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:

2015-06-05_1144-fifteenth-site1

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.

2015-06-05_1144-fifteenth-site2

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:

2015-06-05_1144-fifteenth-site3

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!