DenverInfill Blog

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I called it! (anon 10:03am) and you all doubted me- tsk,tsk.
 

Congratulations to the Nichols Partnership. We're almost as relieved with this news as they are. I hope they sell it out quickly.
 

SWEET!! That is great news.
 

YESSSSSSSSS!!!
 

WHERE DEM HATERS ET NOW?
 

WOW! Randy, Chris and Bill of the Nichols Partnership deserve a heap of praise for pulling through such adversity.
 

hallalejua... halleluja... haleluja, haleluja, haleluuuueeeaaa
 

This project is an example of how diligence, patience, and hard work can pay off in real estate. I have no doubt that it will be a tremendous success.
 

nice now i dont have to stare at the same 3 floors of ugly concrete and mess out of my window anymore....maybe the crane will actually start moving because of someone operating it, not because of the wind...
 

Thrilled to here it! How many stories will be they be at by the DNC?

Also - The base for the tower crane for the Four Seasons has been put in...
 

Here's to Nichols and those lenders! I've been watching them swing that crane every morning for the past week, hoping they were warming that thing up for some action, and it looks like they were!
 

CONGRATULATIONS TO EVERYONE INVOLVED IN THIS PROJECT - WAY TO GO !
 

Denver went 2 decades without a skyscraper being built. Now there will be 2 40+ buildings going up at the same time. Way to go Denver!
 

Congrats Randy, Way to go. Love your building,it will make the Convention Center Area a lot nicer and more exciting. Thank You.
 

How come they are not offering pre-construction unit sales?
 

I too am thrilled to see the Denver Spire moving upward...just sort of wish it were going to be a bit more like this...not to rain on anyone's parade...but...

http://www.thechicagospire.com/

Why is it that the architects of our buildings seem to know only one shape: the box? Or the box with a sort of an outcropping they are all calling a spire? This design repeats in the Hyatt Convention hotel, the 1600, and now the Denver Spire. Maybe the Chicago Spire is even to wild for Chicago's daring sky line, but there's no reason we cannot get some buildings above 40-50 stories. Why can't we get some developers with (a) imagination, (b) bigger bucks, and (c) mixed use concepts. What ever happened to the Trango Tower people--now that was a cool and unique signature tower for our city. I appreciate all of the excitement over the three 14th Ave projects, I just wish two had gotten together for a truly outstanding double the height project (imagine if Spire people and 4 Seasons people had merged projects for an 80-story project, for example. Our developers need to go to Chicago and spend some time there. Where's our Hancock building? Where's our Water Tower Place? Forget Cherry Creek Mall, we need a replica of Water Tower Place to bring real retail to 16th street--as much as everyone is so terribly excited about the Fontius make-over, I'd have preferred that site (façade intact) to have been the base of a new 75-story mixed use project that would have been 8 stories of underground parking, 12-stories of indoor (this is Colorado and it's cold in the winter to the geniuses that thought the outdoor pavilions was a brilliant idea) mall, with a 20-story hotel above the mall, with 43 stories of luxury apartments and condos above that. Maybe if our mayor had been as much into great use of our downtown land resources for stunning mixed use towers as he was into restaurants and brew pubs, things would be different.
 

Anon 3:51: Height is not everything. I would prefer to see more downtown parking lots disappear under 40-50 story buildings than a few 80 story building constructed. Have you ever worked or lived in an 80 story building? I worked on the 72nd floor and hated it. Taking the long elevator ride down just for a breath of fresh air really sucked.
 

Anon 3:51: Constructing a 75 story building on the south side of 16th street would cast a shadow completely across the street at all times of year and seriously hurt the pedestrian activity of that part of the mall. Also, I hope nothing like Chicago Spire ever gets built in Denver. It is the ugliest, most phallic building I have ever seen. I cant believe the people of Chicago are allowing that giant dildo to be constructed on their waterfront.
 

Anything above 60 stories would be too high for our skyline and might the demand might not meet its need, hence all the 40-50 story towers being built. Anyways, Chicago first started as a sprawl of 30 story buildings before the bigger ones got started.

Also, the Hancock building is plain fugly. So is the Sears Tower. If tall building have to look like that, no thanks. I'd prefer a Chrysler or a Empire State Building, myself.
 

I'm with anon:3:51 we do need a new NICE sig tower! That would look nice in denver & also put us on the map a little bit more. But the chrysler or empire state buildings NO! They are fugly to.
 

I want a building just like the Bank of China Building in Hong Kong...if you want some pretty fantastic models of tall buildings check out that skyline!

I totally agree that an 80 story building would stick out like a sore thumb if it were placed in the middle of our skyline today...let's just let Denver grow, and whent the density is great enough to support such a structure, then I think we should build it...
 

To paraphrase all of the above:

I want it all, and I want it now!
 

