DENVER | Main Development Thread #7

[twister244]

Based on the 16 Chestnut webcam, the southern half of the crown for 1144 has taken shape. I would assume we are days away from having an official "topping out" ceremony, no?

[CharlesCO]

Originally Posted by MovinOnUp

Checking this forum's pulse

Not sure if this has been posted, but gives this a bit more context re: the DIA renovations. Looks like it will be a nice repurposing of the main hall. Security still seems a little confusing, but otherwise nice.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHbxv_Wqedk

There was quite a bit of discussion about this when the details were unveiled last month — though I think it was in the transit thread.

[pregersthehobo]

Originally Posted by twister244

Based on the 16 Chestnut webcam, the southern half of the crown for 1144 has taken shape. I would assume we are days away from having an official "topping out" ceremony, no?

Yup. View from my office window below. Can't really get any higher on this side.

[Matt]

[Fritzdude]

I guess I haven't been paying attention, but this green belt that will be going in the Cole neighborhood is a lot larger than I anticipated. 12 total acres of bike trails, parks, trees, and recreational opportunities basically running the length of 39th St. from York to the Platte River.

https://www.denvergov.org/content/denvergov/en/platte-to-park-hill/39th-avenue.html

[RyanD]

Originally Posted by twister244

I would assume we are days away from having an official "topping out" ceremony, no?

She officially tops out Friday!!

[Matt]

Now that I see where 1144's crown stands in relation to Four Seasons, it appears there is no direct line of sight to any of the units in Four Seasons; the entire crown is above the penthouse floor of Four Seasons. The justification for not illuminating the crown based on "sensitivity" to the neighbors in Four Seasons seems to go out the window (no pun intended). This is especially evident in Ryan's photo. The thought of the crown being dark makes me sick to my stomach. I don't care about vertical striping on the side of the tower - Denver needs an illuminated pinnacle standing tall in the skyline. What a way to undermine such an incredible building.

[mr1138]

Originally Posted by Fritzdude

I guess I haven't been paying attention, but this green belt that will be going in the Cole neighborhood is a lot larger than I anticipated. 12 total acres of bike trails, parks, trees, and recreational opportunities basically running the length of 39th St. from York to the Platte River.

https://www.denvergov.org/content/denvergov/en/platte-to-park-hill/39th-avenue.html

This project has the potential to be completely transformative for the neighborhood. Not only does it add much needed greenspace, but also will make significant flooding and water quality improvements in keeping with what we now know about the virtues of "day-lighting" major storm sewers to restore them as small creeks.

Ask the NIMBY constituency though, and it's all just a giant evil scheme to ruin City Park and prop up their despised I-70 ditch.

[Fritzdude]

Originally Posted by mr1138

This project has the potential to be completely transformative for the neighborhood. Not only does it add much needed greenspace, but also will make significant flooding and water quality improvements in keeping with what we now know about the virtues of "day-lighting" major storm sewers to restore them as small creeks.

Ask the NIMBY constituency though, and it's all just a giant evil scheme to ruin City Park and prop up their despised I-70 ditch.

OK, can someone illuminate me on this issue a bit? Why is there so much animosity to the I 70 project? I realize that it's going to require some people to lose their property. However the area is so toxic that it would seem the owners would be overjoyed to get above market value for the sale. In return, the neighborhood gets to their natural streetscapes and add parks while reducing pollution from the highway. Regardless of your position on this, it is obvious that something needs to be done to these elevated roadways. Their crumbling. Why is this so controversial?

[twister244]

Originally Posted by Fritzdude

OK, can someone illuminate me on this issue a bit? Why is there so much animosity to the I 70 project? I realize that it's going to require some people to lose their property. However the area is so toxic that it would seem the owners would be overjoyed to get above market value for the sale. In return, the neighborhood gets to their natural streetscapes and add parks while reducing pollution from the highway. Regardless of your position on this, it is obvious that something needs to be done to these elevated roadways. Their crumbling. Why is this so controversial?

One of the biggest complaints I have heard is that the construction could potentially unearth toxic soil from below as the region has a history of being extremely polluted. Now, how much of the concern is based on actual studies or not, I don't know. The alternative that has been submitted is re-routing I-70 along 270/76 and expand there. Seems like that idea would simply divert congestion to someone else's backyard, cost a pretty penny, and add to people's commute time across the city. Kyle Zeppelin came out heavily yesterday against the I-70 project, but how much of it is political posturing I don't know. The city is moving forward with neighborhood projects in anticipation of construction beginning next year.

