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Denver Infill Blog
February 2006
Here's
where I will regularly share news, observations, rumors, ideas, or
anything else about urban redevelopment, infill projects or Downtown
Denver.
Blog Archives
January
2006
December
2005
November
2005
October 2005
September 2005
August 2005
July 2005
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February
28, 2006. Today I'll end the month with news of a new
infill project in the Ballpark neighborhood! The project is called
Rue 32 and will include 40 units on a site at the corner of 32nd and
Blake, across Blake Street from the Fire Clay Lofts development. The
1.15 acre site covers the entire half block between 32nd and 33rd Street
along Blake, and is owned by Trujillo Real Estate. Currently on the
site is a warehouse building from the 1960s, with the rest of the lot
being undeveloped. I assume the warehouse will be torn down, but you
never know. More research is needed on this one.
I've just uploaded a few
new project to their respective neighborhood pages. Added within the
past day or two: Confluence Heights (Project #20) on the
Highland
page, City House (Project #32) on the
CPV North
page, and the Garden Factory Lofts (Project #20) on the
Curtis Park - Five Points page.
Also, the new River North neighborhood page should be up and running
sometime this week.
February
27, 2006. The Denver Business Journal has an
article in this week's edition about the improving Denver office market (Office
Market Shows Signs of Recovery), and in it are a few paragraphs
about the Central Business District. Here are a few quotes: "The
vacancy rate in the central business district, encompassing 23 million
square feet in the heart of downtown, has dipped to 16 percent, with a
median leasing rate of $18 per square foot. Brokerage CB Richard Ellis
reported that the central business district experienced the highest
absorption of all sub-markets in Denver, with a year-end total of 863,317
square feet. It's a trend that helped spur a dozen building acquisitions
last year in the area, the company reported. 'The central business
district appears to be tightening up,' said Jim McGrath, senior vice
president and branch manager of commercial real estate services firm
Studley in Denver. 'Clearly, that's the case with Class A space,
especially any kind of space that has decent western views. We were
recently out in the market with a 50,000-square-foot tenant, and I think
we only found five quality options for them.'"
All good news there,
particularly the reference to Class A space and spaces with good western
views. I'll address that shortly, but first, the other paragraph
about Downtown:
"Lower Downtown has a
vacancy rate of about 8 percent and high-rise product is commanding
$6-to-$8-per-foot pricing differences, and the entire central business
district is at about 16 percent, according to year-end reports. 'As a
result, LoDo has at least four new projects that are not just on the
drawing board but are going through approvals,' Wheeler said. 'There's
clearly a lot of pent-up demand for new product in the central business
district, in LoDo or the Cherry Creek market,' Wheeler said. 'However,
Cherry Creek's ability to absorb larger blocks of space is very suspect.'
At least part of the reason for all the activity downtown is because it's
populated with growing oil, finance, insurance, real estate and service
companies, Ruschmeyer said. 'Those industries are doing well in the
economy and, in turn, are doing well here,' he said. 'If you look for a
block of space in a Class A building in the central business district,
there's nothing over a couple of floors,' he said."
OK, the Class A market
Downtown is starting to get pretty tight. The economy has been steadily
improving and we've had good absorption. Also, the growth in supply
has been kept in check... say, for about twenty years now! The last
true high-rise office tower built in Downtown Denver was 1999 Broadway,
which was completed in 1985. Since then, we've seen some
lower-scale, quality properties come online, such as 16 Market Square, the
Millennium project at 17th & Wazee, and 1899 Wynkoop. All those
projects were nice infill additions in LoDo, but are not CBD high-rises.
We've also seen some good build-to-suits, such as the Webb Municipal
building, and the DNA and EPA buildings currently under construction.
But where does a firm go if they're looking for a good-sized block of
Class A space, in a high-rise with commanding views, in a building that
isn't twenty-five years old? Atlanta? One of the reasons
Downtown was able to snag the Gates headquarters was because Legacy
Partners took the risk and built a spec building during a weak market, and
because their building was new and available when Gates needed it, Gates
snatched up the whole building. We've got a serious
chicken-and-the-egg problem in our Downtown office high-rise market.
