Mountain West Microbrew: Chit chat and irrelevancy - Page 53

Boquillas · #**1041** Posted **May 21, 2013, 11:18 PM**

Hey all! Long time SSP member and complete Mountain West non-entity here. I've been here in Denver for a year now, having come from Texas (Texcolo knows me

) although I'd like to stipulate that I have no feelings on football whatsoever. Anyway, I do a lot of on-site urban sketching here, and just posted a lot of Denver sketches over in the urban sketching board, where no one will see them. Thought some of you Denverites might want to check 'em out, though.

http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/showthread.php?t=205674

To win you over, here's the Speer Blvd bridge.

Thanks,
Boq

texcolo · #**1042** Posted **May 21, 2013, 11:37 PM**

^

AWESOME!

You'll love Denver, so many things to draw.

Boquillas · #**1043** Posted **May 21, 2013, 11:41 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by texcolo

^

AWESOME!

You'll love Denver, so many things to draw.

Man, I should've let you know I was here a long time ago Tex. We have to stick together against the "natives."

Boquillas · #**1044** Posted **May 30, 2013, 6:23 AM**

Say, Denver peeps. Does anyone have any recommendations for cool historic buildings to draw? I'm fairly familiar with downtown, but all the older neighborhoods have lots of hidden gems. I have my eye on the Patterson Inn, but is there anything else cool I should look at? I particularly like Richardsonian Romanesque stuff.

bunt_q · #**1045** Posted **May 30, 2013, 1:10 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by Boquillas

Say, Denver peeps. Does anyone have any recommendations for cool historic buildings to draw? I'm fairly familiar with downtown, but all the older neighborhoods have lots of hidden gems. I have my eye on the Patterson Inn, but is there anything else cool I should look at? I particularly like Richardsonian Romanesque stuff.

The Loretto Heights admin building? It's Romanesque, it's an Edbrooke design, and it's in the middle of nowhere southwest Denver.

Boquillas · #**1046** Posted **May 30, 2013, 2:44 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by bunt_q

The Loretto Heights admin building? It's Romanesque, it's an Edbrooke design, and it's in the middle of nowhere southwest Denver.

Thanks! Will look into it.

Cirrus · #**1047** Posted **May 30, 2013, 2:51 PM**

Go up to Boulder. There are a bunch of great drawing subjects in downtown Boulder and on the CU campus.

wong21fr · #**1048** Posted **May 30, 2013, 3:29 PM**

The DU campus has some subjects that you would probably like, also check out Golden, specifically the Mines campus, for some other subjects (though most of the buildings draw more from Dutch Revival)

What about the Tivoli Building on the Auraria Campus?

Avoid Boulder, there's a reason they moved the architecture program to CU Denver.

PLANSIT · #**1049** Posted **May 30, 2013, 5:19 PM**

You should consider looking at CPVLIVE's DENVER - Historic Public School Architecture From The City Beautiful Era Photo Thread. It's awesome.

DENVER - Historic Public School Architecture From The City Beautiful Era

Boquillas · #**1050** Posted **May 31, 2013, 6:57 AM**

Thanks for the suggestions! Cirrus, I know, I need to. We go up to Boulder plenty, but I haven't sketched there yet. And they've got that great Art-Deco City Hall.
Wong21, have sketched in Golden, but not on the Mines campus. On the list.

Plansit-- I love that thread. Have to do those places when school's out, or risk looking like a creep.

EngiNerd · #**1051** Posted **May 31, 2013, 2:31 PM**

Also you can hit up any of CPVLIVE's photo threads, they are all definitely worth a look, and might give you some other ideas.

Cirrus · #**1052** Posted **May 31, 2013, 2:46 PM**

Not to nitpick too much, but the art deco building in Boulder (which is great, I totally agree) is the county courthouse. Actual city hall kind of 🞵🞵🞵🞵🞵.

Boquillas · #**1053** Posted **May 31, 2013, 6:12 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cirrus

Not to nitpick too much, but the art deco building in Boulder (which is great, I totally agree) is the county courthouse. Actual city hall kind of 🞵🞵🞵🞵🞵.

Ah, should've known. County courthouses are usually better looking in general. Well, whatever it is, I want to draw it.

bunt_q · #**1054** Posted **Jun 10, 2013, 10:41 PM**

Random observation.

Of the top-10 threads currently in the mountain west, we have:

SLC - 6
Boise - 2
Denver - 2

Of the top-20, counting surrounding cities, we have:

SLC - 10
Boise - 6
Denver - 3
Idaho - 1

What is wrong with this picture? Apparently SLC must have epic, China-levels of urban development going on. Or an inferiority complex... not sure which. Because I think forumer numbers are probably relatively even.

