Recently, DenverInfill had the opportunity to tour the new Colorado Convention Center expansion, and we are happy to present a photo tour of the project. Crews are busy “raising the roof,” adding 200,000 additional square feet to the existing Convention Center, and while there is still a lot to go, many elements of the project are beginning to take shape.

Before we begin the update, we would like to thank Joe McCullough, the Director of Operations for the Colorado Convention Center, and Tom Poth of Hensel Phelps, the project’s general contractor, for touring us around on a beautiful autumn day.

For each section of the tour, we will post a floor plan highlighting where we are in the expansion with a red box. We will also provide any publicly available renderings next to the floorplan photo.

Let’s begin with the side closest to 14th Street, the kitchen and back of the house area, a new 30,000 square-foot space that integrates into the existing loading dock while featuring new freight elevators to these levels. This structure also features a second level which will be used for storage and a hospitality suite; these two functions are not pictured below.

Next up: the 80,000-square-foot ballroom.

When complete, the ballroom will be the largest in Colorado. As shown on the floor plan above, this space can be divided into 19 configurations. Leading out of the ballroom is a 20,000-square-foot terrace with views of Downtown Denver and the mountains. Currently, the terrace area is being used for construction staging.

While there are new construction elements of the expansion project, there is also a lot of integration into the existing Convention Center that is taking place.

The southwest portion of the existing Convention Center, closest to Speer Boulevard, featured an 80-foot ceiling and glass curtain wall. As part of the expansion, a second level is going in, which will be used for pre-function space. This second level requires attaching the new floor to the existing structure and includes a set of long escalators. In the photos below, you can see the amount of steelwork necessary for this task; it’s awe-inspiring.

That’s all for our inside the infill tour; however, we still have a couple of topics to explore. First up, the large crawler crane that was residing on the roof for multiple months. While we captured some great views of the crane from a distance in the past, it was even more impressive to see it up close. Not every day do you see a large crawler crane on the roof of a building. Now that most of the steelwork is complete, the crawler has been taken down. However, the two tower cranes will remain up for the next few months.

Last up, let’s talk about the existing roof.

Each update we post on this project spurs a discussion about why the Colorado Convention Center has yet to explore the opportunity to put a solar farm on the ample amount of square footage available on the roof. In short, it’s not structurally possible; here’s why: the exhibit halls below rig thousands of pounds of equipment to the ceiling for every show. The extra weight of a solar farm would far exceed what the roof can handle. Lucky for you, we can show precisely this. We were able to pop into a show that was setting up and was in the middle of rigging equipment to the ceiling, shown in the photos below.

Before you raise a comment about the black roof, this is also being addressed. Come 2024, the black roof will invert and go white. Solar options are also being explored for the architectural blades as those do not have any rigging operations below them.

That’s a wrap for our Colorado Convention Center Expansion tour. It’s great to see such a large project come together, and we can’t wait to tour it again when it is close to completion!

Project Description Developer Architect Contractor
80k sf ballroom | 20k sf terrace | 35k sf pre-function | 30k sf back of house
 City of Denver
 TVS Hensel Phelps