Developers won't build (or, actually, the banks won't finance) without
pre-leasing half the building or more. But if I were in charge of a
firm looking for space, I wouldn't want to commit to a lease on a space
that I can't move into for 3 years! Sometimes, you just have to
build it and trust that they will come. The southeast Tech Center
submarket added millions of square feet of space during the 1990s
boom, mostly all on spec, and yet most of it was absorbed in due time
because it gave firms the opportunity to "kick the tires" on a space or
two before deciding where to lease. Residential developers will tell
you that it's much easier to get people to commit to buying a condo if the
building is under construction...even if it's just a hole in the ground...
than it is just from a glossy brochure. Now that we've got all these
high-rise condo towers filling up choice Downtown vacant lots
(particularly those with unobstructed mountain views), let's hope a
developer or two out there might decide to take advantage of the situation
and put up a signature, Class A, twenty-first century office tower in the
heart of Downtown. If they do, they will have a one-of-a-kind product.
Finally, the article
quotes Mr. Wheeler as saying that there are four new office projects in
LoDo "not just on the drawing board but going through approvals." I
can think of three: 1400 Wynkoop, the New Sugar Building, and 1490
Delgany. What's the fourth one?
February
26, 2006. Today I have news of another infill project in
the Highland neighborhood, and an update on a Golden Triangle project
that's moving forward quickly.
At the corner of W. 29th
Avenue and Vallejo in the Highland neighborhood is a new infill project
called Confluence Heights. The project includes 24 flats in a
4-story building, with the ground floor being retail. The project
will include both one and two bedroom units, with prices starting around
$280,000. The building will have an all brick exterior, concrete and
steel construction, oversized windows, and underground, heated parking.
Confluence Heights is scheduled to be completed in the Spring of 2007.
Here's what it will look like:
Confluence Heights. The surface
parking lot that used to be there has recently been ripped up and a
construction fence now surrounds the site. This project is located
next to the historic Wheeler Block and across from the Wyandot Overlook
project currently under construction, giving this stretch of W. 29th
Avenue a renewed urban form and a feel similar to that of 15th Street as
it heads into Highland. It's great seeing new projects like Confluence
Heights that, in combination with other new projects, begin to transform
the character of an important neighborhood street.
Meanwhile, in the Golden
Triangle, a project that has been on the list for a while is now moving
toward construction, and has a new name and a new rendering too! The
Belle Terre project (see Project #2 on the
Golden Triangle page) is now known as the Piranesi, and its new
rendering looks like this:
Piranesi. The project's website (www.piranesi-condos.com)
is also up and running. And what's this about it being under
construction already? Almost. The Bolts auto repair shop at that
corner had to go first, and that's exactly what happened yesterday.
Check it out here:
Bolts Demolition.
February
25, 2006. Big news today! Trump finally revealed
more detail, including the site and a rendering, of his proposed tower in
Downtown Denver. John Rebchook at the Rocky Mountain News has the
story:
Trump Sets Sights on New Tower.
There's a lot of interesting things about this proposal.
First, a bit of history.
The "El Jebel" tower was originally proposed by Wes Becker back in the
early 2000s for the surface parking lot site at 1770 Sherman next to the
historic El Jebel temple. The temple, an architectural and historical gem,
has been in need of a major renovation and restoration for a number of
years. Its future was uncertain. Here's a
photo of the side and back of El Jebel.
Mr. Becker and his development partners' proposal was to build a 48-story
office building on the adjacent parking lot, along with a complete
renovation of the historic temple. Their proposed tower was higher
than the zoning at the time would allow, but their argument was that they
needed the profit from the extra density from the tower to cover the
millions of dollars it would take to restore the El Jebel temple.
The city agreed and granted a new PUD rezoning for the site, as well as a
variance for the tower from the mountain view plane from City Park.
Around that same time though, the Downtown office market tanked, so
eventually they changed the proposal from an office tower to a combination
hotel/condominium tower. Several years have passed, but the project
has never moved forward due to a lack of financing. You can check
out the tower's site characteristics and designs of the original tower
(also designed by David Owen Tryba) on
Block 035-B in Upper Downtown. Now in 2006, along comes
Trump.
The tower's location at
18th and Sherman would probably not be my first choice for a Trump tower,
but now that we know it is the location, I can understand its appeal.
