The 34-story Confluence tower is now out of the ground! You heard that right! Construction commenced back in late 2014 and, as you can imagine, there is a lot of underground work to be done for a 34-story tower with structured parking that’s going up right along a park, next to a river.
Let’s get right to it. You see that concrete structure peeking out at the back of the site? That’s the main structure for the 34-story tower. The 6-story building, which will front 15th Street, is not out of the ground yet.
Taking a closer look at both the front and back of the site, we can clearly see that the foundation has gone in, the underground parking is almost topped off, and the main buildings are starting to rise.
Here we can see how close this tower is going to be to the river.
All of these close in photos give us a good idea of how far along construction is but what about the big picture showing the impact this tower is going to have? I have two photos showing that. Here is a ground level photo, looking at The Confluence, from 16th and Little Raven Street. In about a year’s time, you will see a 371-foot tower filling in this view.
From the sky, The Confluence will add a substantial amount of height to the Central Platte Valley skyline. Take the DaVita World Headquarters (blue glass building on the right), and add 10 more floors. That will roughly be the height of this tower.
Make sure you click the picture below so you can see high resolution version. In the center of the photo you will see the two white tower cranes for this project.
When finished, The Confluence will add 288 apartment units to the Central Platte Valley.
I can’t help but think this will become a for-sale condo building. The height, construction, and location seem to be a cut above most other apartments going up in the area. I would definitely love to own a place there!
You very well may be right about this one and I agree wit you owning a condo in that building would be cool. From what I understand a lot of these developers that are building apartments buildings right now, have certain clauses with their insurers that say if you convert before 8 years then your insurance becomes void, so we may not see things happen for 6-8 years depending upon the building and when it was completed. From what I’ve heard, a lot of the buildings in Cherry Creek being built by BMC Investments like Steele Creek were built with that intent.
I wonder if any of these developers are also betting that the law changes? It sounds like a change of that law is something that is in the works.
Actually BMC takes a long term position with their properties. While built to condo standards, BMC has no intention of converting.
Hi Ryan,
I’m a big fan of what you guys do, I’ve been reading the site for years and love the updates as Denver continues to grow into a city to be proud of! But as the Union Station/LoDo/RiNo neighborhoods develop, I’ve been dying to ask; why is there such a large variation in the heights of projects? How can Little Raven go from 6 stories to 32? Or, why isn’t Block Z taller than 5 and 6 stories? Is it zoning? Is it because developers don’t want to build what they can’t fill? It just seems so odd to build short buildings downtown one minute, and then boom here comes a 32 story apartment building.
Hi Austin,
A lot of it has to do with zoning. This particular project has been in the works for years, and received special zoning to go up to 34-stories. Z Block (Dairy Block) isn’t taller because Lower Downtown is a historic district and only allows a certain height and form. Union Station is zoned so the central downtown skyline isn’t extended through the valley. There are still a lot of ‘unlimited’ height lots around Central Downtown.
What’s up with the folks in the front with the big “Labor Fraud” sign?