Thanks to CU Denver students, a new building is coming to Downtown Denver’s Auraria Campus that will anchor the corner of Speer Boulevard and Auraria Parkway.
The new CU Denver Wellness Center will contain approximately 85,000 square feet of space and cost approximately $42 million. The facility will include weight and fitness studios, basketball courts, a rock climbing wall, wellness and information center, training and assessment rooms, social lounge, locker rooms, a multi-activity court, and a 6-lane indoor swimming pool. Here is a Google Earth aerial showing the proposed building’s location at the Speer/Auraria corner in between the new CU Student Commons Building and the MSU Hotel and Hospitality Learning Center/Springhill Suites Hotel:
This graphic, from the CU Denver video noted below, shows the building site plan and adjacent buildings:
The project was initiated by CU Denver students and will be funded primarily by student fees approved by CU Denver students in a recent election. For a complete overview of the genesis of the project and the inspiring story about how the CU Denver students convinced the CU Regents to support the project, please read this article by Chris Casey of the CU Denver University Communications office. Another great resource about the project is the project’s webpage on the CU Denver Office of Student Life website and this video from that webpage:
The following images are all screenshots I captured from the video. Please note that the building has not yet been officially designed. These renderings represent design concepts used for project scoping and cost estimating purposes, not the proposed architectural design. But they do give us a good sense of the scale and general layout of the building. It appears from the project’s webpage that credit for these design images go to Brailsford & Dunlavey and SmithGroupJJR.
12th Street elevation looking towards Downtown:
Courtyard passage below rooftop public space:
Auraria Parkway elevation:
Speer/Auraria corner:
Courtyard between the Wellness Center and the CU Denver Student Commons Building looking toward the Tivoli Student Union:
Finally, here’s a view of the Speer/Auraria corner where the building will be located. I took this shot from the CU Denver building at 14th and Larimer where I work at the College of Architecture and Planning:
According to the preliminary schedule, construction would begin in 2016 with completion set for January 2018.
Congratulations to the CU Denver students for their leadership and initiative in developing this exciting project!
Excellent news! It’s great to see Speer truly getting a great streetscape and making this area feel more like a city and less like a highway. That aerial view definitely reminds us how much more work there is left as far as developing parking lots along Speer.
I read a plan a while back (the recent GoldenTriangle plan maybe?) about reducing the number of travel lanes on Speer and maybe even some street parking along it. Do you have any insight to this? Street parking would definitely make Speer feel more walkable.
While a wonderful facility, it seems as if this is a replication and waste of limited resources for the Auraria Campus which is supposed to be built on a shared resource model. What was the emphasis behind building a fitness center solely for CU Denver students rather than a jointly-funded refurbishment and expansion of the Auraria Events Center? Did CU Denver feel that the Event Center was overcrowded and could not accommodate all three institutions? Or is this a case of CU Denver expressing elitist attitudes and desiring to separate itself from the serfs?
Sure seems that way.
Such a cynical view. While the shared resources model still applies to some of Auraria, each institution also desires and deserves some spaces of their own to help create a stronger sense of institutional identity. I see no elitism here.
Cynical maybe, but this Wellness Center was proposed at the same time that the initial steps have been undertaken to consider how to refurbish and expand the outdated Events Center. Suddenly CU Denver has no incentive to provide any funding for a remodeled Events Center because they’ve already taken care of themselves. This inconvenient truth will make this project far harder to accomplish. Also, will Campus Recreation club sports (that have always drawn students from all three institutions in contrast to CU Denver club sports) be allowed to use this facility or will it truly be just for CU Denver students and employees? Because that’s sure seems to be what CU Denver is trending towards.
What’s next? Does CU Denver decide that the a new library is warranted for just CU Denver and withdraw all of the resources from the existing library (one that another institution on campus provides the largest portion of funding for)?
I don’t know the answer to some of those questions, Paul.
Blast those elitist students for voting to tax themselves and improve their own campus! Tell em straight, Paul, motivated young people who invest in their school and future are the worst! Lol
The idea in the Auraria master plan is to create individual “neighborhoods” for each institution on campus. So this is perfect. More power to CU Denver students for making this happen. That’s pretty amazing! I don’t doubt the same could be accomplished by students of the other colleges on the campus.
And I’m thrilled to see yet another building built right up against Speer, creating a better link between the campus and downtown.
Now if they could just get a building or two built on those massive median strips…
: )
For sure, and I do applaud CU Denver’s student leadership for proposing this and it does a great job of pushing the campus to the edge of Speer Blvd. That said….
… this is a $50M project and cost estimates for renovating the Auraria Events Center are in the $60M to $80M. If CU Denver opts out of funding the Auraria Events Center, which seems likely given that the Wellness Center fulfills this role for them, then that project suddenly becomes a lot more expensive to the remaining institutions to cover. Plus, $110M to $130M is being spent on campus recreation where $60M to $80M would have sufficed. This is something that should have remained part of the shared resources model at Auraria for the sake of maximizing resources.
Since MSU is building their new fields and athletic center near Colfax, perhaps the Events Center should be remodeled to become an actual events center and not a drab hole with some weight rooms off to one side. Reduces overlap and provides more resources to the student body of all three schools.
Paul,
Since you seem quite passionate about this, why don’t you conduct some research, send some emails, and place some calls to the Auraria campus to get answers to your questions, instead of venting in the comments section of an infill post.
Hey Tim, I’ve always enjoyed the vigorous debate about the built environment on this blog, which is a lot more enlightening than just making nice. Urbanists disagree strongly about a lot of things, and Ken has created a forum here for exactly that.
Hey Nash,
I simply requested someone do their due diligence before making blatant accusations about UCD, shared facilities, funding, etc. Happy to have legitimate debates and discussions about infill. Less inclined to harp on things w/o looking into them first.
Tim,
The rhetorical questioning that I posited above was based in fact and on conversations with the administrative staff at MSU Denver. The Event Center will no longer be utilized by CU Denver nor will they be providing funding to AHEC for it (beyond the bond fee). MSU Denver leadership and AHEC leadership is not happy with this go-it-alone approach following studies and discussions on what an Events Center renovation should entail.
Unanswered is the question of whether or not CU Denver will allow non-CU Denver students to utilize the facility or participate in IM sports there. The trend seem to suggest no.
It looks like they are barely saving the view corridor of Tivoli down Blake.
I noticed this too and am a bit disappointed. They could have gotten the same building footprint and similar interior spaces, but pushed the mass closer to the new Academic building to allow the Blake st. view of the Tivoli towers to be preserved forever. Apparently this simply wasn’t on the architect or campus planners’ list of criteria, which I think is unfortunate.
Other than that I think the building looks great and will be a nice addition to campus though!
I should have read the original post closer, since Ken clearly says this is a concept and not the final design. For the record, if anybody is listening, I think the Tivoli view corridor down Blake is VERY important and should not be discounted. Push the taller basketball court spaces away from the MSU Hospitality center and just make that portion 1-2 stories and the problem is solved.
I love all of the solar panels!!!
Exciting project. The several new building over the last few years all make Auraria feel more like an actual campus and not just some random buildings lost in a sea of parking lots. Hats off to the students for putting this together, fighting for it, and voting it in. I hope some of the stated desirable results, such as increased retention and graduation rates, come to fruition.