I think if Trump had gone for a site closer to the lower end of Downtown
near where the Four Seasons and the 14th & Lawrence towers are proposed,
it would have somewhat marginalized the uniqueness of the product due to
the similar nature of the towers. By going "uptown" with his site,
Trump's tower will stand alone as the only luxury hotel/condo high-rise in
that part of Downtown. And since we all know that Downtown Denver
can only support so many of these high-end hotel/condo towers, it's
unlikely another tower similar to Trump's will appear in that part of
Upper Downtown in the near future. By splitting geographically from
its closest rival, the Four Seasons, the Trump tower carves out its own
territory and probably increases the likelihood that both towers will get
built. Two other advantages to the El Jebel location: From the
popular view of the Downtown skyline with mountain backdrop as seen from
the Museum of Nature and Science, Trump's tower will be front-and-center
prominent. The Four Seasons will barely be visible. Conversely, the
Four Seasons will dominate the view from the Highland side, allowing each
tower to dominate its side of the skyline. Also, the inclusion of
the renovated historic El Jebel building as a part of the Trump Tower's
amenities gives it an added element that sets it apart from the other
towers.
The Rocky Mountain
News website only has an (understandably) low-resolution rendering of
the Trump Tower. But, thanks to John Rebchook, I'm happy to present
here at DenverInfill the high-resolution debut of the proposed
Trump Tower Denver. First, here's the view (from Cheesman Park) of
the skyline (Trump-Skyline)
and here's a zoomed in view of the tower so you can see more of the
building detail (Trump-CloseUp).
The original rendering, of course, is courtesy of David Owen Tryba Architects.
So far, I like the tower
design but, considering this perspective doesn't give us any real sense of
the building's colors, materials, etc., I'll wait to see further detailed
renderings before I give it my final judgment. The twin spires are nice
and are definitely a welcome change from the monotony of Denver's
flat-roofed skyline. One other interesting aspect about this project
that John mentions in his article: Assuming both the Trump Tower and the
Four Seasons get built, there will be three towers that can claim to be
Denver's "tallest" in some way. Trump will have the most number of
floors, the Four Seasons will be the tallest in height to the top of a
spire, and Republic Plaza will still be the tallest in height of the
uppermost habitable floor.
February
24, 2006. Today's Post contains new information,
sort of, about the fate of the proposed 31-story condo tower at Speer and
Market. According to the article (Development-Review
Group Expands Downtown Purview), the committee that was
originally formed to look into the issue of whether or not
Block 242 & 044 should remain within the
LoDo Historic District has recommended the creation of a new design review
district all together. The new
district would cover several blocks along
Speer Boulevard/Cherry Creek that contain a mix of historic buildings,
surface parking lots, a Denver fire station, and some small park-like
parcels. My first reaction to the proposed new district is positive.
This area forms the edge to not just Lower Downtown, but to Downtown in
general, as viewed from the west/northwest. Further south along
Speer, the Convention Center, Performing Arts Center, and a number of
mid-rise buildings form a strong defining edge to Downtown, in contrast to
the mostly-horizontal Auraria Campus. But in this part of Downtown,
the edge is poorly defined, with an uncomfortable interspersion of
lower-scale historic buildings and surface parking lots that eventually
trickles off into the flatness of the Auraria athletic fields and the
Pepsi Center parking areas. We can do better. But if the LoDo
Historic District guidelines dictate, the edge will consist of only
55-foot (or shorter) buildings all featuring the Neo-LoDo architectural
style. Is that what we want? Personally, I would like to see Lower
Downtown wrapped by taller, more modern structures. This is already
the case to the south, with modern high-rises found along Lawrence and
Larimer, and is occurring to the north, with the development of the
Central Platte Valley. Coors Field mostly defines how LoDo is framed
to the east. To the west, I'd like to see taller modern buildings
lining Speer (like Geller's 31-story proposal), then tapering down to the
height of the Acme Lofts at Wazee Street.
Anyway, I'd say the
creation of this proposed new district means good things for Geller's
tower. He's on the committee and, clearly, the intent is to do
something different along there from an urban form and massing
perspective; otherwise, they would have proposed to expand the LoDo
Historic District into this area instead.
February
23, 2006. Consistent with what I had mentioned in my blog
of February 9, the developers of the Museum Residences on
Block 043-E are gearing up for
their next phase. The Post has an article today (Another
Tower Project) about the proposed Museum tower at the corner of
12th and Broadway, which will feature condos and a boutique hotel.
Unlike originally planned, however, the Denver Art Museum will not be
occupying as their administrative offices the 7-story section that will wrap
around the parking garage along the Broadway side. The developers
are studying what to do with that space.
The article also includes
a quote by a realtor about the condo/hotel tower: "'I think it's a
great concept, but if it isn't done correctly, the location can present a
problem,' he said. 'They have to address situations like noise. They have
to market the units, not the location.'" That's just nonsense.
