A significant project at the heels of the Alameda Lightrail Station in the Baker neighborhood might be coming soon. Located at 301 South Cherokee Street, the site of the now-shuttered pharmaceutical plant is gearing up to be replaced by the most significant project the area has ever seen, a two-building residential project featuring a 7- and 14-story building. On the permitting side, a building permit for the seven-story building was submitted to the city in April.
First, let’s glance at the project site’s current state. The pharmaceutical plant consists of four buildings which will be demolished to make way for this new project. The campus appears vacant, with the windows boarded up along South Cherokee Street.
When looking at the landscape plan, we can better understand how the buildings will be situated on the project site. The seven-story building will reside towards the back of the lot towards the rail tracks to the west. The 14-story building will face South Cherokee Street. A shared private drive off Cherokee Street will be created for vehicular access to both buildings.
Below is a preliminary rendering of the project showing both buildings. The perspective of the rendering roughly matches up with this photo.
While a building permit was recently filed, there are still no firm timelines yet for demolition and construction. Nevertheless, this project adds new height to the Alameda Station area and is welcomed as Broadway Park starts to develop.
| Project Description | Developer | Architect | Most Recent Activity |
|---|---|---|---|
| 7, 14 Stories | 717 apt homes | 967 (v) parking | Hanover | W Partnership | Building Permit (2023-04-27) |
14 stories would look great in this area! Especially right as you pop out of the underpass. Looking forward to this
Will be interesting to see this one develop, especially since Hanover is constructing the the building further from Cherokee first. This little area will be a great place to live in a maybe 5 years when some of the retail is filled in and and another 3-5 projects get completed.
Do we have a date for the opening of Bayer Square? It has been complete since the new year more or less. Since the drug dealers have been pushed to this area by city over the last year perhaps that has delayed the opening.
Do you live in this area?
Yes in the RYE building across the street
I’m not sure when Bayer Square will open. I’m in the same building and Broadway Marketplace is a little sad right now, especially with the Ace block now shuttered. Hoping some new development will get underway soon, a lot of it is still hung up with the city.
As someone who often shops at that safeway, the answer is almost certainly that Bayer Square doesn’t yet have the active ground floor adjacency and frequent pedestrian traffic to discourage illicit activities. Hopefully soon!
“Bayer Square” is was originally envisioned as a “mercado”, or outdoor market, and was to be closer to the light rail station, at the NE corner of Dakota & Cherokee; it met part of the open space requirement of the GDP; the concept was shifted in both location and use by the developers — there is a condo building now planned for where the mercado would have been
A perfectly serviceable building being torn down. Hmm.
I’m sorry Jeff, but how does a one-story building that is boarded up a “serviceable building?” And there’s four of them! What would you do with these buildings that no one seems to want to make them “serviceable” exactly?
Imagine writing on the internet, in public, for all to see, that an unused industrial facility in the middle of a dense transit-adjacent development has greater utility than apartment homes for nearly a thousand people.
you might notice the other new buildings along Alameda have a step down on their north side, but neither of these planned west of Cherokee will … here’s why:
in 2007-2009, a stakeholder group worked on a GDP for what’s now called Broadway Park and the Alameda Station Area Plan; these two planning processes were more or less simultaneous and intertwined; one of the key decisions formalized in the GDP was to create a mid-height buffer (“2-6 stories”) adjacent to Alameda, and allow heights to to increase to 14 stories within about 1/3 of a block to the south; a similar, but wider buffer was specified along Broadway
while the Upsher-Smith property was within the GDP boundary, and the GDP showed the buffer extended across this property, when the area was rezoned in 2010, a buffering strip of C-MX-5 zoning extended east of Cherokee, but west of Cherokee the pharma plant effectively received C-MX-16 zoning; if anyone has notes explaining this outcome please share them
Looking at the final Alameda Station Area Plan (2009), in picture 3.5 on page 18 (Building Heights Concept) the entirety of the Upsher-Smith property up to Alameda would have a range of building heights from 5-14 stories.
