Due to the geographic size and amount of infill going on in River North, we are splitting up our roundup posts into four areas. Here is a map showing the areas we will be referencing for these posts.
Today, we will begin with the west quadrant, which encompasses Denargo Market and everything west of the train tracks up to 33rd Street. Currently, there are three projects under construction.
Denargo Market Phase 3. This project has topped out at eight stories with work beginning on the exterior weatherproofing. Like many multifamily projects this size, the primary structure is light gauge steel. When complete, this project will provide 337 apartment homes.
AMLI RiNo. This seven-story, 390-home project will be divided into two buildings connected by a bridge near the north end of the project. One elevator core has topped out, which gives you a good idea of how tall this project will be. Work is currently underway on the second floor for the north building and the third floor for the south building.
DriveTrain. The original DriveTrain project we announced is no longer active. Back in 2018, Carmel Partners bought the parcel and has begun to build a new rendition of DriveTrain. This project will now feature 403 homes contained in a six-story building. Below are a couple of new renderings courtesy of 4240 Architecture, the architect on record.
Construction is well underway for DriveTrain with the underground levels now complete. Here are some recent photos around the project site.
That’s a wrap for the west area of River North! Stay tuned for the other three over the next week.
Yikes. That’s a pretty major downgrade for DriveTrain. Architecture is whatever, but the original scope of the project was really admirable. Now it’s just another apartment building with some middling ground-floor retail that entirely too many people are just going to drive right past. I’m a bit worried about this entire stretch of road. It was planned with a lot of great intention, but I’m at a loss for how it’s supposed to work. Brighton Blvd is a thoroughfare. Maybe one day it leads to some ostensibly useful Western Complex, but right now, the road is nothing but cars headed elsewhere.
“But there are bike lanes!” Sure, but where do they go?
Hopefully one day the riverfront park turns all of this into a neighborhood that makes sense. Hopefully the road infrastructure will slow the traffic down enough to make retail commerce viable. Hopefully the city finds a better way to connect these developments to its adjacent neighborhoods. Because right now this just looks like a free-for-all.
Ryan – Do you know if there will be any ground floor retail included in these projects?
Denargo Phase 3 has 12,000 square feet, I don’t think AMLI has any, and DriveTrain has quite a bit along Brighton.
Nice reporting! I have a couple of questions, what is to be done with the land to the northeast in the Denargo Market area? And why are all the buildings designed to be the same average height. Seems a bit monotonous for that to work in modern times unlike how it worked in Europe where each building has it’s authentic characteristics. Just seems institutional might be another word. Thanks!
For the undeveloped land it is supposed to be developed as a mixed used community of commerical, retail and residential, but has been stalled for awhile. With respect to your question on height, that is usually driven by zoning as well as constructability. A lot of the zoning in this area is or was limited to some height, moreover, for a long time Denver did not allow for Type 3 construction in wood, which limited wood to 4 stories. Then Denver did not allow Type 3 wood over a podium, limiting it to 5 stories total, so you ended up with a lot of 4 and 5 story buildings. Now Denver allows Type 3 wood over a podium which you can max out at 6-7 stories. Much of the height limits in this area keep you to 8 stories max and going to 8 stories require concrete or steel construction, significantly increasing construction cost for only one additional floor, so you end up with a lot of 6 to 7 sotry buildings.
Regardless, in this case I don’t the height concern fully applies. For the AMLI building under construction, it is actually a combination of 7, 6 and 5 stories, so hopefully that adds some variation to the height and the Cypress’ Denargo Market Phase 3 is going light gauge 8-story and is three stories higher than Denargo Market Phase 2 across the street (now AMLI Denargo Market). The aforementioned future development on the vacant land is where the higher density was zoned and has some buildings slated for over 200′ heights.
Thanks! Pretty informative.
If you want to get an idea on what that portion of Denargo Market could possibly look like, Tryba Architects are apparently working with the owners of the property on the planning. They have a listing on their website with some pretty (and informative) renderings.
https://www.trybaarchitects.com/portfolio/denargo-market