Today, we have a quick update on 99 South Broadway. When we announced this project back in May, fences were already up around the site with the old Security Service Credit Union slated for demolition. Fast forward five months, the old building has been demolished along with the sea of surface parking around it.
Here are a couple photos of the site from the past weekend. As a refresher, this project will feature a single floor of underground parking with a three-story building wrapping around the entire site. With it will come 238 apartment units and 13,200 square feet of ground floor retail.
99 South Broadway fills in a crucial hole along South Broadway and will bring more pedestrian activity to the area once it’s complete.
Really feel like this site is worthy of something better than what it’s getting.
Nick, What would you like it have been? The developers brought an “upgraded” proposal to the neighborhood to see if there would be interested in supporting a rezoning from 3 to 5 stories. The reception was mixed but a vocal minority of BHNA scared them off from going through.
So squat.
So much hangs in the balance with this project. It has the potential to usurp all the culture and personality of the neighborhood in one clumsy swoop. More engaging ground-floor retail? Fine. More residential density? Yeah, that’s the right idea. But if it doesn’t ingratiate itself to the sidewalk and nightlife experience curated by the Hi-Dive, Mutiny, 3 Kings, Sweet Action, Lowbrow, Pie Hole, and the dozens of other businesses that make this stretch of Broadway the most exciting and eccentric in all the city, then it’s a dangerous disservice.
Even worse? It drags more of LoDo and Cherry Creek into the neighborhood and skews property values to the point where its current tenants can no longer exist.
Maybe they should turn it into a brutalist concrete bank with a giant surface parking lot. God forbid there be somewhere for people to live…
Your argument doesn’t make sense: You think engaging ground-floor retail that this project claims to have is great but that it doesn’t “ingratiate itself to the sidewalk”? Which is it? Also, a pre-req for retail on Broadway shouldn’t be that it enhances the nightlife but that it enhances value to residents and visitors throughout the day.
The problem that South Broadway is going through is that those small businesses you listed, and any potential new ones like it, won’t be able to afford the rents in this building and in old buildings. I’m not sure I’d say it’s skewing property values, but that’s where the property values are. Yet, this project isn’t causing them, it’s already happened and will continue with or without this project. I agree with you though, it’s definitely a bummer that the strip is going to it’s indie-business charm.
As a resident three streets to the East, I would like to see a bakery, butcher (think Tony’s), a deli and anything else you’d see in NYC. This concept I would support!
I agree with you Dave, this is insane the number of apartment complexes just being slapped up on every corner and vacant lot. There is so much more they could do, unfortunately the charm that was once Baker, is being lost to the mass influx of people moving here from out of state. The people paying for this are not the ones moving in, but the people that have been here 20, 30, 40 years. The charm of the neighborhood was why most of us moved here. Taking out one eyesore of a building to put in a much larger eyesore of an apartment complex only makes the neighborhood lose what it was.
Sad to see that nearly every project on this site is just one apartment complex after another. Denver is already bursting at the seams with these things and none of them affordable, and now sadly another apartment complex is being thrown up in Baker. We already had the ones on Grant Street, then on Washington, then down Broadway you have multiple units, along with ones off of Logan, add in Alameda Station, Denizen and now the expansion of Denizen, not to mention the renovation of the 1st St building and the addition that is being added on there. Its not like there is not already too many around this area, its just getting to the stupid level now. Does not appear that anyone considers the traffic nightmare Broadway and Lincoln already are at rush hours, especially by Waterworks carwash. I have requested numerous times for a left turn light to be installed there for traffic going onto northbound Lincoln and I never get a response from the city. Now with another couple apartment complexes being slapped up it will only worsen the situation for traffic that cuts across from Speer down Grant, to 3rd St heading west on to Broadway. This will mean even more traffic going down Southbound Broadway.
It would have been nice to see something better there like say a dog park, or just a park in general. A lot of the people that live in this area have pets and one by one all the dog parks are being closed down and apartment complexes put up, or closed for more pedestrian areas. Then add in the mass explosion of those scooter things being left literally everywhere, an apartment complex will only add to it. The bank was an eyesore, but something other than more housing could have been done if the traffic situation is not going to be addressed with better lights and traffic flow. Disappointing to say the least. As someone else mentioned the property values in the neighborhood are skyrocketing which is good for people wanting to sell, but terrible for people that have been here a long time and have seen their property taxes escalating quickly. Mine have almost double in the past 5 years which is insane.