It's not about the location? Excuse me, but we're talking about
being next to the Denver Art Museum! Every marketing piece coming
from any realtor selling anything, anywhere, in the Golden Triangle, will
prominently feature as their main sales pitch, location, location,
location! "Steps from museums and culture!!" "Minutes from the
Cherry Creek bike path!!" "Easy walk into Downtown!!" ...and so on.
Suddenly, just because you have a building facing a busy, noisy arterial
like Broadway, you're no longer in a good location? Don't tell that to
the people at One Lincoln Park. I know! Why don't they make
this last phase all "affordable" condos under the city's Inclusionary
Housing Ordinance? They'd sell out the entire phase in the first
day! I'm sure there are a lot of people out there who would be
willing to "tolerate" the location. Oh, here's a little
diagram that was included with the
article.
February
22, 2006. Today I've got two sketches of what the City
House project will look like. This is the latest project by
East-West Partners for their Riverfront Park area. City House will
be an 18-unit townhome project squeezed in between the Glass House and One
Riverfront Park, both currently under construction (see blog entries for
January 2 and January 19). Here are the images (City
House 1) (
City House 2).
February
21, 2006. At the January meeting of the Lower Downtown
Design Review Board, the 1400 Wewatta project was discussed. This is
the large mixed-use project proposed by Opus Northwest for the surface
parking lot areas of
Block 012. This time, the board
approved the building envelope along the Cherry Creek and Wewatta Street
sides. Next time the developers come back, they'll be looking for
approval of the building's massing. After that, it's down to getting
approvals for the facade and colors and materials and all the other
architectural details. It's good news to see this project working
its way through the process with the city.
This Opus project on
Wewatta is roughly at about the same stage in the design and approval
process as is the new Sugar Building proposed for
Block 019. These two proposed structures, along with the
1800 Market Residences on
Block 049, represent three very significant projects that
together will consume about one and a half block's worth of surface
parking lot in Lower Downtown. If these three projects were the only
new developments happening in Downtown, it would still be an exciting
situation. In the past, we'd be grateful for having three projects
like this happening concurrently. But, consider the fact
that while these three buildings will be under construction, we'll also
have One Lincoln Park, the Spire, the Four Seasons,
the Embassy Suites, and perhaps another tower or two under construction at
the same time as well. During 2007, there could easily be ten major
buildings under construction at the same time in Downtown proper, and
that's not counting "short" projects like the 16-story Hanover tower in the Golden
Triangle and all the things East-West Partners will have going in the Central
Platte Valley.
Yes, people, it appears The Boom is Back!!!
February
20, 2006. Wondering what the next hot Downtown
neighborhood is? As I've said many times before in this blog, look
no farther than the
Jefferson Park neighborhood. This is the
neighborhood that was completely bypassed during the 1990s boom, while
Center City neighborhoods like the Golden Triangle, Highland, Uptown, and
others saw a flurry of infill activity. Now it is Jefferson Park's turn.
This is a neighborhood that could easily become another Cherry Creek East.
Seriously.
Yep, we've got yet
another Infill Update in the Jefferson Park neighborhood: a new townhome
project just broke ground at 25th and Decatur in the heart of the
neighborhood. It's called Cityscape Townhomes, and it features 7
units ranging in size from about 1,400 to 1,800 sf. Here's a link to
their
website, and a
rendering of the project design.
This project is just up the street from the
Walker's Row project that is nearing
completion of its final phase, and just a few blocks away from the Zocalo
Condos and RiverClay projects. Then there's the proposed Spanos
project, which I mentioned in my blog of
October 11, but haven't yet added to the
Jefferson Park page as an official project, due to the controversial
nature of the project and the fact that it hasn't yet gained the blessing
of the Jefferson Park neighborhood association. The Spanos project,
as originally planned, would replace the existing Baby Doe's and Chili
Pepper restaurants with a large, multi-building apartment complex of over
300 units. The neighborhood is pressing for the project to include
at least a quarter of those units to be for-sale condominiums,
ground-floor retail, as well as a design that is more harmonious with the
lower-scale, historic nature of neighborhood. Regardless of what
happens with the Spanos project though, the Jefferson Park neighborhood is
definitely on the development community's radar screen, and it will be
interesting to watch how this neighborhood evolves over the next few
years. Right now, the prices for new condo units in Jefferson Park
are still remarkably reasonable, in the $200 to $250 per square foot
range, but a few years from now, $400/sf townhomes might be considered a
steal.
February
19, 2006. If the appearance of a chain-link fence around
the site of a proposed infill project is a good sign, then take this
photo as positive evidence that
One Lincoln Park is getting closer to
becoming a reality!