You guys need a Ken. An SLCInfill.com or something.

wong21fr · #**1055** Posted **Jun 11, 2013, 3:36 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by bunt_q

What is wrong with this picture? Apparently SLC must have epic, China-levels of urban development going on. Or an inferiority complex... not sure which. Because I think forumer numbers are probably relatively even..

Remember all of the debate about the CC hotel over a decade ago (Jesus, that much time?)? We hashed out the designs and talked about what we wished it would be like. We thought about it and discussed it endlessly. Then we moved on to other things (such as massive discussions about Union Station). Now were are in a stage where we give new developments a couple of posts and move on to urban design discussions. I'd say it is because we've matured, but also because our current political leadership is focused on a damn Aerotropolis and not the city center or even the inner neighborhoods. There's no big civic projects either proposed or U/C to get uber-excited about. Bike lanes down 15th just don't catch the imagination, nor does a DT Circulator.

And there's no massive tower for us to speculate about. We've got tons of development, but it's ultimately all filler to repair the urban fabric, nothing that is going to be super iconic that catches our imagination.

bunt_q · #**1056** Posted **Jun 11, 2013, 4:58 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by wong21fr

There's no big civic projects either proposed or U/C to get uber-excited about. Bike lanes down 15th just don't catch the imagination, nor does a DT Circulator.

It's a bit sad that fastracks doesn't fulfill this, but you're right, there aren't any big civic projects going really. That's actually kind of sad. Maybe that means we have an opportunity now to do something? For the last 20-30 years we've done viaduct reconstruction, an airport, downtown parks/setting the stage for redevelopment, three stadiums, a convention center, a tower hotel, municipal buildings, state and local courthouses... and you're right, there's very little now.

The airport project is exciting, but not enough. Regional transportation plans are either far off, stupid, or both.

But that begs the question - what do we still need?

PLANSIT · #**1057** Posted **Jun 11, 2013, 5:17 PM**

Colfax/Broadway/Federal/CC Streetcar?

EngiNerd · #**1058** Posted **Jun 11, 2013, 5:31 PM**

High Speed Rail

wong21fr · #**1059** Posted **Jun 11, 2013, 5:41 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by bunt_q

But that begs the question - what do we still need?

The streetcar network that we often talk about is one thing. Improvements to our local bus service would be another. One will catch the imagination, the other will have bigger impact, but neither will cause endless debate as they are both the products of endless studies and we won't even see any competing visions. To me, the transportation planning process doesn't seem to illicit a lot of thoughtful discussion.

If we had an Amazon like development proposed for DT (three 30-40 story towers) that would probably illicit some discussion.

RyanD · #**1060** Posted **Jun 11, 2013, 5:42 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by bunt_q

But that begs the question - what do we still need?

Street cars and more significant development that we can probably support. Something outside of the 5-story apartment projects..

I understand Toronto is larger (2.5mil city / 5.5 metro) but this is happening all over these Canadian cities, even Calgary our apparent sister city (1.2mil city).

So how can these cities support all these tower / much higher density developments? We're kind of stuck with meh. Don't get me wrong, I love the fact that Denver has some serious infilling it's doing but I think that we could be doing it better.

Like I sad before, we need cheap condo towers. That would move people in the city. I would love ONE developer to try it. Just to see how it would sell. Keep it in the 150-200k range for good 850-1000 sq foot units. I know that sounds improbable but it would be interesting to see.

Quote:

What's up with all the cranes?

Look up. No, look higher—look way up. If you happen to be downtown, chances are very good that you’re standing in the shadow of a tower crane.

Toronto is in the throes of a construction boom. In fact, with 189 high-rise buildings in the works, we have more towers under construction than both New York City (82 buildings) and Mexico City (88), places that each have over three times Toronto’s population. Rising hundreds of feet from the ground, or perched precariously atop nearly complete skyscrapers, these cranes punctuate our skyline.

...

300: The approximate number of tower cranes in Toronto.

http://www.thegridto.com/city/places/whats-up-with-all-the-cranes/

From Ken, who is in Toronto right now:

Under construction in Toronto at the moment:

2 - 70+ floors
3 - 60-69 floors
7 - 50-59 floors
23 - 40-49 floors
37 - 30-39 floors
26 - 20-29 floors
55 - 9-19 floors

Surely Denver can even have a 1/4 of that without saturating the market too heavily.. THAT would give us a reason for more threads in the MW forum