Denver Infill Blog

July 2005

Here's where I will regularly share news, observations, rumors, ideas, or anything else about urban redevelopment, infill projects or Downtown Denver that doesn't fit into one of the other sections on this website.

Blog Archives

July 31, 2005.  I've made more improvements to the Big Picture section.  I've added a second overview map, this time where the color coding reflects the height of the buildings in number of stories.  I've also added the aerial photo of the simulated Denver Skyline, introduced two days ago here in the Blog, as a permanent feature of the Big Picture.

Despite the incredible progress that would be made in repairing the built environment in Downtown Denver if all of the infill projects proposed to date are completed, 15th Street will still be a problem.  There are those two long surface parking lots behind both sides of the Pavilions, the surface lot across California Street from the front entrance of the new Hyatt, and several other surface parking lots here and there along 15th between Civic Center and LoDo. Then, there are the handful of existing buildings that really need to be replaced with something more dense and attractive, such as the old Burger King at 15th and Stout, the building where Tarantula Billiards is at 15th and Champa, the old Woolworth's Building also at 15th and Champa, and the building where the Pawn Shop is near 15th and Champa.  Which is worse, an unlandscaped, poorly maintained surface parking lot, or a dilapidated, marginally used structure?  Take a stroll along 15th Street between Welton and Curtis and you decide for yourself.    

July 30, 2005.  Today I updated the Big Picture map and the Infill Scoreboard to include not only the One Lincoln Park and the Walnut Street Townhome projects (see the Ballpark neighborhood for the latter), but to reflect changes in the project data for the Nichols' high-rise at 14th & Champa, and to update the status of several other projects.  The grand total is now over 12,000 residential units either completed, under construction, or planned since Spring 2000 in the DenverInfill.com coverage area.  For you high-rise fans out there, there are now 9 towers of 21 or more stories that fall into one of those categories.  

July 29, 2005.  Here's an aerial photo of Downtown Denver with 10 different infill projects added to the scene.  In some cases, the new building is the actual architects rendering that was scaled and skewed to get it to fit.  In other cases, the building was drawn by me to represent the general massing or form of what the structure will/may look like.  I certainly don't claim to be a digital artist, but I know Photoshop just well enough to be dangerous!  Anyway enjoy this glimpse into Downtown's future.    

July 28, 2005.  We go 20 years without a single private-sector high-rise built in Downtown Denver, then within the span of 7 months we hear of plans for buildings of 50, 41, 31, 30, 30, and 27 floors in height, plus twin 23-story towers already under construction, plus a number of "short" projects of 20 stories or less.  So is this the dawn of a Golden Age of Downtown Denver high-rise residential development, like what Vancouver or San Diego has been experiencing?  To me, the most important part of Randy Nichols' announcement about his proposed 41-story condo tower was this: "We're trying to fit into a demographic that has been underserved. We're aiming at the young professional who works downtown who enjoys LoDo and everything downtown has to offer but is priced out of the vast majority of projects."  Until we can find a way, without onerous deed restrictions that deprive individuals of the right to build wealth through real estate equity, to provide high-rise Downtown housing for the non-affluent, we will never have the dynamic 24-hour Downtown that we all want.  Don't get me wrong, it's important that the moneyed folks live in Downtown as well.  In fact, I remember a quote from some book I read in grad school that went something like this: "A measure of a great city is the degree to which rich people are willing to live in the center of it."  I suppose there's some truth to that statement, but even still, it is certainly only one measure of what makes for a great city.  I hope the Nichols project sells its 505 units out in a matter of days.  Perhaps then we will see more of the development community focus on providing Downtown high-rise housing that is not just about selling "luxury," (certainly not everyone must have hardwood floors and stainless steel appliances) but about providing a decent, reasonably affordable place for the average Downtown worker or enthusiast to live. 

July 27, 2005.  So this is the month for big project announcements in Downtown Denver!  The fact that Randy Nichols of Nichols Partnership (who recently completed the Clayton Lane project in Cherry Creek North) purchased the corner parcel at 14th and Champa was something we learned about back in April along with news of several other high-rises in that area.  Today we learned of the details of Mr. Nichols' project: A 41-story condominium tower! He has just completed the purchase of the Davis & Shaw furniture building which will be demolished, with that parcel combined with his other parcel at the corner to create the site suitable to hold his 41-story, 505-unit tower.  This isn't a new Infill Update as I've had this project already marked out on Block 131, but it sure is nice to know more about it.  There are so many high-rise proposals in Downtown Denver these days, it's getting hard to keep track of all of them!  What a fortunate problem to have.  I'll have more thoughts on this in the coming days.   