The Chrysler and Empire State Buildings are fugly??? OMG I think that comment takes the cake!
 

Anon 3:51 here.

The Chicago Spire takes a tiny big of getting used to. The coolest thing, I think about it is how it looks at night.

Many women have said that all skyscrapers are phalluses--men reconstructing themselves, hence the ever growing need for taller and taller to out do the other guys. So, your point anon 10:31 is a bit non-sequitor when it comes to the phallus argument. And anyway, I wasn't suggesting the exact building be build in Denver. I was simply hoping to illustrate that there is a diversity of architecture going on in the world and we are missing out. When you look at the Denver Spire and the Four Seasons and even the supposedly high art 1401 Lawrence, all you see is very tall boxes with, maybe some tiny bit of ornamentation (spire) at the top. The tapering of the buildings, something needs to be done so our buildings look more distinctive. What's is say when the most distinctive building we have is one that looks like a cash register? As an example, I offer up another Chicago example in that of the Park Hyatt Hotel. Very thin, great base, cool restaurant, awesome top. Unique but not too scandalously revolutionary. We need someone to mix things up a bit. There are thousands of options.

As for casting a shadow across a street objection? Huh? A 20 story building casts a shadow across the street too. All times of the year, not to point out the obvious, but there's no shadow at night, first, and second, all big cities with great tall buildings have shadows being cast. After a while, you just get used to it and it's fine.

Now we need to move on to the urban sprawl concept. Downtown Denver is already approaching a state I call -- not walkable. This means you cannot expeditiously walk from one end of downtown to the other. To be fair, you cannot do so in Chicago or Manhattan either. It takes 30 minutes to walk from Sears to Hancock. I've never walked from north to south in Manhattan, east to west sure, but north to south takes 20 minutes on the subway, so I have no clue how long a walk it is. Anyway, Denver is only going to get worse the more of our parking lot space we consume with 8-15 story buildings. And, people, we don't have a subway or any plan for one. If we don't want our downtown to become like that of Paris (hence the phrase I coined some time ago--Don't Parisonify Denver) where you have a gigantic sprawling urban core where no building is more than half the height of the Eiffel Tower, then we need to urge the concept of lank banking and multi-use sites. We need to encourage that three developers with the cash to develop 10-12 stories, merge their projects , the city buys and holds the land in a "land bank" for the future when three more people have money to develop 10-12 story buildings. It is nearly impossible to ever tear down a 12 story condo building to make way for a taller bigger project. Each condo is individually owned and unless every single owner can be bought out, you're screwed. Right now, a lot of down down land is being 'wasted' on shorty projects below 15 stories. And, I may well be alone, but the totally uninspired developing group was selected for the Union Station Redevel project rather than the one that would have brought us a new skyscraper--which in Denver means something taller than 15 stories. I lived in one of the shortest condo buildings on my block in Chicago and it was 27 stories. It's weird to think my Chicago Condo building would have added to the skyline in Denver. Anyway, I'm merging a lot of ideas together around a common theme of environmental prudence. Taller buildings use less material to build, consume less land, use less energy to operate, and are critical to an urban center with no plans for local rapid transit. It's fine to be able to ride the Light Rail to Park Meadows Mall, but what if I simply want travel between the DAM and the MCA-Denver? How exactly do you get there on foot? RTD generates three highly convoluted and confusing bus and food options, the shortest of which they estimate as taking 14 minutes. That's not including bus wait time.

All I'm saying is that it we continue to let our urban core sprawl as we did our suburbs for the last 50 years without a subway system, we'll have America's worst congested city. We either need to bank land and build upward more downtown (by the way taller buildings look less out of place when they are joined by other buildings not the other way around) or we need to plan some better local public transportation than buses alone. If buses alone could do the job, London, Paris, NYC, and Chicago wouldn't have seen the need to build subways.

As to Saint's points: If there is demand for a 40 story 4 Seasons and Condo tower and a 41 story Denver Spire, how is there not demand for one 81 story tower? Wouldn't that be the same demand? Cities can be creative with their "land banks". When a skyscraper plan to build the world's tallest on S. Dearborn in Chicago fell through, the city turned it into a downtown ice skating rink in winter and a summer arts camp / art fair during the summer and spring. We could do the same only I'd add a farmer's market in fall for year-round use. It's amazing what creative, talented, forward thinking people can accomplish when they spend less time bashing progress (aka regress) and more time more time working amicably to find satisfactory solutions for all. As a native of the city and county who's lived all over the country from Seattle to Providence, R.I., I feel knowledgeable enough on the subject to suggest that people in my hometown are second in resistance to new ideas and change with the most being the people of St. Louis and Kansas City, MO (where Show Me really means 'ain't gonna happen in this lifetime'). It took a monumental effort to get a new Airport. It took Herculean efforts to persuade for the doubling of the Convention Center--and the city had to agree to back the hotel for it to get built--all this so we can now finally host our own Winter Ski product Convention just announced for 10 years starting in 2010 after being wrested from Las Vegas which has held it for over 30 years. All of this so we could be enough on the map to be considered as a viable host for the DNC, and so on. None of these things would have happened had it not been for our forward thinkers who could see into the future and work to add value to our city that eventually helps the city life on into perpetuity.

