Right next door to Alexan Arapahoe Square, the 21st and Welton Apartments are also making significant vertical progress. This project will be a bit taller than its neighbor, rising a total of 18 stories. For a rendering refresher, head on over to our first update on this project.
The 21st and Welton Apartments are being built with a traditional concrete structure since it will be just taller than the maximum height of the light gauge steel systems, which are currently rated for around 16 stories. As far as progress is concerned, the building is currently 11 stories up with seven more to go. In addition to the significant height progress, part of the facade is starting to show. The brickwork for the parking podium, and a significant portion of the north end of the building, is starting to go up.
Just like its neighbor to the north, the 21st and Welton apartments are taking up a full half-block along Welton Street.
Just over a year ago, this project was just starting to get out of the ground. In just a year, this part of Arapahoe Square now has three significant projects underway, all eradicating surface parking lots.
Docking at a harbor near you!
Jesus, that parking podium…
Do we know if they are building the parking levels in a manner that can be easily retrofitted to other uses if/when parking demand goes down with self driving cars?
While I’m sure it’s technically feasible, is that a thing?
Yup. Car ownership is going the way of floppy drives and betamax—and it’s going to happen way faster than we all think.
In general, parking structures can be converted to other uses as long as the structure is mostly flat, which is what this building appears to have done. I’m no professional so I could be wrong, but at least that’s my understanding.
Flat floor plates are important, but floor-to-ceiling height is critical. No one wants to work in an office or live in an apartment with 7-foot ceilings.
TCR and Kephart. Is anyone really surprised that this monstrosity of a cruise ship came from that team?
TCR especially is putting up mediocre work at RIDICULOUS scale with very little if any retail across all of their projects. They are legitimately the opposite of what a growing city needs.
18th & Market, if it happens, will be a nice exception. Lots of retail planned along Market Street, and plenty of setbacks due to the LDDRB.
Awful.
Way out of scale for the neighborhood and the street. What happened to urban design review by the City Planning office.
Hi, Terry. Denver is in the middle of a severe housing crisis. I’m glad you’re so privileged that you can be particular about architectural quirks, but most people don’t have that luxury. The city needs housing en masse, by whatever means possible.
Just like everyone else who reads DenverInfill, I find this building and the ones near it very disappointing. That being said, I recognize that most things I hate about them are necessary evils:
– Building (what we would consider “modern”) retail/commercial underneath (similarly “modern”) residential is harder and more expensive than it looks to laymen, and the resultant space is often difficult to lease because of a whole bunch of economic and logistical factors. Not to mention the fact that there is significant existing restaurant/retail space within walking/light rail riding of this location.
– Scale: to anyone who spent any time in the area we’re discussing here, I’d argue that the neighborhood didn’t and still doesn’t *have* a scale. So much of this immediate area has been parking lots for eons. At last, the street will see at least some of the traffic necessary to make the light rail line that runs on it make sense. I wish this building looked like the proposed 18th and Market as much as anyone else, but without LoDo prestige to incentivize that kind of spend, we’ve got what we’ve got.
I hate to say it, but I really do see this as an improvement over current conditions. Perhaps we’ll see some non-residential development take hold across the street? Plenty of parking lots left to go, folks…
Yikes
I’ll offer just a slight comment on the proposed 18th & Market apartment: retail is only at both corners, 18th & Market and 19th & Market. But, if you think about that, it makes the most sense because it is the intersections of two streets that will generally see the most foot traffic. If you look at older, US cities the intersection corners of buildings are where you will most likely see retail. I just wish that these land barges being built along Welton would have some corner retail.
This one does have 4,000 sq ft of retail slated for the corner of 22nd and Welton. Which works as 22nd between California and Welton is shaping up as a nice retail node for Arapahoe Square.
I almost think this building will be not be as gross and land-bargey as the other buildings due to the fact that the renderings show it being half glass, which may end up making it almost look like two separate, less offensive buildings.
I think from the middle-up that might be true, unfortunately (my opinion only) that parking podium is too uniformly bland and oppressive looking across the entire lower half of the building, which will be more readily noticeable to passersby.
I think your observation goes to what I like about the 18th and Market St proposed development. One of the main issues, I think, with these types of land-barge developments is that, even though they cover an entire block, their designs seem to emphasize that fact by presenting a large horizontal space along the entire lower podium. The 18th& Market St development addresses that by varying the facade of the lower levels to create a sense of multiple, narrower buildings with smaller footprints. This is similar to older buildings in older cities: there is a sense of verticality to the structures. You could have a building with a larger footprint but is was generally taller so that sense of verticality was maintained. These new buildings on Welton street had the opportunity to do that, since they have different masses in the upper portions of the structures. All they had to do was just carry that sense of different masses to the ground floor by varying the facades so that it corresponds with the upper portion. In essence, make the buildings seem like multiple, narrower, buildings.
Exactly!