[mr1138]

Originally Posted by Fritzdude

OK, can someone illuminate me on this issue a bit? Why is there so much animosity to the I 70 project? I realize that it's going to require some people to lose their property. However the area is so toxic that it would seem the owners would be overjoyed to get above market value for the sale. In return, the neighborhood gets to their natural streetscapes and add parks while reducing pollution from the highway. Regardless of your position on this, it is obvious that something needs to be done to these elevated roadways. Their crumbling. Why is this so controversial?

It seems that the opposition is multi-faceted, and some of the arguments have more merit than others. The primary argument stems from a social-justice point of view - the idea that this neighborhood was unfairly targeted when I-70 was built in the first place, and that residents feel that the option of re-routing the freeway to the north (up 270 and down 76) was never seriously considered by CDOT. Many of them also seem to come from a militant anti-car point of view.

From what I can tell, the issue of stirring up toxic soil is a bit of a red-herring, the real purpose of which is to throw sand in the gears of the planning process. In fact, they seem to be looking for anything and everything that may stop the project - social justice arguments, arguments that the emissions data was fudged, etc. etc. The opposition to this greenway project just seems to be one of the many things in what they perceive as their arsenal of arguments.

Just my 2 cents: I myself am an advocate for routing freeways AROUND urban areas, rather than through them, and I think the I-270 to I-76 reroute actually does have some merit. I also think that CDOT was less than transparent in their early analysis and explanation for why this option wasn't studied further. But the whole thing has gotten so out of control and beyond reason that I've kind of decided to just sit back and watch it all play out. The opposition have come to sound like a bunch of CRAZIES, and I don't really care what happens at this point. They sat on their asses until the 11th hour, and now they are being completely irresponsible in their attempt to hold up the project.

Nobody seems to be able to offer a reasonable alternative plan other than "don't do this project." They can't seem to acknowledge that YES, the viaduct is crumbling, and simply doing nothing for another 10-15 years is not an option. But where the really loose me is when they throw a completely reasonable and worthwhile project like this greenway under the bus, while neglecting to do their research on the subject and completely misrepresenting the facts. The idea that a detention pond will "destroy the City Park Golf Course," or that daylighting the drainage will somehow make water quality at the outflow WORSE (which is provably untrue, and in fact the opposite of what daylighting does) actually demonstrates willful ignorance on the subject that stoops to the lowest levels of science denial.

[wong21fr]

Another view of 1144th and the imminent topping out:

1144 by Wong21fr, on Flickr

I'd say it's pretty damn close.

[semiurban]

Originally Posted by wong21fr

Another view of 1144th and the imminent topping out:

1144 by Wong21fr, on Flickr

I'd say it's pretty damn close.

Does anyone know what the white horizontal material on some of the floors is?

[wong21fr]

Originally Posted by semiurban

Does anyone know what the white horizontal material on some of the floors is?

That's probably a coat of paint due to those beams being exposed to the elements.

[TakeFive]

mr1138... You cover the "landscape" quite well. Few points.

The social justice issue is mostly silly but there is an argument to be made. Under Obama/Fox USDOT, a social justice component was added to the EIS process, therefor... but it's mostly a chicken-egg debate. Often land adjacent to freeways is populated by lower socioeconomic class bcuz it's more affordable. Same with floodplains in other states. At the time I-70 was built the freeway was (well) north of downtown and was never an issue - until just recently. Try to visualize the context way back when...

The 270/76 route was considered but not seriously bcuz it is utterly ridiculous. It would cost (well) over $3 billion for starters. The exact same social justice issues would be present. Some pretend that you could just move the I-70 traffic onto the existing 270/36 infrastructure and it would somehow suffice. Asking the freight, airport and tourism industries to be happy with a 25 minute (minimum) and unnecessary detour is insane.

Normally, below-grade freeways are preferred by the neighborhoods. Is it any wonder why much of the 101 through Scottsdale AZ is below grade? What CDOT will do is no different than what ADOT did over 25 years ago through downtown Phoenix including park deck. It's no big deal.

CDOT and Denver's drainage projects are totally separate issues. However they did find they could be mutually beneficial and an IGA was executed. Therefor it must be a conspiracy of collusion.

That's a start...