February
17, 2006. Rumor has it that regulars who park at the old
Motor Hotel Garage on
Block 138 have been notified that they'll
have to find somewhere else to park starting right away. The building is
coming down! The historic parking garage (hard to believe there
could be such a thing) was built in 1928 and served as Downtown's first
structured parking facility. The building features gray brick with
creamy terra cotta trim and decorative elements that gives it a weird art
deco/gothic vibe. From three of its four sides, the old Motor Hotel
Garage is an eyesore, although at one time it had buildings connected to
it on both sides and another behind it across the alley. But from
its front facade along Stout, it actually has some charm, although you
have to look past the years of neglect and broken windows to see it.
It's probably been decades since the front has received a good power
cleaning.
The building will be
razed and replaced with a 27-story Embassy Suites hotel and a 12-story
Homewood Suites hotel, both of which will be developed concurrently by the
same developer. Originally, the plan was to develop the Embassy
Suites on the small lot between the Garage and 14th Street, with the
Garage getting a makeover and serving both the new hotel and the condo
tower planned by St. Charles Town Company across Stout Street. But
that idea apparently didn't pencil out, so the old Motor Hotel Garage will
soon join the Davis and Shaw building as casualties of Denver's current
Downtown building boom.
It's too bad that the
original plan didn't work out. Right now, the dirty, gray-colored
Garage, sitting all alone amid a sea of dirty, gray-colored asphalt
parking lots, can't help but give an immediate impression that it's an
urban-renewal project waiting to happen. If the Garage could have
been sandwiched in between two new buildings and received a thorough
restoration, it would have added a nice historic element to an area that
will soon become dominated by glassy neo-modernist structures. But
the land in that part of town is too valuable for anything but a
high-rise, and the footprint of the parcel between the Garage and 14th
Street is only 9,713 sf, which is not particularly suitable as a site for
a skyscraper. So, grab your cameras and run down to 14th and Stout
one of these days and take a few photos in memory of the old Motor Hotel
Garage... just in case the rumor is true.
February
16, 2006. Recently, the state of Colorado issued a
Request for Qualifications for "Project Management Services for the
Colorado Center of Justice and the Colorado History Museum Project." A few
days later, they canceled the RFQ but stated that it would be reissued in
the near future as a Request for Proposal. Not bothering with the RFQ
stage and going straight to the RFP stage will save everyone time, so I
think this is a positive development. The fact that the state is
ready to move forward with serious planning of this project is in itself a
positive development. In case you're not clear on what I'm talking
about, read my blog of
December 6, 2005 or, here's a paragraph
from the RFQ (which I managed to snag before the state pulled it from
their website) that describes the scope of the project:
"The existing Colorado
Judicial Building and Colorado History Museum are situated within the
Judicial/Heritage Complex located in Denver within the one-block site
bound by Lincoln Street on the east, Broadway on the west, 13th Avenue on
the south, and 14th Avenue on the north. This site contains two unique
structures that share common mechanical, electrical, and plumbing systems.
The Project to be managed involves site evaluation, selection and
acquisition, design and construction of a new Colorado History Museum
Building, phased relocation of the existing Colorado History Museum,
partial or full demolition of the existing two structures (the Museum and
the Judicial Building), possible temporary relocation of the judicial
operations, and construction of the Colorado Center of Justice on the
existing site. Both project management services and court and museum
construction expertise are being sought collectively from a single firm.
This firm will need to address design coordination issues in the context
of working within Denver’s historic Civic Center and cultural districts.
The Colorado Center of Justice will involve construction of an
approximately 600,000 gross square-feet (gsf) building envisioned to house
the Colorado Supreme Court, Court of Appeals, Colorado State Court
Administrator’s Office, Attorney General’s Office, Public Defender’s
Office, Supreme Court Library, and other smaller State of Colorado
legal-related entities, and limited parking. The Colorado History Museum
will involve construction of an approximately 240,000 gsf building to
house the Colorado History Museum, Colorado Historical Society's
Administration offices, Stephan Hart Library, Office of Archaeology and
Historic Preservation, and State Historical Fund. The project will
incorporate commercial operational facilities for store and restaurant use
incorporating patron parking."