July 24, 2005.  I think it's safe to say that 15th Street will no longer be the only street in Downtown that seems like it's always being torn up for one reason or another.  Add 14th Street to the list.  For several years now, 14th between Curtis and Welton has been a cone zone due to the construction of the new Convention Center, the renovation of the Denver Auditorium into the new opera house, and the construction of the new Hyatt.  All of these projects are finished or will be finished this year... just in time for construction to begin on the Four Seasons at 14th & Arapahoe, the Embassy Suites at 14th & Stout, the Nichols Partnership high-rise at 14th & Champa, the St. Charles Town Co. high-rise at 14th & Stout, and the Hilton Garden Inn at 14th & Welton.  Then, when those are all finished, that will be about the time the city decides to rebuild 14th Street by taking out a lane and widening/streetscaping the sidewalks into the "14th Street Promenade" concept called for in DMAP (Downtown Multimodal Access Plan).  Not that I'm complaining however.  Change is one of the signs of a healthy and vital city, and after our long drought of no new skyscrapers, I'll take all the construction we can get.  Cities are never finished, which for me makes them so fascinating. 

July 23, 2005.  Here's some news about Denver's Justice Center project: The city is in the process of selecting a consultant to develop an Urban Design Framework Plan for the new Justice Center complex in the Civic Center part of Downtown.  This is not the process of selecting the architect to actually design the buildings... that is still planned as an international design competition down the road.  This consultant would develop a framework plan within which the architect that is eventually chosen must work.  The plan will address issues such as the appropriate scale and massing of the proposed buildings, materials and other facade elements, how the buildings should relate to the street and to each other, and, most importantly, how the buildings will integrate with the surrounding civic buildings and neighborhood residential.  The selection process has narrowed the list of consultants down to two: Denver's own David Owen Tryba Architects, and internationally known SOM (Skidmore, Owings & Merrill).  The winning firm will be excluded from competing in the design competition.

July 22, 2005.  Big news!  Details about the One Lincoln Park project, mentioned as the topic of my very first blog entry below, have finally been revealed... and it's better than one might have imagined!  It's not only a new 31-story tower for Downtown, but the first in what is planned as a multi-tower high-rise village clustered around the 20th & Welton Light Rail Station.  Transit Oriented Development at its finest!  The project is slated for the small odd-shaped block right across from the light rail station next to one of Denver's most admired buildings, 1999 Broadway.  For more info and renderings, check out Block 177 in the Northeast Downtown section or read the article (Luxury Condos with Light Rail Planned) from the Denver Post.

July 21, 2005.  The year 2006 is looking like it's going to be an exciting year for Downtown Denver!  The new Art Museum building will open, the new Hyatt will be enjoying its first year of business, the new Denver Newspaper Agency and EPA Regional HQ buildings will both be completed, and there could be as many as a half dozen or more major tower cranes looming over the skyline.  Projects that hope to be under construction in 2006 include the 50-story Four Seasons, the 27-story Embassy Suites, the 30-story One Lincoln Park, the 14-story Hilton Garden Inn, the 12-story Best Western, and possibly one, if not both of the 30-story towers planned for 14th between Stout and Champa.  Speaking of the Four Seasons, the developers have been saying that their big public marketing campaign will begin in July... but so far, no big project sign at the site, no changes at their website (www.fourseasonsdenver.com), nothing.  Let's hope this project sticks to its schedule and gets underway soon, as I'm a bit paranoid that some of these other projects may wait to see if the Four Seasons project really happens before they commit to construction.  

July 20, 2005.  Great news about the Executive Tower at 14th and Curtis.  While the plan from a few years ago to strip the entire building down to its girders, reclad it in glass, and make it into a new hotel, is long gone, the building is about to undergo a multi-million dollar renovation nevertheless.  The upper floors will be converted to housing for students attending school at the nearby Auraria campus, and the lower floors will be renovated but retained as hotel rooms.  The tower itself will continue to sport its brown brick with beige accents, but the three-story base will get an entire makeover.  Currently, only the 15th Street side of the Executive Tower / Brooks Tower complex that occupies this block is inviting, with restaurants, storefront windows, and pedestrian amenities.  But the other three sides, particularly the 14th Street side facing the Denver Performing Arts Complex, feature long blank walls of brick and lava rock that stifle any pedestrian activity.  Now that's all about to change, with the base getting stripped of its featureless facade and new storefronts with windows and light and activity taking its place.  It's about time.   