[mr1138]

Originally Posted by TakeFive

mr1138... You cover the "landscape" quite well. Few points.

The social justice issue is mostly silly but there is an argument to be made. Under Obama/Fox USDOT, a social justice component was added to the EIS process, therefor... but it's mostly a chicken-egg debate. Often land adjacent to freeways is populated by lower socioeconomic class bcuz it's more affordable. Same with floodplains in other states. At the time I-70 was built the freeway was (well) north of downtown and was never an issue - until just recently. Try to visualize the context way back when...

The 270/76 route was considered but not seriously bcuz it is utterly ridiculous. It would cost (well) over $3 billion for starters. The exact same social justice issues would be present. Some pretend that you could just move the I-70 traffic onto the existing 270/36 infrastructure and it would somehow suffice. Asking the freight, airport and tourism industries to be happy with a 25 minute (minimum) and unnecessary detour is insane.

Normally, below-grade freeways are preferred by the neighborhoods. Is it any wonder why much of the 101 through Scottsdale AZ is below grade? What CDOT will do is no different than what ADOT did over 25 years ago through downtown Phoenix including park deck. It's no big deal.

CDOT and Denver's drainage projects are totally separate issues. However they did find they could be mutually beneficial and an IGA was executed. Therefor it must be a conspiracy of collusion.

That's a start...

Those are all good points. I think it's pretty clear that the re-route would simply be too expensive - though CDOT didn't necessarily make that point all that clear. Of course, they didn't really need to make it all that clear at the time, because the opposition was practically silent on the matter, in spite of acting "outraged" now that the project is nearing groundbreaking.

I will say that I think that it wouldn't necessarily cost 25 mins IF both 270 and 76 were fully upgraded to the standard that is being proposed for I-70. But again - $$$$$! This would require a complete re-build of several interchanges, some of which are fairly new anyway. It would also involve a much broader scope (west of I-25) than is currently being considered. Again, I think the premise isn't totally insane on the surface, but when you start to think about details, especially in a notoriously under-funded state, it doesn't really make fiscal sense to be that ambitious.

Also, we shouldn't gloss over what was done in the 1950s. It is fairly well-known that low-income areas WERE targeted all over America, including Elyria-Swansea, Globeville, and Lower Highland (nobody talks about Lower Highland now, because it is so far gentrified at this point). This was part of a policy of "Slum Clearance" that Jane Jacobs and others have expanded upon in great detail. In theory, the freeway could have been pushed further north into the industrial zones north of the residential neighborhood, but that land would have probably cost more at the time since it was productive industrial property. But your point is totally correct that a re-route in today's world would present all of the same social-justice issues as widening the highway in place (it would just impact people in Commerce City and Adams County rather than in Denver).

In any case, the sky is definitely not falling, and the sunken freeway will definitely be better than what is there today. And the greeway/drainage project is a valid effort, and good for the neighborhood in many different ways. Any connection between the projects certainly isn't collusion, but as Sheldon Cooper might say a "happy coincidence." Of course, anti-government conspiracy theorists will find this kind of supposed "corruption" just about everywhere they look, and will assume it is all part of a grand plan to disenfranchise one of the few remaining low-income neighborhoods in central Denver (with Hancock as the master mind of course). Frankly though, I'm not sure Hancock understands the way these things all fit together well enough to have planned such collusion.

[COtoOC]

Originally Posted by mr1138

It seems that the opposition is multi-faceted, and some of the arguments have more merit than others. The primary argument stems from a social-justice point of view - the idea that this neighborhood was unfairly targeted when I-70 was built in the first place, and that residents feel that the option of re-routing the freeway to the north (up 270 and down 76) was never seriously considered by CDOT. Many of them also seem to come from a militant anti-car point of view.

From what I can tell, the issue of stirring up toxic soil is a bit of a red-herring, the real purpose of which is to throw sand in the gears of the planning process. In fact, they seem to be looking for anything and everything that may stop the project - social justice arguments, arguments that the emissions data was fudged, etc. etc. The opposition to this greenway project just seems to be one of the many things in what they perceive as their arsenal of arguments.

Just my 2 cents: I myself am an advocate for routing freeways AROUND urban areas, rather than through them, and I think the I-270 to I-76 reroute actually does have some merit. I also think that CDOT was less than transparent in their early analysis and explanation for why this option wasn't studied further. But the whole thing has gotten so out of control and beyond reason that I've kind of decided to just sit back and watch it all play out. The opposition have come to sound like a bunch of CRAZIES, and I don't really care what happens at this point. They sat on their asses until the 11th hour, and now they are being completely irresponsible in their attempt to hold up the project.

