Planning is underway for the next phase of development at the TAXI campus in River North. Known as Redacted, the project will consist of two adjacent four-story buildings with a combined 194 units of rental housing.
The site for Redacted, outlined on the Google Earth aerial image below, is accessed by 31st Street and is located next to RTD’s under-construction North (N) commuter rail line and behind a large RTD maintenance facility. A future TAXI building will occupy the space between Redacted and 31st Street.
Redacted is intended to provide workforce housing for the neighborhood. Zeppelin is considering an innovative process by which employers lease blocks of apartments at market rate and then rent the homes to their employees at a discount. An August article in the Denver Business Journal gives some details on this idea. We will learn more about this concept as the Redacted project advances through the development process.
For now, we have this newly-updated rendering by Dynia Architects to share with you, thanks to Chris from Zeppelin Development.
It’s great to see the build-out of the TAXI campus continue, and its particularly exciting to see new ideas for how to address Denver’s housing affordability challenges.
Gotta say…this is the worst development name since David Moffatt put up the Grand Bile Hotel in 1891. In keeping with 19th Century themes, I wonder if the employers leasing apartment blocks will also have a “company store” onsite to ensure convenience and indentured servitude of their employees who would rather be paid a living wage. I suspect the specific details of these dealings will be…REDACTED.
Good one.
I know affordable housing is a huge issue, but this development is just terrible. You could not find a worse location unless you built it on a landfill. People deserve more dignity than this.
As to the actual design of the building……..Pathetic. Looks like a 1960s Holiday Inn knock off design from the Soviet Union.
I have never been a big fan of the buildings in Taxi development. Renovating buildings is good and I can understand initially building low-rise buildings. However, low-rise buildings with surface parking seems to be their favored form. In addition, they all use the same aesthetics. Too much of any one design in one location becomes monotonous. The Source and Hotel is a good combo, I think, because there is two different eras, architecture, etc that contrast and compliment each other.
Meanwhile, just to the north in Sunnyside, there is this:
https://confluenceco.com/our-developments/zia-sunnyside
Ground was broken in mid-September: 314 apartments and 120 condos. 66 apartments and 25 condos are designated affordable. Plus some retail space. The architecture is not ground-breaking but ti looks good and it complements the surrounding neighborhood.
Agreed. The boxy design is uninspiring. Humans deserve better.
may the jokes commence. this design should be redacted.
It was built on a landfill…
Agreed, it looks like a holiday inn
I want to live next door…in “Renditioned.”
user 1: we want more affordable housing!
user 1 after seeing affordable housing projects: wow that looks ugly! bad location yadda yadda…
lol
My first thought was that it looks like a prison for well behaved criminals, which, after reading the breakdown, is 100% in line with the intended use.
It’s not atrocious, but is quite “meh”.
The architect really phoned it in on this.
The name is rather silly. However, project names change all the time. I’m not going to harp on that too much.
I absolutely love what Zeppelin has brought to the RiNo neighborhood and the impact they have made to the Brighton Boulevard corridor. I’m absolutely jealous that I didn’t have the gumption or wherewithal to bring the entire TAXI development to life. They created context where there wasn’t much context at all. We may not all like the industrial-esque designs and we all don’t care much for the parking lots either, but even in time parking lots can be developed upon. Although, I’ve been through TAXI and perhaps those parking lots are there to stay for the long haul.
Humans have lived near train tracks for…well…as long as there have been trains. The view isn’t great I suppose, but some humans don’t really care about that. For an employee/employer relationship, the opportunity to rent a discounted apartment that is so close to downtown Denver could be a very attractive part of the employee’s benefit package; or, the attempt to indenture will be a huge insult and the experiment will fail. How these said employers work out the lease details for when an employee leaves the company or gets fired/laid off is another story. I’m sure the kinks will be worked out (or not).
Consistently, I see architects being thrown under the bus on this blog. Like I’ve said before, architecture is no different than art in a gallery and art is the confluence of the artist’s own expression and view on life. Let’s be real, is this building’s design really the confluence of the architect’s views on life and beauty? Most likely it is not. If we want better architecture then we have to demand it from the development community, not necessarily the architect. But, boo stupid architect for designing another lame building, I hate you!
Oh and to me, it really looks like a modern school building that you would see plopped in some abhorrently socialist country on the European continent–minus all the ridiculous parking space– because Europeans don’t own cars.
I hate it
Serious question: What employer would lease a block of apartments here? RTD?