July 17, 2005.  Got a lot accomplished today on bringing DenverInfill.com closer to being completed.  As noted on the Recent Site Changes page, I added some summary totals to the Infill Scoreboard section. I now have all the infill project data in an Access database and can quickly calculate all the summary totals with a cross-tabulation query.  So can you believe that the total number of residential units completed, under construction, or planned since Spring 2000 in Downtown Denver and the adjacent Center City neighborhoods totals almost 12,000!?  Amazing.  The other big new is The Big Picture... a new section that contains an aerial image showing the location of every infill project tracked on this site, and color-coded to indicate the project status (planned, under construction, completed).  Regarding the Downtown Statistics page that it replaced, I'll provide links to other sites that have quantitative information on Downtown and the surrounding areas.  So what's left to complete?  Add a lot more links to the "Links to Other Sites" section and finish writing text in the "Observations & Ideas" boxes at the bottom of the individual Downtown block pages.  After that, it's a matter of keeping up with all the Infill Updates as projects are announced, periodically updating photos of projects as they finish construction, and add fun stuff to the Special Features section.   

July 16, 2005.  With all these proposed high-rises being announced for Downtown, it makes me ponder one of the topics I enjoy pondering... the market forces that influence the development of skyscrapers.  We start with the cost of land.  Land in Downtown is expensive, and understandably so.  Simple economics tells us that when you have a limited and finite supply of something that is in demand, it's going to cost a lot.  So if you go out and spend a bunch of money on a Downtown parcel, you need to build a lot of something on it to produce enough of a return to make your venture profitable in the end.  Building a lot of anything on a small parcel means going vertical.  The problem is that high-rise construction is really expensive, so not only do you have the high land cost you need to make up, but now you've also got to offset the high cost of construction (and permitting, and site logistics, and so on).  To make up for all these high costs, you need to charge more for the condos or office space or whatever it is you're building.  But the more you charge, theoretically, the smaller the pool of individuals or companies there is to potentially lease or purchase what you've built.  So if we want more high-rises to get built in Downtown, we need to either decrease the cost of development (which should translate into lower purchase or lease amounts), or we need to expand the pool of potential purchasers/lessees. 

On the cost side, one option is to decrease the cost of entitlement and permitting.  Fortunately, Mayor Hickenlooper and Planning Director Peter Park have made this one of their top priorities, and it can't happen soon enough.  But on the demand side, I don't think it's a matter of there being not enough people or firms out there in the suburbs that can afford to be located Downtown.  Rather, it's the perception of what you get for your money.  This is particularly the case with the office market, where tens of millions of square feet of suburban office space was developed in the 1990s and virtually none Downtown... even after the Downtown market had fully recovered from the glut of the 1980s.  Even today, with our nationally recognized vibrant and successful Downtown, companies continue to choose far-flung suburban office parks over Downtown at an alarming rate.  We simply need to more effectively elucidate the value of being located in the Downtown area. 

So, to the corporate decision-makers out there, that means that the extra buck or two per square foot you'd pay for office space Downtown is offset by the fact that you'll have happier employees because they have a workplace that is centrally located within the metro area providing them the convenience of being able to live just about anywhere in the region; happier employees because they have a work location with an infrastructure that readily allows them to commute by car, bus, light rail, bicycle, or even by foot; happier employees because they can walk out their door at lunchtime and have hundreds of restaurants, shops, and services within easy walking distance rather than being forced to eat in the company cafeteria or spend half their lunch hour sitting in their car in left turn lanes just trying to get to a drive-thru burger joint; happier employees because they can walk out their door after work and find themselves surrounded by the finest museums, theaters, nightlife, and sporting events in the region; happier employees because they can conveniently work and pursue education at the same time due to the three colleges within walking distance of their job; happier employees because they have the opportunity to experience intellectual stimulation and emotional fulfillment by being surrounded by an intensity and diversity of human beings, buildings, places, sights, sounds, and activities; happier local clients because they too will find it more geographically convenient to work with you; and happier out-of-town clients because if your customers are going to travel long distances to Denver to meet in person, you might as well afford them the opportunity to visit you where they can also experience the best that our city has to offer, instead of forcing them to spend thousands of dollars to sit in a boring suburban office park that looks just like the boring office parks they have at home.              

July 14, 2005.  A few minor updates... The "11th & Delaware" project listed for the Golden Triangle neighborhood now has a name: Belle Terre, and the unit count has been refined from 48 to 44.  Also, the old Denver Police Department District 1 station at 22nd and Decatur, site of the proposed Zocalo Condos in the Jefferson Park neighborhood, is now under demolition.  Finally, speaking of the Jefferson Park neighborhood, another new infill project is working its way through the city review process.  Look for an official Infill Update soon (with rendering!) for the Diamond Hill Residences, located on the bluff overlooking Downtown next to the Chili Pepper restaurant.