To put this project in
some context, the existing Colorado Judicial Building and Colorado History
Museum together total about 215,000 sf. The new Justice
building is proposed as a 600,000 sf facility (about the size of the new
Wellington Webb Municipal Building) and the new Museum building is
proposed at 240,000 sf, about 100,000 sf larger than the new
Libeskind-designed Denver Art Museum building currently under
construction. These two new facilities will have a major impact on
Denver's Civic Center area! Let's hope that when the time comes, the
state does the right thing and sponsors an international design
competition and provides sufficient funding to ensure we get two quality
buildings worthy of a world-class city.
Finally, did you notice
that they're calling the proposed facility the "Colorado Center of
Justice"? Perhaps they want to distinguish it from the new "Denver
Justice Center" planned for nearby, or maybe, when it's finished, it
will somehow become the
center of all justice out there in Colorado?!
February
14, 2006. A few projects are one step closer to breaking
ground. The biggie: One Lincoln Park. A building permit
application has been submitted to the city and is getting the necessary
approvals. If all goes as planned, we should see a groundbreaking
for One Lincoln Park within the next 30 to 60 days. Other projects
also now on the Building Permit roster:
Inca 29 in the
Prospect neighborhood and 11th & Grant
Residences in the
Capitol Hill neighborhood. Also, I
think I stumbled upon a new project in the
City
Park West neighborhood. While researching the city's
Building Permits list, I discovered a building permit application for a
new five-plex at 1649-1657 Franklin. I don't have anything at that
location yet, so looks like it's a new infill project. The property
is located immediately north of the Franklin Townhomes on the west side of
the 1600 block of Franklin. The five-plex will occupy the space where
three single-family dwellings are currently located.
Also, is something going
on at 29th and Vallejo in the
Highland neighborhood? A
DenverInfill regular tipped me off to the fact that the remarkably
ugly asphalt parking lot at the southwest corner of that intersection was
completely ripped up a few days ago. I haven't discovered anything
about a project there yet, and there's always the possibility they're just
redoing the parking lot. But let's hope it's a new project. There's
a lot already going on in the area, with the Overlook under construction
just across the street and a block over. Please send me an email if you
know anything about that site.
February
13, 2006. Hey check it out... the Glass House now has
some glass on it (and some brick too)!
Glass House
February
12, 2006. The
Curtis Park-Five Points neighborhood is
the focus of today's blog. The most recent project added on that
neighborhood page, 2400 Champa, has a new name and a rendering! The
project is now known as Lombard Gate, and here's what it will look like:
Lombard Gate Residences. The
project consist of five townhomes, two carriage homes, and two penthouse
flats for a total of nine units. Check out their website here:
http://www.curtisparktoday.com.
Next, here's a new
project to add to the Curtis Park-Five Points page: the Garden Factory
Lofts. This is a five-unit townhome project just around the corner
from Lombard Gate at 2340 Curtis. Here's a rendering:
Garden Factory Lofts. This
project's website can be found at:
http://www.denverfactory.com.
You'll notice on their website that the developers are also building
another project at 1749 Race Street. It's a triplex, which puts it
just under my DenverInfill four-unit minimum, but good to see yet
another infill project for the City Park West neighborhood anyway.
Also, a five-unit
residential project will be coming soon to the corner of 28th and Stout. I
just learned about this one and don't know much else about it yet, but I'm
hoping to get more information on the project soon.
Finally, in case you
missed it, here's an article from yesterday's News about the
different residential towers proposed for downtown and how they're
targeting different markets: (Two
Proposed Towers Target Very Different Sets of Buyers). So,
we've got residential towers aimed at the 20-something-first-time-buyers,
and towers aimed at the lots-of-equity-empty-nesters. What about the
people in between?
February
10, 2006. Mr. Trump has announced he's still interested
in our fair city after all. Despite the fact that the City
eliminated him as a contender for the job of Union Station Master
Developer, the News and the Post both report that Donald Trump and the Bayrock
Group still intend to build a "a
single-tower, five-star development" somewhere in the Downtown area. (Trump
in a Denver State of Mind,
Trump Keeping an Eye on Downtown).
This isn't really new news, as he alluded a few months ago to the fact that he was pursuing a project for Downtown separate from
the Union Station job. I guess what we have really learned here is
that nothing has changed, other than that he's publicly acknowledged that
he's no longer in the running for the Union Station project and that he's
still planning to build some kind of tower in Denver. So, where is his
proposed project located? How tall will it be? We don't know.