So, KCollins, while agree with the 'sore thumb' simile on the face of it, it's better to have one building stick out now and be joined over time with others, than to use that as an excuse to construct a bunch of shory condo towers on land that will never be able to be reclaimed.
 

Its interesting because we were all biting our nails practically at every post asking what's going on with the Spire. Now on the actual page that reassures us that the Spire will go up, you losers start taking about a signature building. There are plenty of surface parking lots that will provide that. In the meantime let Denver's core grow.
 

The cash register building isn't Denver's most distinctive - 1999 Broadway is. Building tall is all about economics. If you want Chicago I'd suggest you move back. You're not going to turn Denver into Chicago with governmental gimmicks. When the population and economics warrant Denver will grow tall.
 

Anonymous 3:51/4:15:

It's fine to be able to ride the Light Rail to Park Meadows Mall, but what if I simply want travel between the DAM and the MCA-Denver?

You can get within three blocks of each of these on either end of the 16th street mall shuttle. Plus, when the downtown circulator bus is finished, you'll be able to get between the two without walking more than two blocks total. Is that not good enough for you?

How exactly do you get there on foot?
I'd assume you'd walk if you wanted to get there by foot. It's not very far.

If we don't want our downtown to become like that of Paris .... we need to urge the concept of lank banking and multi-use sites.

Are you kidding me? First of all, Paris is both more walkable and more mixed-use than Denver. If Denver was more like Paris — that is, built on a human scale, I think we'd be a lot better off. I'd take the scale of Paris over that of Chicago any day.

Second, big buildings do not necessarily make a city more walkable. Just look at 17th street for an example of that, which is the least pedestrian friendly area of downtown Denver, yet has the highest buildings. The key is to get strong enough density to make an area walkable, which, if done right, can be buildings of around 5 stories. It could even be lower than that.
 

If you go Chicago, why not just go New York? Chicago is just a shadow city of everything New York does. Its lame and overrated. It has clearly been marginalized by the existence of Los Angeles.
 

More to my point and in the spirit of providing evidence that I'm not alone in hoping for better city planning, here's an interesting story regarding a lack of vision for Civic Center (which I mentioned in my post before seeing this article just now).

http://www.rockymountainnews.com/news/2008/jan/26/temple-vision-for-civic-center-blurry/
 

People chicago is not a shadow of NY nor marginalized by LA. It is itself a Great city such as the rest of our cities and has hosted the worlds tallest building for years and will cont. to do so when the 2000'ft spire is done being built. But I am a Denverite just wanting denver to stand out, with its skyline, in much this has nothing to do with the economy, gov, investors, architects, engineers or contracters(such as mr. trump) that build tall buildings. Just from this blog alone I have learned how hard it is to build a building by getting funds, gov, eco. stimulus, land, or the right architect for the job. If the multi billionaire Trump can not build in denver then damn! he even had a clearance from the city gov. the land, funds, and his own architect. It is hard.

But lets not hate on each others cities for what ever reasons. denver will be denver chi will be chi, ny will be ny, and la will be la.
 

L.A sucks, talk about srawl and a pathetic downtown center, I'm glad Denver is nothing like L.A!
 

Hey Ken,
I apologize if you already have a link to this page. If not, you might enjoy considering it, and, perhaps inviting conversation about how our fair city stacks up. It's pretty compelling to have quick access to the graphical images of all the tall buildings built, proposed, or under construction all over the world. They seem to have a number of missing buildings for our city, though.

Cheers, and keep up the excellent work on your most informative and useful blog. Other than my own, yours is the only blog I visit weekly.

http://skyscraperpage.com/diagrams/?c129
 

When will pre-sale begin? Shouldn't it have started by now?
 

Totally agree. The new Spire is another boring Denver shoebox. 1999 Broadway is the most distinct example of modern contemporary architecture we have in this cowtown. The Qwest (1801 California) tower wouldn't be so bad if it weren't butt fugly earthtone brown. I always thought if it sported a whitish facade with blue glass (think LA's Library Tower) it might look pretty decent. I saw the renderings of the 4 Seasons. Once again, prominent use of earthtone colors. Common Denver, look at pictures of Singapore or Hong Kong for some killer skyscraper designs. Where is IM Pei when we need him?!?