A new 71-unit condo, The Laurel, is now complete in Cherry Creek North. Not only does this provide for-sale housing to the neighborhood, it also maximizes on the density allowed for the parcel it sits on. We visited the 11-story building a few times since 2016 and you can check out the post history by following the link below:
The Laurel feature a clean grey and white facade with protruding balconies around the building. Here are a couple photos taken from the west and south of the project.
As with most Cherry Creek projects, The Laurel features ground floor retail and has an overall great presence at the pedestrian level.
Let’s wrap up the final update with two more photos of The Laurel from East 1st Avenue. The 11-story building is flanked by two other projects of similar height making this a great dense cluster of buildings.
It’s great to see this much density go up in the Cherry Creek neighborhood!
Out of curiosity… why is Cherry Creek going so vertical lately? It’s got to be the NIMBYest neighborhood in all of Denver, so I’m surprised that all this construction is allowed to happen. Are they trying to compete with the Tech Center?
They’re going vertical because they can and should. All the DTC does is encourage sprawl and inject more traffic on already at capacity roads. Cherry Creek is a walkable, urban neighborhood which is better than the tech center in every aspect. I work on the south end of the tech center and it is truly a nightmare of “urban” planning.
The only problem with Cherry Creek is the lack of transit. We need to get BRT, rail, or a gondola along the Speer corridor.
Maybe it’s because I’m pretty obsessed with Cities Skylines (video game), but I just implemented a gondola system in my virtual city. It has insane ridership and hubs right out of a train station. So, then I decided to find real world examples and Mexico City came up:
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/28/world/americas/mexico-city-mexicable.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexicable
7 stations, 3 miles, and 29,000 passengers per day.
Let’s just say the gondola starts on 14th and Stout, connects to Speer and drops you at 2nd and University. That’s 3.4 miles and you could probably nix a couple of the stops and get away with 4 or 5 stations.
Telluride has a gondola system as public transit, and I took it. Completely amazing. I have NEVER thought of the gondola idea down Speer until you brought this up. It seems like it would be cheaper than laying down track / dedicating lanes.
La Paz, Bolivia has a gondola system as well (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mi_Teleférico). A gondola seems fitting for Colorado.
How do we get this to the politicians? I’m willing to help out.
Oh goodness, that’s a beefy gondola system. It would have to be a Denver only funded item so RTD would be out of the picture. I can imagine that its on-time rate is better than train and bus because… well it’s a gondola. I think it’s brilliant.
There’s a company with an office in Denver.
https://www.eco-transit.com/
Haha! I’ve played a bit of Skylines too. My traffic is always a nightmare no matter how well I’ve planned my public transit. 🙁
The traffic is the worst. I’m working on a massive atoll and it’s nightmare fuel. Commuter rail with subway transfers is the way to go to get some of your traffic under control. Some of my islands have streetcars and monorails as well which help a ton. It’s such a fun and frustrating game.
The only problem with that is gondolas are soooo slow. I use to work for Vail and would have to ride gondola 1 every day up to mid-vail. That distance is a lot shorter than downtown to Cherry Creek. I don’t think the speed capacity of a gondola would provide the connection desired by mass transit.
It would be an interesting time trial to see if a bus stuck in traffic along Speer (current conditions) takes a shorter amount of time than a gondola. The one in Telluride is very quick and I was impressed with the speed.
OMG I am obsessed with Cities Skylines myself. How many cims do you have in your city?
Just circled back to this today. I hadn’t realized I’d actually started a conversation. We also have one of the biggest gondola manufactures based right here in Colorado. They have big plans to move into the urban market in the US. It’d be nice to see Denver as a leader.
https://coloradosun.com/2019/08/29/leitner-poma-ski-war-gondolas/
Completely agree with Ryan.
Do you have any idea what is going to happen with the Cotrell building site at 16th and Welton? It looks like they are getting ready to demo it very soon (no big loss as far as I’m concerned…that green!). I haven’t seen any info on what might go there. Perhaps more surface parking! 😉
Here’s an old article.
http://www.signatureflip.com/sf01/article.aspx/?i=6996
Huh.. I can’t find anything on this but the demolition permit with the city.
“Hillen Corp. will be demolishing the building at 601 16th St. The plan is to install a cover walkway… … etc etc. An alley closure will also be established on the west side but only at the building lines… … etc etc. The demolition of the alley side will be done with boom lifts and small equipment to make sure not to damage the building to the west.”
Underneath that green facade is an old building waiting to shine through again. Cotrell’s was a long-time Denver institution selling men’s clothing. I believe that building has been there since the 1920s. It’s unfortunate that the preservation and restoration of this building wasn’t given more thought, since it would be a nice addition to that corner (without the green facade). I don’t know for sure, but I have been told the building will be demolished, to be replaced by what I do not know!
The fence is up this week, so I suspect they are getting close to taking it down. I’m surprised there isn’t a public plan for the place, yet. Thank you for the demo permit update.
I originally thought that the building could look great if restored, but then read an article on how fully it had been renovated (turned green). I suspect that there isn’t much of the original building remaining under that stone. I guess we’ll find out in the next few weeks.
On an earlier thread, Istanbul, Turkey, also has two gondola lines in their public transit system, the Maçka Gondola and Eyüp Gondola.