Clearly, whatever he proposes is likely to compete directly with the other
upscale luxury towers proposed for Downtown, so this news raises more
questions about the Denver market than it answers. Can we really
support a 50-story Four Seasons, a 55-story Gulf Group tower, a conversion
of the Embassy Suites to a Ritz Carlton, a rumored W Hotel in the CPV, and
now a five-star Trump tower? All this in addition to the other
"short" luxury products like One Riverfront Park and the Museum
Residences? By my rough estimation, that's nearly a thousand units
that are all priced in the $500 or more per square foot range.
Either only one or two of these towers will actually happen, or a whole
lot of folks with a bunch of money needs to decide they want to live in a
Downtown high-rise within the next year or so. Let's hope it's the
latter.
February
9, 2006. Today I heard that the second phase of the
Museum Residences, the tower at the
corner of 12th and Broadway, is moving forward. The 17-story tower,
originally envisioned as all condos, is now supposedly going to be half
condos and half hotel... sort of like a mini Four Seasons. Design
work will begin shortly and the developers hope to break ground later this
year.
More news about the
Highland neighborhood: One of the projects I'm attempting to gather more
information on so I can add it to this site appears to be moving into the
construction phase already. At the western corner of 17th and
Boulder street is a vacant lot, where a six townhome project is planned.
That's about all I know at the moment, but it appears construction will be
underway soon at that site. Diagonally across the street, on the
eastern corner of the same intersection, an 18-unit condo buildings is
also reportedly being planned. If you can provide more info on these
projects, please let me know. Two more Highland projects are also in
the works. I'm hoping to post news about those within the next week
or two.
February
8, 2006. Here's a nifty little
plan map of the Central Platte Valley
that I was able to recently obtain (courtesy of
CB Richard Ellis), showing all the parcels, current developments, planned
developments, ongoing construction, and so forth in the CPV. Several maps
similar to this are available on the
CPV
(North) neighborhood page under Projects #24 and #25, but this
map is the most current I've seen of late. The map is dated May 2005. The main thing I'd like to draw your attention to is the red dashed line
which represents the alignment of the underground light rail tunnels that
will begin construction later this year as the first component of the
FasTracks transit program. Also, the streets in purple (17th Street,
and Chestnut Street) are the streets currently under construction in the
Central Platte Valley. Construction of these streets represents a
clear sign that commercial development is finally getting ready to take
place on the Downtown side of the CML railroad tracks. Can't you
just sense that any day now there will be a project announcement of some kind in
this Commons portion of the CPV?
February
7, 2006. For the first time, I've removed a project from
DenverInfill.com. The apartment building at 21st and Welton on
Block 179 in Northeast Downtown, proposed
a few years ago by Trademark Communities, is no longer being pursued, and
recently the land was put up for sale. However, I added the proposed
North Broadway Tower just a few streets over on
Block 157. I've also updated a few
other projects' data and have retallied the Infill Scoreboard. This site
is now tracking 190 projects totaling 13,380 residential units, with a
number of new projects yet to be added.
February
6, 2006. Today I attended a luncheon at which developer
Randy Nichols of the Nichols Partnership gave a presentation about their
proposed 41-story Spire project at 14th & Champa on
Block 131. In that presentation, he
unequivocally stated that the Spire will break ground in May. No
pre-sales will be required to begin construction. They will begin to
sell units in May 2007 when the project is at approximately 70% complete.
The building will be topped off in September 2007 and construction will be
complete by Spring 2008.
The
developers of the 31-story One Lincoln Park project have recently stated
that they have met their sales goal and that they will break ground in
March or April. Thus, within the next few months, two high-rise towers,
both
developed by the private sector with no public subsidy whatsoever, will be
under construction concurrently in Downtown Denver. The last time that happened was
in 1984.
February
5, 2006. As promised, I've updated the entire
Infill Scoreboard
page. Now, all the projects listed and both the summary tables are
current as of today. The bottom line: 13,843 residential units
proposed, completed, or under construction since Spring 2000 within the
Downtown and Center City Neighborhood areas covered by DenverInfill.com.
I still have the two maps on the Big Picture page to update.
I've also uploaded to
their respective block or neighborhood pages several project renderings,
and added the 11th & Gaylord condo tower project to the
Capitol Hill neighborhood page. Over the next week or so,
I'll be adding another half dozen or so projects as official Infill
Updates. There's a lot going on.
February
4, 2006. Here's two more articles (in case you can't get
enough) about the proposed 55-story condo tower at 14th and Lawrence.
They're very similar to the articles I posted in January from the Post
and the News, but each contains minor bits of information not given
in the others. For example, in this
press release from the developer, it
mentions that a sales office will be built on the site this spring, and it
was in this
article from GlobeSt.com where it
mentions that 50% of the units will have to be sold before construction
can begin.