July 13, 2005.  So what's up with the planned Downtown Target store?  When it hit the media well over a year ago, the store was to be built on Block 162.  The facades of the historic buildings along the Mall were to be preserved and everything else was to be scraped.  Mercy Housing was negotiating to build their affordable housing above the new Target since their recently-purchased Bank of Denver building would be one of the buildings removed.  There's been no official news for quite a while, but a lot of rumors abound.  Frederick Ross has put the largest parcel on the block up for sale... not a good sign if a deal is imminent.  Plus they're remodeling the corner storefront at 16th & California... an unlikely event if the building is about to become part of a Target.  On the other hand, there have been rumors that Target is moving forward with plans to have a Downtown store open by 2007... and it may even be a SuperTarget!  Hard to say how it will all work out as no one seems to be talking.  Bottom line is, however: 1. Downtown needs a full-service grocery/general merchandise store, and; 2. Something needs to be done with the vacant Fontius Shoe store at the corner of 16th & Welton.  It has been vacant for something like 20 years!?!  I nominate that as the #1 Downtown Denver Disgrace.  If there ever was a case for the city's use of eminent domain...       

July 12, 2005.  A bit of follow up on the proposed 30-story One Lincoln Park.  The little black building at 20th & Lincoln (see the E. 20th Ave. street elevation photo on Block 032-B) is reportedly being remodeled for a "sales office."  Hmmm... a sales office for what I wonder?  If One Lincoln Park is indeed to be built at or adjacent to that location, it will be a great way to start the process of filling in Downtown's largest concentration of undeveloped parcels.  The area around 20th, Broadway, and Welton is an embarrassment of ugly parking lots.  So how would our skyline change with One Lincoln Park in that area?  Just for fun, I've given it a try on this photo simulation.  The background aerial is a bit dated, and I have no idea the true orientation of the building, but it's good enough to give you an idea.        

July 11, 2005.  Big news!  Plans are being made for a 300-foot residential tower along Cherry Creek at 14th and Larimer Streets (Block 242 & 044).  Check out the discussion about the project from the June 2, 2005 minutes of the Lower Downtown Design Review Board... I've saved the section from their minutes about this project here.  Looks like there'll be a rezoning and other issues to work out before this can happen, but what a tremendous site for an architecturally-significant tower!

July 10, 2005.  A new project is coming to Walnut Street!  I'll be adding it soon to the Ballpark neighborhood page, but I figured I'd tell you about it here first.  It's slated for the half block facing Walnut between Park Avenue West and 24th Street.  There's a building there now at the Park Avenue West corner, which will remain.  The rest is an ugly gravel lot that will be developed into 29 rowhouses facing both Walnut and 24th Street.  The project requires a rezoning and is currently working its way through the city process where hopefully it will encounter no problems.  There are so many vacant lots along Market/Walnut, it's good to see them getting filled up.  Corum Real Estate Group's full-block long project on the 1800 block of Market (Block 049) is another good example.  That project, by the way, is now up to 13 stories and will be breaking ground in the Spring of 2006.

July 7, 2005.  A few site upgrades are in the works at DenverInfill.com.  I'm improving the aerial photos for all the Center City neighborhoods by adding more street names, increasing the size of the yellow infill project numbers, and adding a drop shadow to all text to increase readability against the aerial photo background.  I hope you find the Center City neighborhood aerials are easier to read. I have 11 of the 13 neighborhoods done as of today.  Lots more little improvements are planned for the coming weeks... stay tuned. 

July 6, 2005.  New infill project Rumor of the Day... the VFW Post on the 900 block of Bannock in the Golden Triangle neighborhood is rumored to be replaced with a 5 story condo building.  I'll see what more I can find out about this... or email me if you know something about this proposed infill project.  On a separate note, here are two feel-good articles about Denver's FasTracks transit program, both appearing on the Michigan Land Use Institute's website.  The first one appeared 2/22/2005 ("Denver Voters Gallop to Smart Growth") and the second one was published 6/16/2005 ("In Denver's Transit Breakthrough, A Lesson For Detroit").    

July 5, 2005.  My first DenverInfill.com blog entry!  So let's start off with a big announcement.  Have you heard about the new 30-story tower planned for Downtown?  It's to be called One Lincoln Park and will be located somewhere on Lincoln Street, most likely between E. 16th Ave. and E. 20th Ave. where there are a ton of surface parking lots.  There was a full-page ad for it in the June 24-30 Denver Business Journal, but no specific location given (that's why I haven't made it an official "Infill Update" yet).  The tower will have 185 units ranging in price from $275,000 to over $3,000,000.  The name of the developer and the exact location are being kept secret until they launch their marketing campaign in a month or so.  There was a very dark silhouette of the building in the advertisement, so I scanned it and messed with the image to make it as clear as possible.  You can check it out here.  Of course, as soon as I get more info, I'll post it here at DenverInfill.com.