A new multi-family development, Camden RiNo, is now under construction in Denver’s River North district.
Located on the full city block bounded by Walnut, 32nd, Larimer, and 33rd streets, the 233-unit apartment community is being developed by Camden Property Trust. Here’s the site outlined on a Google Earth aerial, followed by some site photos from earlier this month:
The project consists of several five-story buildings. On the 32nd Street half of the site, apartments and ground-floor townhome units wrap around a 359-space parking garage. On the 33rd Street half of the site, apartments and ground-floor townhome units wrap around a landscaped outdoor courtyard with various resident amenities, including a pool.
The building’s primary entrance faces Larimer Street near 33rd, where the leasing office and fitness center overlook a large landscaped courtyard. Also adjacent to the courtyard and anchoring the 33rd and Larimer corner is a 3,500-square foot retail space. Access to the structured parking is via 32nd, with all of the parking hidden from street view by residential and other uses.
Below we have two sets of renderings. In the first set are building elevations for all for sides of the project, courtesy of Wallace Garcia Wilson Architects. The second set includes views of the entry courtyard with ground-floor retail near Larimer and 33rd, and the outdoor pool in the interior courtyard, courtesy of Norris Design, the project’s landscape architect.
Construction of Camden RiNo is expected to take about two years.
3,500 Square feet of retail?!? That is really disappointing. This building has an entire block frontage on Larimer. That is 400 linear feet of street frontage. You could easily get over 10,000 sf of new retail on that stretch. It is such an important block to contribute to the active retail environment on this corridor. The building looks fine if uninspired, but this, to me, is nearly unforgivable. They are guaranteeing that this will not be a continuous active corridor in perpetuity.
I am greatly approve of ground floor accessible residential units but not as the dominant land use on one of central Denver’s most promising corridors. The City should really be much more demanding in the code to ensure a majority retail frontage in these settings or, at least, space that could be converted in the future. There may not be enough market for 10-15,000 sf of retail today, but they are guaranteeing that there will never be.
I am equally frustrated with the sluggish pace of retail infill in Metro Denver, but this article help put the whole thing in perspective. Obviously Denver and SF are two wildly different markets, but many of the same economic and logistical factors are in play.
https://www.bisnow.com/san-francisco/news/retail/city-regulations-struggling-to-keep-up-with-the-pace-of-retail-changes-82631