It was about a year ago when we reported on a significant new office tower, 1144 Fifteenth, proposed by Hines for 15th Street between Arapahoe and Lawrence streets. Since then, the project has moved through the development review and approval process with the city while Hines and their architect, Pickard Chilton, have been working hard to refine the building’s program and design.
We’re happy to report that the official groundbreaking ceremony for 1144 Fifteenth is scheduled for Tuesday, June 9! DenverInfill will be there to take a few photos that we’ll share with you later that day. As the groundbreaking approaches, Hines is getting the site ready for construction as shown in the photos below.
The parking lot at the site has been closed and barricades and fencing are being installed:
Due to the necessary closure of the curb lane during construction, the protected bike lane and traffic lanes along 15th Street are being realigned to remain open. David at Streetsblog Denver has more on this topic here.
Next door, the side of the Four Seasons’ podium base facing the 1144 Fifteenth site was constructed as a blank wall, since that is where the Four Seasons and a future neighboring building would share a common wall. When the Four Seasons was built in the late 2000s, 1144 Fifteenth wasn’t an active project, so a grid of slightly protruding lines was added to the Four Seasons’ blank wall as a temporary architectural detail to make the blank wall a bit less, well… blank-looking. Now that 1144 Fifteenth is moving forward, those lines are being removed so that 1144 Fifteenth’s wall can adjoin the Four Seasons’ wall, as you can see in this photo I took on Wednesday:
On Monday, June 8, we will have a special 1144 Fifteenth Update #2 post where we will share with you a bunch of interesting facts and figures about the tower, as well as the official final project renderings straight from Hines!
June 5, 7:00 pm EDIT: Update #2 post just got moved up from Monday to tonight!
Ahhh beautiful story about the wall Ken. Four Seasons + 1144 = a match made in skyscraper heaven.
Did Hine’s own this property for a while or were they wanting to purchase it for this project?
Woohoo! (does a little dance)
Here’s a property owner who understands the real property concept of ‘highest and best use’ with a plan for up to three 600 feet tall high rise buildings on a city block. Kudos to the landowner. (As Four Seasons was being constructed, a second elevator core was ‘roughed in’ to ground level next door, providing easy startup should they decide to move forward with a 3rd tower.)
Is that for the second 4S tower? Do you have anymore info on that? All condos right?
It will be interesting to see if that moves forward now. I worked there when it first opened 2010 and they were having a really hard time selling condos that first year. Later, they cut the prices a considerable amount and sold out within just a few months. I’m pretty sure the building’s owners didn’t make as much off the residential portion as they wanted to.
But it’s a different economy right now and building another condo tower has to be awfully tempting.
Remember too that just because the foundation was put in does NOT mean anything is planned or imminent. The notorious Tabor 2 has had its foundation ready to go since the creation of the Tabor Center decades ago. Plans come and go over the years, usually changed dramatically from proposal to proposal. There’s no way to know what will be built next to Four Seasons or when, but I wouldn’t discount it as an eventuality, or think that poor performance during the 06 recession is an indication of the viability of a tower in that location. A ready made tower foundation seems almost too good to pass up. They may wait until a real estate cycle that supports condos is back in place, or they may just go with office or apartment (or another hotel), who knows?!
The condo price drop was a fluke if you ask me. Completely a symptom of the 06 recession/real estate bubble. This is over now and they would probably sell those condos for above asking price if they still had inventory. Unfortunately the supply is now gone, and nobody can secure financing to build more condos. I wouldn’t assume that this is a permanent situation, it’s just nobody knows how long it is going to last or what exactly will cause a shift in the market when a shift finally does come (and if history teaches us anything, it’s that the real estate market always does shift eventually).
The condos in 4 Seasons now ell for 7 figures. I agree a ready foundation is meaningless, but I think the key is finding the right price point. As Ryan says, they found it when they lowered the prices, and now there is a resale market. Denver is not Chicago, New York, or San Francisco, and cannot support those kind of prices. But it can support high enough prices for a smart developer to make money.
Regarding Tabor, it seems that property has just had unfortunate timing. The current owner bought just before the last recession, so they had huge paper losses to overcome. The same fate occurred when the property was originally developed – an economic bust in the middle of construction. I suspect the developers of 4 Seasons and 1144 are just luckier and perhaps better prepared. It does surprise me that downtown can absorb so much new office space in such a soft economy, but all of the smaller office projects have quickly been absorbed with near 100% occupancy, so that is an encouraging sign.
Would you say this is the first real commercial skyscraper Denver has seen built since the 1980’s?