Residential development in Downtown Denver’s Arapahoe Square district continues full-steam ahead as another major project is about to break ground. As we reported in February, Lennar Multifamily Communities has proposed an 18-story, 329-residence apartment tower on the half block along Welton Street between 21st and 22nd streets. The surface parking lot at the site has been closed and construction is planned to begin early in the new year.
We also have some new project images to share with you. The look of the tower isn’t substantially different than what was shown in our first post, but the design has been refined and these new renderings are of higher quality. Here are three views looking east at the 21st and Welton corner: from above (left), from street-level (middle), and the 21st Street elevation (right):
The above images are courtesy of Lennar Multifamily Communities and RNL Design, the project architect.
This project, along with two nearby projects that recently broke ground at 20th and California and 22nd and Welton, will collectively bring a little over 1,000 new housing units to a significantly underdeveloped part of Downtown Denver located a few steps from a light rail station.
We will check in on this project in a few months once construction is underway.
My favorite part of the renderings is that the RTD cars are a lot more modern looking than the current ones.
All Aboard!
Is there any ground floor retail in this project? Love the new renderings here and very excited for the project, but was a bit concerned if there’s no programming along that block.
In the original post I recall it mentioned 4,000 sq ft of retail. Honestly at this point all of these super wide projects ought to have some form of retail and/or restaurant space, it would be a wasted opportunity otherwise.
…sorry to leave multiple responses, though while the renderings definitely look better than some other projects I’ve seen recently (*cough* anything Alexan *cough*) I’ll admit I’m still skeptical of seeing too many half-block projects pop up all at once… What I like about One City Block, for example, is it’s technically the same complex for an entire city block however there are 4 unique buildings with distinctive designs rather than one or two monolithic buildings that hinder variety. My two cents.
One thing to keep in mind is that the density of this project is over twice that of One City Block. OCB has 300 units on a FULL block while this project on Welton has 329 units on HALF a block.
Parking podium to the rescue! Will the garage be convertible?
IIRC, there are some parking spaces on the ground floor that the developer set aside to be convertible to retail spaces. Don’t know about the upper portion of the parking deck.
I really hope at least one developer takes advantage of Arapahoe Square’s new zoning before this cycle ends. It would be nice to have a point tower or two mixed in with all of these behemoths to break up the monotony.
One component that other two Arapahoe Sq. landscrapers have that this one lacks is that they found a way to cover up the parking on the upper levels with apartments, with the 22nd and Welton project doing a much better job overall. I don’t understand why they couldn’t have done that with this one. Come on RNL Design! Don’t let Kephart best you!
I agree with Jerry, the parking garages for most of the new apartments and office projects in Denver have done a great job hiding their parking garages either by surrounding them with retail or apartments or by simply hiding the garage with fake windows or some sort of metal skin. At a minimum this could have been done on the side facing Welton.
Another consideration is that the parking garage on the alley side is not covered at all. This is a concern for the Clements historic neighborhood to the east and behind this project. Parking structures of this type means that at night lighting will be visible to everyone. Lincoln 100 project just one block away understood this and shielded all parking areas to the street. This project could stand to add this type of element to all sides of the building.
In my mind, that just means that another project needs to be developed on the other half of that block. An ugly-alley side of a building should be covered up by another building, not cosmetic treatments. But covering the other sides with some sort of paneling is certainly an idea with merit.
I would agree with this type of thinking if the second side of the block was being considered with a building. Currently this side has a historic structure that is only two stories tall. This project needs to be thought of as standalone. There should not be, in your words, ugly-alley side of a building. Often this type of argument leads to many years of viewing an ugly-alley side without guarantee that it will be covered at all.