One of the most prominent projects going up in Lower Downtown is nearing the finish line. With the facade work mostly complete and the streetscape underway, Market Station is shaping up nicely. In this update, we will take a tour around the entire project before we wrap it up with one last update in a few months.
Let’s begin with some views of the project along the 16th Street Mall, where the taller, 10-story structures reside. These two buildings contain all of the office space and are mostly complete. In addition to the different brick patterns between the two buildings, their massing varies slightly with setbacks on different floors. This helps break up some monotony given they are the same height.
The rest of the project steps down to five stories along Market and Blake Street towards 17th Street. These five-story buildings contain all of the residential units for the project.
The 17th Street side features three unique brick facades with a set back in the middle of the block. Here, there is a pedestrian passageway to access the interior retail of the project. Over on Blake Street, the historic RTD Headquarters building is sandwiched between the taller 10-story building at 16th and Blake and the shorter five-story building at 17th and Blake.
The Market Street side of the project is all new construction and provides a continuous five-story street-wall with varying heights, setbacks, and facades. Another pedestrian entrance for the interior retail resides towards the 16th Street Mall and features a unique sign with the only street-to-roof metal facade.
It is great to see this project come together and fill in such a large gap in Lower Downtown. When normalcy returns, this will be a wonderfully activated block with residents, office workers, and retail goers. When complete, Market Station will feature 85,000 square feet of retail, 90,000 square feet of office space, and 225 apartment homes.
Is it just me, or is this project really beige? Also, the slide show function doesn’t seem to be working. I tried four browsers on 2-different OSes.
We are working on a fix for the lightbox issues, sorry! We just noticed this bug today as well.
Edit: This has been fixed! 🙂
In person the buildings don’t come across as overly beige. For my tastes the intricate brick work is a bit over-the-top. A more measured dose would have contributed so much more to this project. Does anyone know, or have an educated guess, as to why the office component is on 16th and the residential facing 17th? To my thinking, this is the exact opposite of what might be considered the natural placement of those two components on this site–17th being office and commercial oriented, and 16th more pedestrian or residential friendly. Any thoughts?
One thing might be there is more night time and day time activity on 16th street, so residential development would be preferred away from 16th due to the noise.
There is commercial / restaurant type real estate opportunities throughout the first floor of the build along all faces of the project. The first 5 floors along 16th are a combination of retail and office space. It isn’t until the building steps back into the smaller footprint that residential units begin along 16th St.
These buildings all look the same. Piles of varied façades set back or overlaid. Boring, boring, boring..
Hi Diego, it seems like you come to every blog here to criticize. Why don’t you show us your work and architectural designs? Don’t forget to mention the cities where you designed and built them. Don’t worry, I’ll be waiting, I have time…
Diego’s comments are neither constructive, nor informative. Just garbage. Just another troll. While I don’t necessarily like every part of the whole development, I think overall it will be a nice addition to the 16th street mall with the courtyard and all.
Love this and think its going to be amazing once complete, but agree the color is becoming pretty expected. Seems every new building in Lodo has that beige look, would really like to see more red brick. This looks pretty similar to the fitzgerald, and the curved facade building across 16th (both beautiful buildings as well). I think Thompson Hotel is using a darker brick.
But hey. Easy to complain about something and forget it was a scene from the walking dead not long ago! Overall looks really nice. Just wish we could tie in our historic red brick more often!
Meh. The brick work is lame. Just trying way too hard to be cute. Stick with traditional…Get fancy around the windows and add a cornice. That works. Wish they took a design cue from the 2 buildings that were already on this block. And agree with everyone else about the beige. Blech.
It’s ironic that everyone hated the old Post Office Annex building next to Union Station and were overjoyed when it was torn down, all due it being “too beige”!
I agree that we need more red brick, but the ship has sailed as there is very little left to develop in the LoDo area. Just another missed opportunity for my hometown of Denver. Maybe we can get the last large parcel left in LoDo, across the street from this building, to make an effort to use red brick with some more embellishments as Dan mentions. You know, like the other historic old buildings in LoDo!
Looks like the FBI building in DC…which is going to be torn down
Certain cities, and certain parts of cities, across the world, have certain quintessential architectural styles that have stood the test of time and are now cherished. This development is distinctly Denver, and distinctly Lodo. It doesn’t look cheap or utilitarian. It looks like it was intended to stand a hundred years or more. I suspect a hundred years from now, it and its handful of doppelgangers throughout the neighborhood will be greatly appreciated, if not beloved.
I could be wrong.
Looking forward to shopping here – Continuum does great work and attracts some of the best tenants Denver has; just look at Union Station and 9th and Colorado!
Only a year and a half behind. The city should have asked for the street lanes and sidewalks back a year ago.
I can’t believe they permitted them to build much of the multi dwelling apartment out of wood downtown. It’s just not safe imo.