see page 06b of the Denver Design District GDP; there are several differences between the GDP and the area plan, but note that GDPs are supposed to be formal regulations whereas area plans are visions, not regulations
Not sure but likely has to do with two things:
1. Alameda becoming an underpass as it goes West, so no sidewalk at street level and
2. This parcel doesn’t need to balance with lower density parcels directly adjacent across either Alameda or Cherokee, because those are C-MX-5 minimum already (unlike the condition east of Cherokee, which needs to soften the transition into Baker/Broadway)
The Denver zoning map shows the Upsher-Smith property still zoned for a PUD. https://denvergov.org/maps/map/zoning And, no indication on the City’s website that a rezoning is in the works. Did I miss something?
if you read the PUD, it is just MX-16 zoning plus allowing industrial use
I am so frustrated that all of these massive new buildings in this area have no (or almost no) ground floor retail. If the city wants to activate this area, we NEED retail uses on the ground floor along alameda and cherokee.
Actually, the proposed building have retail space at the northern and southern corner of Cherokee, with small “single-height” office spaces in between. Also, the northwest corner is identified as a “retail-adaptable” space. This information is from the site plans and urban design plans on file with the city.
Also, the building adjacent to “Bayer Square” has retail spaces al along the edge facing the square plus a retail space on the corner of Alameda and Bannock. That information was also taken from the site development plan on file with the city.
in the Denver Design District GDP there is a table of ranges of land use proposed for the various subareas; this project is in Subarea 2, along with the Denizen apartments; the table says this area would contain roughly 887-1107K sq. ft.of retail/service/office/hotel, and 341-355K sq. ft. of residential use; a few storefronts are falling far short of meeting the what the GDP had proposed in any of the development in this area so far
As a former, long term resident of the Baker neighborhood as well as an architect, I’m a little disappointed to see such a large building this far north in the Alameda Station TOD area. When 5 story apartment buildings started going up beginning just across Alameda from this project they felt out of place and brought a different feel to the neighborhood. A project like this that is 3 times taller than the already large apartments I think would have been great towards the southern portion of the TOD where there aren’t hundreds of single family homes in it’s shadow. Knowing many current Baker residents well I know they’ll be up in arms about this without anything to do but accept the character of the neighborhood is changing or move.
I have a hard time accepting that the Alameda Station / Broadway Marketplace area should fit into the historic Baker character. As a current resident of Baker, I can definitively say that Alameda is a sizable dividing road between Baker and higher density, with both areas completely unrelated. In addition, as you move further north into Baker along Cherokee, it is scattered with high density, weird abandoned facilities, industrial areas, and light commercial until about Dailey Park, where another uptick in density exists. Hardly the typical “Baker character.”
The entire Alameda Station area was rezoned to 16 stories quite a while ago and I haven’t heard much of an uproar.
Lastly, that 14-story building will probably cast shadows on Mason Alameda (4-story apartments), a transmission repair shop, and a couple businesses along Alameda across the street. Maybe the first backyards across the alley towards Byers. Lastly, because it’s on the west side of Cherokee, it’s visibility will be pretty hidden by the time you get to say… Cedar thanks to already existing high density on the north side of Alameda. I bet the majority of the residents in Baker won’t even care about the size of this project as it’s across Alameda and completely out of the view of 97% of the neighborhood.
Hear hear!
“When 5 story apartment buildings started going up beginning just across Alameda from this project they felt out of place and brought a different feel to the neighborhood.”
This should be the case. Same as when many long-time residents, including Latino families, were driven out by gentrification over the last decade. These interloopers also brought a different feel to the neighborhood. Neighborhoods shouldn’t be dipped in amber, but they have been for the past fifty years with our modern zoning codes and their lack of flexibility.
the Baker Neighborhood Plan foresaw, and accepted, dense residential use on Cherokee NW of Alameda, but specifically called for retaining the wide tree lawn that the then-existing industrial building had; the apartments at that location did not respect that element of the plan — perhaps we should have tried to stipulate it during the New Code Denver process