Happy 2019 Denver! Let’s start the new year off with an exciting infill announcement: The redevelopment of Lower Downtown’s “Bell Park” block is once again in play.

Currently occupied by surface parking lots and a small plaza featuring the bell from Denver’s long-gone 1886 City Hall building, the Bell Park development site is bounded by Speer, Market, 14th, and Larimer and bisected by Cherry Creek.

Proposed residential/office project site on LoDo's Bell Park block

The big news: Kairoi Residential submitted a Project Concept Review Plan to the city on December 27, 2018 for a 36-story residential tower on the west (Speer) side of the creek, and a 5-story office building on the east (14th Street) side of the creek.

Before moving on, here’s a bit of recent development history for this site:

In 2007, the block was rezoned and a new “special review district” within the Lower Downtown Historic District was established to allow a tower up to 375 feet tall (400 feet including rooftop mechanical or architectural crown) on the west half, and a shorter building up to 55 feet tall (70 feet including rooftop mechanical) on the east half. That whole special review district process, plus property owner Buzz Geller’s proposed “Bell Tower” project (residential tower and office building), were covered extensively here on DenverInfill. By 2009, Mr. Geller’s project had received approvals from the Landmark Preservation Commission and the Lower Downtown Design Review Board, but by that point the country had plunged into the Great Recession and so the project died.

In 2017, a new vision for the block emerged that would have included two shorter buildings, a hotel and an office building connected via a plaza over the creek, but that project never made it past the concept stage.

And that brings us to the present, with Kairoi Residential’s concept of a residential tower along Speer and an office building along 14th Street being fairly similar to Geller’s plans from 2009.

A Project Concept Review Plan is the first submittal a developer makes to the Denver planning office, so details at this stage in the process are fairly light. But here’s what we know about this project from what’s publicly available on the city’s website:

The residential tower will rise 36 stories, contain 169 apartments plus a leasing office and resident amenities, and sit on top of three levels of underground parking. The 5-story office building will also sit above three levels of underground parking and will feature ground-floor retail space adjacent to a new public park at the corner of 14th and Larimer (where the Old City Hall bell is).

Additional information about this proposal is available in a BusinessDen article from a couple of days ago. Through a public records request, BusinessDen also obtained the renderings submitted by Kairoi Residential in their Project Concept Review Plan and published them, so we are presenting them below.

Conceptual rendering of Bell Park mixed-use development, courtesy of Kairoi Residential
Conceptual rendering of Bell Park mixed-use development, courtesy of Kairoi Residential
Conceptual rendering of Bell Park mixed-use development, courtesy of Kairoi Residential
Conceptual rendering of Bell Park mixed-use development, courtesy of Kairoi Residential

Keep in mind that these are the conceptual renderings that will undergo significant refinement in the coming months, particularly since this project must be reviewed and approved by the Lower Downtown Design Review Board.

To wrap up this post, here is a bird’s-eye view from this afternoon high above Auraria Parkway looking southeast, with the Bell Park block in the center of the photo:

Drone shot of the Bell Park block looking southeast.

Having parking lots on this prominent and historic block is a disgrace. Let’s hope this project makes it out of the ground this time!