Nobody seems to be able to offer a reasonable alternative plan other than "don't do this project." They can't seem to acknowledge that YES, the viaduct is crumbling, and simply doing nothing for another 10-15 years is not an option. But where the really loose me is when they throw a completely reasonable and worthwhile project like this greenway under the bus, while neglecting to do their research on the subject and completely misrepresenting the facts. The idea that a detention pond will "destroy the City Park Golf Course," or that daylighting the drainage will somehow make water quality at the outflow WORSE (which is provably untrue, and in fact the opposite of what daylighting does) actually demonstrates willful ignorance on the subject that stoops to the lowest levels of science denial.

Pretty much my thoughts too. They're acting like city park is paving over the golf course or something.

As for the freeway, I think it'll be better for the neighborhoods once complete. A "parkway" would most likely be a traffic-choked disaster as people will take the path of least resistance between DIA and Downtown. And a couple protesters I saw on the news sounded like complete morons who didn't know what they were even talking about. But whatever... I rarely use it. I am interested to know how you tear down the viaduct and keep lanes running at the same time.

[TakeFive]

mr1138... For me Context is Everything.

If you want to provide more, better options for lower income housing, then build more freeways. The land next to freeways (typically) being less desirable would do just that. My point would be to let lower income peeps choose where they wish to live but do provide them with good health insurance and access to care. It's more important to pick your battles. There's little point to having an endless circular chicken-egg debate.

CDOT is (still) one of the most poorly funded state DOT's. The growing states of GA and WA each added just less than a $billion per year to their state DOT in 2015. That's about what CDOT could use to just maintain and address more critical projects. Spending an extra $2 billion that they don't have is unconscionable. You have to assume that years of delay has already added about 3.5% (minimum) per year compounded in costs to the Central 70 project.

I-10 just like I-70 is a critical east-west transportation and freight corridor. After 25 years there has been no (real) detrimental effect in Phoenix. I-10 essentially divides downtown from mid-town Phoenix. The deck park functions fine. Currently on the downtown (south) side of the freeway's deck park they are building high-end condos and townhomes.

Totally much ado 'bout nothing.

Originally Posted by COtoOC

As for the freeway, I think it'll be better for the neighborhoods once complete. A "parkway" would most likely be a traffic-choked disaster as people will take the path of least resistance between DIA and Downtown.

Precisely; good comment.

[Fritzdude]

Originally Posted by TakeFive

mr1138... For me Context is Everything.

I-10 just like I-70 is a critical east-west transportation and freight corridor. After 25 years there has been no (real) detrimental effect in Phoenix. I-10 essentially divides downtown from mid-town Phoenix. The deck park functions fine. Currently on the downtown (south) side of the freeway's deck park they are building high-end condos and townhomes.

Totally much ado 'bout nothing.
.

I'm glad you mentioned the "final mile" along I-10 in Phoenix with their park deck. It's worked brilliantly for them. If there isn't a more perfect analogy for what Denver is trying to achieve, then I don't know what is. Here is a great YouTube video on the project that is now 25 years old.

https://youtu.be/Z0X-sLwNVq4

[TakeFive]

Originally Posted by Fritzdude

I'm glad you mentioned the "final mile" along I-10 in Phoenix with their park deck. It's worked brilliantly for them. If there isn't a more perfect analogy for what Denver is trying to achieve, then I don't know what is. Here is a great YouTube video on the project that is now 25 years old.

https://youtu.be/Z0X-sLwNVq4

Wow, thx as I had never seen that video.

It was also in 1985 when Maricopa Co. voters (all of metro Phx) approved Prop 300 with a 20-year half-cent percent tax to finally address growth and the need for freeways. Then in Nov 2004 they re-upped for another 20 years. Through 2025, MAG which is DRCOG's sister, will generate $22 billion in transportation investments of which 30% is allocated to transit.

I've been arguing for a $15.5 billion metro transportation effort to be divided between local city/counties ($3 billion) DRCOG ($6 billion) and RTD ($6.5 billion) also over a 20-year period. It's merely a combo of what the two best transportation funded cities, Phoenix and Seattle are doing.