of the historic building getting underway by summer 2015. Completion of the project is targeted for late 2016.
We’ll keep you updated on this exciting project as the hotel design is refined and we get closer to construction!
Very cool! I’ve been wondering about this tract. Perfect scale for the neighborhood, nice compliment the vertically-challenged Alta City House and 20th & Chestnut projects. Great that they’ve incorporated the Hose Co. Building into the concept! When the East-Line opens in 2016 the demand will definitely be there for Hotel space.
Still wondering about the rest of the “L” block just north of the Wewatta Pavillion!
Very exciting news. Thanks for the update!
I remember back in the late 90s (when things were slowly beginning to take off in Ballpark neighborhood across 20th St.) wondering if that small building might ever be saved. There was a ferocious-looking/sounding guard dog in the building (which was secured behind a chain-link fence). So this has come full circle, happily! Thanks once again, Ken.
Great news! Funny, I was just looking at a google map of this site yesterday and wondering what was to come. It seems like a bit of an odd place for a hotel, but I like the design and the restoration of the DHB.
And to echo Keith, I’m so happy to see it’ll being built a little taller than it’s neighbors. Hopefully the other two buildings will have some height as well.
An odd location, perhaps, but the hotel will be able to advertise “easy access to/from I-25” to its guests arriving by car, in fact the easiest access of any downtown hotel.
Yes, easy access from the freeway, and many guests staying for baseball games too.
Also a 5 min. walk to the train station, important for business travelers coming/going to the airport. With a over a million SF of office space either already built or under construction in the Union Station area there will be increased demand for hotel rooms.
I wonder what is planned for the rest of the site between this and 19th?
Fantastic!
I am so excited for this project if for no other reason than the restoration of the Denver Hose Company building. I have always loved its beautiful brickwork and imagined it as a cool restaurant and/or bar. So glad to see that idea come to fruition.
I’m not sure whether it is the extra 20 or 30 years this building has on some of the other old buildings in Denver or the fact that it was one of Denver’s first fire stations that make it “worth saving” but I find it somewhat bewildering that the treatment it is about to receive cannot, for some odd reason, be applied to other old buildings in Denver (i.e. Z Block). The wrapping of a cool new modern building around the historic brick building will be stunning and completely worth the extra cost of restoration. I know some people on this website have disagreed with me often about this and taken the stance that some of these small, old, 1-2 story brick buildings are not economically viable for Denver’s growing downtown but this project simply exemplifies the idea that adaptive reuse and infill should always be pursued instead of blind demolition of buildings.
I know Focus Property Group may not have had much of a choice in the restoration of the Denver Hose Company building as it is an Historic Landmark but I still applaud them for not shying away from its incorporation into a beautiful new development. Here’s to hoping this starts a trend and other developers take notice that existing structures don’t always have to be torn down for new development and growth to take place!
You mean asides from the far larger, but younger, building that will be torn down for this project as well?
Paul, I personally would advocate that no buildings get torn down. It’s simply not very environmentally friendly. And there are many empty lots and surface parking areas that should be built upon before demolishing existing buildings. We have seen that even one story warehouse type buildings can be transformed into useful and interesting buildings such as in the Ballpark and RiNo neighborhoods. The building that is going to be torn down here is no exception and could be converted into something cool as well. But alas, the building is simply not very old or architecturally interesting so I suppose I must choose my battles.
I think that everyone who frequents these blogs would far prefer that the parking lots get filled in first. Empty lots contribute nothing to the urban experience at the pedestrian level. Unfortunately, those lots are owned by private entities who, I am sure, are profiting enough from them to make redeveloping them very difficult unless it is a very high density development. Until the profitability of owing a parking lot declines, say via establishing more frequent and reliable mass transit that is convenient for commuting around most of the city, making those lots disappear will be a slow process. Unfortunately.
Speaking of brickwork, did you notice that the hotel takes a hint of the its style and incorporates it into its own?
And yes, ZOG, I did! It is so subtle some might not notice but it looks incredible. I hope that gets incorporated into the final project and not just the rendering. Perhaps even more of it would be beneficial. Either way, great blending of modern and traditional brickwork.
Very cool!