Speaking of new
residential towers, I've heard yet another rumor about when One Lincoln
Park will start construction. This time I heard they've met their
pre-sale requirements and that construction will begin in March or April.
That seems reasonable. It was also reported a few days ago that the
new
Museum of Contemporary Art project at 15th and Delgany will
break ground in March. We should also see construction begin this
spring on the Parking Garage component of the new Denver Justice Center on
Block 020-W while the rest of the complex gets designed.
Finally, I've just
updated three Downtown block pages with new Infill Updates of projects
recently announced. You can now find the Opus project on
Block 012 in Lower Downtown, the Homewood Suites project
referenced on
Block 138 in Central Downtown, and, of
course, the proposed 55-story Gulf Group condo tower on
Block 070, also in Central Downtown.
It's been several months since I've updated the
Infill Scoreboard
and the two maps on the
Big Picture page, even though I've added many new projects to
the site, so I'm planning on getting those updated very soon.
What other changes are in
store for DenverInfill in the near future? I've got four or
five projects alone in the Highland neighborhood to add (a few you don't
even know about yet) and several others from other neighborhoods. Also,
I'm going to add a new Center City neighborhood! To better reflect
the evolution of the area north of Downtown, I'm going to split off the
portion of the Ballpark neighborhood west of the railroad tracks and,
along with the west bank of the Platte, create a new River North
neighborhood page. Not only are there a few cool projects going on
up there (like the TAXI project), but the River North name is now pretty
well established, and its character is notably different than the Blake
and Walnut street areas.
February
3, 2006. In a follow up article (LoDo
Cuts Opus' Plans Down to Size), the Post reports that
the Lower Downtown Design Review Board yesterday refused to approve a
request by Opus to allow a mechanical penthouse on their proposed project
on
Block 012 to exceed the 130-foot
building height limit for the area. Nevertheless, Opus will tweak the
building design and move on with the project. It's certainly not
unusual for developers to try to squeeze out just a bit more density than
they're allowed. With the cost of construction, I suppose you can't
blame them for trying. We also learned that the 130 feet of building
height at the corner of Wewatta and Cherry Creek will contain 10
floors.
Also, a project in the
City
Park West neighborhood first announced in my blog of
January 4, the Marion Street Lofts, has a
new name and now a rendering! The project is to be called the Old
Market Lofts after the old Ace Supermarket that's currently on the site.
Here's the
rendering, courtesy of Locus Architecture
of Denver.
February
2, 2006. The Denver Post reported today about a
project I first mentioned in my
November 9 blog that's planned for the
large surface parking lot behind the Steelbridge Lofts. If you
missed it, here's the article (Project
Sought for LoDo Lot). The project is planned as a
mixed-use development by Opus Northwest. In the article, we learn a
bit more about the project, such as it will include a total of 440,000 SF
in three buildings, with about 200,000 SF of that as office space on the
Wynkoop side of the block, with the balance on the Wewatta side consisting
of a mix of commercial and residential. The building at Wewatta and
Cherry Creek is planned to be approximately 13 stories to match with the
Waterside Lofts across the street. So far, this project seems to be
moving favorably through the design review process. Hopefully, we'll
see this project break ground some time this year.
Another positive article
(CBD
Posts High Office Absorption) about the Downtown real estate
market appeared on GlobeSt.com by John Rebchook today. The metro
Denver office market has been slowly improving since the market tanked in
2001 or so, and during that recovery, the Central Business District has
been consistently a step ahead of the Southeast/Tech Center submarket in
terms of lower vacancy rates and higher lease rates. The good news
is that Downtown continues to show no signs of relinquishing its lead as
the best performing submarket in the region. The CBD's direct
vacancy rate is now down to 11.9% from a high of slightly above 20% if I
remember correctly. I suspect we will see a slight blip back up when
the Environmental Protection Agency and the Denver Newspaper Agency vacate
their existing Downtown space to move into their new buildings, but
clearly the trend is very positive for Downtown. Perhaps by the time
all our proposed residential high-rises are wrapping up construction
in 2007-2008, the market will be ready to support a new office tower
again. Wouldn't it be nice if Hines decided to resurrect their plans
for their
1100 15th Street tower at that time?
Can you imagine that tower, the Four Seasons, and the Gulf Group Tower all
clustered next to each other? What a dynamic one-two-three
combination that would be for that part of Downtown! |
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