Through this development cycle, Speer Boulevard has seen a fair amount of development. The momentum seems to keep on going with another large scale residential project underway. Modera West Wash Park, developed by Mill Creek Residential, is a significantly sized project rising eight-stories and providing 242 apartment units to the Speer neighborhood.
To begin, let’s take a look at an aerial with the project site outlined. Modera West Wash Park sits at 390 Grant and has a very unique shape due to the land it is taking up, and the diagonal of Speer Boulevard.
To even better orient yourself, here are is a present day, low elevation aerial. The second image shows the same site outline as above just from a different, more three-dimensional, perspective.
The project site includes a small office building that was sold to Mill Creek back on September 2017. This office building will be demolished to make way for this project. The tenant moved out the first of December, and demolition should take place any day. Below are a few photos from around the project site.
Now, for the rendering of the project, courtesy of Mill Creek Residential. Modera West Wash Park comes to a sharp point at Speer Boulevard and Grant Street, as shown in this rendering. At the moment, we are unsure of how the rest of the building is configured.
The 242 apartment homes will average 864 square feet in size, and come with all of the usual amenities we have seen in most apartment projects around the city. The project will also contain 287 parking spaces giving it a total car-to-unit ratio of 1.18.
The project architect is Davis Partnership and the general contractor is Martines Palmeiro Construcion (MPC).
Anticipated completion for Modera West Wash park is late 2019 making the total build time just over a year and a half. We will swing back around for our first update once demolition is complete!
I’m excited to see this development. I live super close and I think that it will really add street presence to Speer Boulevard. There is another empty lot just south of this lot and the car repair shop that I think would be ideal for retail. We’ll see what happens there.
Ryan, any update on 18th & Market Apartments? I thought they were supposed to break ground in December ’17.
We haven’t heard anything yet. We hope they break ground soon!
I’ve heard that project is on hold.
I like the glass facade on the “point”. Should be a nice addition to the streetscape there. With all this growth along Speer, one can hope the city can push through with their public transit plans. Hopefully something like a BRT along Speer would be outstanding.
Speaking of triangular buildings, what’s going on at 17th and Tejon? I cracked up when I saw on the rendering that the existing billboard is being accommodated
Given that all the lanes on Speer are at capacity now I’m curious how BRT can be accommodated, especially since new developments like this one are being built as close to the right of way as possible.
You take out a car lane each direction.
BRT would replace a current lane in each direction.
This works because BRT moves people more efficiently than single-occupancy cars.
So with fewer cars on the road, fewer lanes are needed to accommodate them.
In much of Denver the ROW won’t be getting wider because there simply isn’t room.
Rather it’s about moving people more efficiently within the given ROW.
BRT on Speer would be lovely. The 83 is a great bus, only downside is that it gets stuck in traffic. A dedicated lane would fix that, and encourage closer headways too.
So 4th Ave. & Grant is in Wash Park now? Fascinating!
Let’s see if I’ve kept up with all the “developers renaming and/or expanding neighborhoods entirely of their own volition” trend…
“North Capitol Hill” is now “Uptown”
“Northside” is now “Highlands”
“Near Northside” is now “LoHi”
“Brighton Blvd” / “Denargo Markets” is now “RiNo”
“La Alma / Lincoln Park” has been whitewashed as only “Lincoln Park”, but just calling the entire area “Santa Fe Arts District” is also acceptable
Depending on where you are, “Five Points” is now variously part of “LoDo”, “RiNo”, “Arapahoe Square”, or “Uptown”
Wonder what they’ll come up with next? I’m guessing that when Elyria Swansea gets bulldozed under for the I-70 ditch (sorry residents, the city can’t hear your lamentations over all the Terra Nullius they’re declaring), we’ll see some new snappy rebranding. Also got my eyes on Globeville; only a matter of time before someone decides it’s actually part of RiNo (RiNoNo?).
Anyways back on topic… questionable naming aside, this looks like a nice project. I like the wedge shape, good use of the available space.
That hood has been West wash park since wash park
Don’t forget, West Colfax is now Slo-Hi (Sloan’s Lake Highlands). I live in East Colfax and was joking the other day that it’ll be ECO in the next 5 years when the BRT comes in.
