Let’s take a look at how things are coming along at 3500 Rockmont, a 16-building, 390-unit apartment complex under construction next to City of Cuernavaca Park on the old Mail-Well Envelope factory site in Downtown Denver’s Prospect district. Our only post on 3500 Rockmont was back in January 2014 when we announced the project. As you would expect, a lot of progress has been made on the development since then. Here are a few photos:
It’s sort of difficult to photograph this project given the amount of land that it covers and how little of it is accessible at the moment from Rockmont Drive. So let’s take a peek from above, thanks to this October 2014 Google Earth aerial:
Clearly, the buildings closer to the main entry (from where I took the photos above) are further along than those by the railroad tracks. It looks like 3500 Rockmont’s buildings will welcome their first residents in phases over the course of the next several months.
missed opportunity to be special.
I believe residents have already started moving in. I heard an advert on Pandora for this place (called West End) offering free rent for the rest of December.
Thie city should reroute the multi-use trail next to the rail lines and away from I-25, because who wants to walk or ride next to the highway. That would then leave that section between this ‘under-development’ and the highway for something more dense. At least there seems to be a decent amount of brick used.
I love the fact that this infill project will add a great deal of population density to an area previously occupied by one large industrial building. The dynamic of all these new residents will have a strong effect on Prospect. I can only assume that many of these occupants, particularly children, won’t be able to resist walking across the railroad tracks to the east to access the Railyard Marketplace and to the south to access the greater Prospect Neighborhood. Hopefully, the city will see the need to install pedestrian bridges linking this area to its surroundings.
It seems like an odd place to live. I wouldn’t like having I-25 as my view and all the noise.
Between all of the activity and construction on Platte Street, this would be a great time to rationalize the routing of the 10 and send it down Platte to the Rockmount turnaround. Otherwise, this place really has just terrible connectivity.
I looks like a very suburban style complex, but it fills a tough site and being on the park is a great amenity for the residents
Imagine how different we’d react to this project had the developer done something really special: a single, giant oval-shaped building with a wonderful courtyard inside for residents, and parking underneath. Instead: welcome to Broomfield!
I agree that something better should ultimately go here, but I’m less than convinced that an Apple Computer Headquarters-style spaceship of a building (https://concreteaspirations.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/apple-spaceship-hd.png) is ever a good urban solution.
This land could easily have been subdivided and parceled out instead as a proper urban neighborhood in keeping with everything else that has been developed in the CPV. If you count the land that they didn’t build on all the way up to I-25, this site is nearly half the size of the Riverfront Park development; roughly 1,300′ X 750′, or the area from 20th to 17th, Little Raven to the CML. The site isn’t even as isolated as it looks – better pedestrian connections across to Lower Highland or over to Prospect would largely solve that issue.
Unfortunately the timing probably just wasn’t right for this kind of development solution with all of the infrastructure it requires. Oh well… the development of the city is an ever-evolving process. Garden-style apartments don’t have the same kind of lifespan that other building forms do. Given a couple decades, this could become an infill site once again.
I agree with you, Ted. The investment needed to make this area more connected (either by the city or the developer), could probably not be financially justified given the current economic environment. However, the issue I have with this development and others like it (Alta City House, Block 32 at RiNo) is that the developers could just develop a portion of the site with relatively low intensity uses (like they are doing) and then develop the remainder at higher intensities as the economic environment warrants it: take a phased-in approached. Of course, that would take longer, which would leave them with an asset that is not making money. That may be why a developer may want to just build something and then move on. Which is their right, but it would be nice if more developers were willing to engage in long-term visions.
I love that the development and density are being developed in the area. However, architecturally, why are the all the buildings the same exact footprint and design? Why not mix it up? When all the building are the exact same design, that is no different than the awful cookie cutter residential buildings in China, 1950’s eastern Europe or suburban Phoenix. Its my experience and observation that density without variety, mixed scales and variety is simply suburban-ism on steroids.