Also, I used to live in Speer, just a couple blocks from this development and nobody knows what Speer is. I’ve heard it called South Broadway, SOBO, Baker, West Wash Park, Northwest Wash Park, South Cap Hill, and Alamo Placita. I’ve never met anyone who know what I meant when I said I lived in Speer.
several blocks east from Broadway and a few blocks north of 6th are now often being labeled “Baker” in real estate and rental listings; this has been going on for a few years, and yes, it confuses the people who move in and eventually dilutes neighborhood identities; to be fair though, West Wash Park Neighborhood Association has represented all of what is nominally “Speer Neighborhood” south of Speer for many years, and no separate association has managed to remain for long at all; and north of Speer is pretty well subsumed into the Alamo Placita; these long term shifts i am more inclined to accept than the short term realtor-driven ones
The name Baker has been around for quite some time. From Wikipedia “historic district designation was granted in 2000 as Baker Historic District as part of the Historic Preservation effort of the City of Denver. The same area designated as a local historic district had been entered into the National Register of Historic Places as South Side–Baker Historic District in 1985.” Here is the link at the National Registry of Historic Places.
https://npgallery.nps.gov/NRHP/AssetDetail?assetID=cacb50a2-2c4e-4095-a993-88ea8880b4b0
So…Baker has been ‘Baker’ for more than 30 years. Probably much longer than that.
Yes, Baker has been around for awhile, however I believe the point is that Baker has historically been west of Broadway and south of 6th. Neighborhood designations are always in flux, so it doesn’t bother me terribly, but I agree the realtor driven designations make it confusing more often than not. For example, a Cherry Creek designation has been stretched beyond believability at this point. With that in mind, I also don’t mind this being called West Wash Park as no one has referred to this neighborhood as Speer for a long time, at least in my experience, so it needs to be part of some neighborhood people recognize, and West Wash Park is probably the closest and most relevant.
hi JerryG — yes, but that’s not my point; Baker got its name in the 1970s when the city designated statistical neighborhoods (that is noted in the Wikipedia article you cited, but did not link — i researched and wrote much of that section); my point is the the neighborhood is pretty clearly west of Broadway, as Andy points out; this is not only geographically convenient (hence the “statistical” neighborhood), but it corresponds well with the community identity over many decades, perhaps a century; the city zoned both Baker and “south Speer” for higher density at one point, but much more multi-family was built east of Broadway (which was also considered safer and more desirable for several decades), hence the area has a higher density and a distinct character; La Alma/Lincoln Park is a different question; historically, St. Joe’s was German/Irish and was the center of a neighborhood that was not as fully divided by 6th Ave. as today’s traffic would suggest, though that was for a time the boundary between Denver and South Denver; even into the mid-20th the Latino population had a lot of contiguity north and south of 6th, but not east of Broadway; at the time it was all considered part of the West Side
the history demonstrates is that neighborhood identities shift, but i still resent the money-driven need for neighborhood cachet that pushes realtors to abuse these identities
Speer is the name of the statistical neighborhood, as defined by the City, for the area bounded by Broadway on the west, Alameda on the south, Downing on the east, and 7th Avenue on the north.
https://www.denvergov.org/maps/map/neighborhoods
The problem is that this particular statistical neighborhood has never had a strong historical/cultural identity, whereas the statistical neighborhoods that surround it (Baker on the west, West Washington Park and Washington Park on the south/southeast, Country Club on the east, and Capitol Hill to the north) all have strong historical/cultural identities synonymous with their statistical neighborhoods boundaries.
The most prominent historical/cultural neighborhood identity within the Speer statistical neighborhood is probably Alamo Placita, but its identity is large confined to the area around the park of the same name and doesn’t extend to the outer boundaries of the Speer statistical neighborhood.
Thus, the Speer statistical neighborhood’s territory is somewhat of a no-man’s land from a historical/cultural branding perspective and is subject to being appropriated by the areas around it. The western part of Speer can be claimed as part of Baker. The southern part of Speer can be claimed as part of West Washington Park, and so on.
Unless there is a concerted effort to give this area a strong identity as the Speer neighborhood aside from city statistical purposes, the area’s identity is likely to continue to be at the whim of realtors, marketers, and others seeking to give it a brand of some kind.
My neighborhood, University, is similar in many ways to Speer. Surrounded by more well-known neighborhoods like Platt Park, Wash Park and Observatory Park with the actual university taking up a big chunk. Most just say “DU Area” when referencing the neighborhood. I have seen some realtors though call it South Wash Park and just laugh.
This construction is miserable. I live in the apartment next door and they are frequently shutting off our water or causing the water to not work. Also very loud. I am very disappointed to learn this will be going on for over a year. Who the hell would want to live directly off Speer anyway?