DENVER | Main Development Thread #7

[TakeFive]

This is fair, reasonable

Originally Posted by gopokes21

This comment here is also a gem. Not that there is anything wrong with being under Denver's median age (or "30" lol), but you have to be not yet 30 if you fail to realize developers want to be here regardless of any rezoning difficulty. Denver has clearly risen as a top market for big money to safe harbor their capital in the form of as many development deals as possible. I can't even keep count how many active deals Greystone alone has. I don't worry about Denver getting dozens of shiny new Texas donuts each year. I do worry about preserving gems, even diamonds in the rough, that may be in their way.

But all these side arguments aside, there's only two key questions to be decided.

First
is the subject property (really) a good candidate for historical preservation?

Second
is it reasonable for the Denver City Council to rob the property owner of its "fair and present" value. If the DCC and/or others are willing to compensate the owner for its fair market value then FINE (to piggyback on a point The Dirt has made). If not then don't be screwing with a party's property rights. In fact, the Supreme Court has typically taken a very dim view of government confiscation of private property.

[bunt_q]

Originally Posted by wong21fr

Step one: Import more Texans and there over-inflated sense of superiority.

There is only one solution for a society in which people view the 7News building as a "diamond in the rough." Towers of skulls. In modern parlance, "hitting reset." The only redeeming feature of that building is that it's somewhat defensible, relatively speaking.

I propose to revise the landmark ordinance as follows: if the City Council wouldn’t be willing to rebuild a structure after an aerial bombardment of our city, then it shouldn’t be preserved. (At least as a hostile preservation.)

[TakeFive]

Just to pick a nit

Originally Posted by SirLucasTheGreat

...but Denver is not SF, Portland, or Boulder as far as I can see. If we were anticorporate, I fail to see how we seem to attract so many corporations.

"Corporations" is a pretty nebulous category.

It is fair to point out that some of the largest tech companies that can afford to go wherever they want to are generally bypassing Colorado aside from a token presence.

For example, Apple just opened two South Lake Union towers in Seattle, enough for ~3,000 workers. They also announced a $1 billion future campus in North Carolina for ~3000 employees a couple of years after announcing a $1 billion campus in Austin. Worth noting is that North Carolina has passed significant reductions in their tax rates starting in 2013.

Microsoft is expanding in Hillsboro, Oregon, which is the techie part of Portland metro and benefits from its Left Coast location (like Seattle).

I like to repeat that metro/Denver/Colorado benefits from its diversity along with recruiting smaller tech companies. It is still growing, if at a slower pace and remains generally business-friendly. Many growing companies do keep up with trends for cost of doing business. Polis, for his part understands this.

[Brainpathology]

Originally Posted by gopokes21

1. It's true that YIMBY wants to turn this city into Dallas, and that's all I've said - FWIW I'm glad you still view that as an insult, but do a little retrospection.

I can't imagine a better way to make Denver synonymous with a useless lifeless city full of nothing significant (which context makes me believe is what you're using the word "Dallas" for) than proclaiming to the world that this building is among the best and most significant architecture that Denver has to preserve.

It's the historic preservation equivalent of bragging that "I got a trophy for placing 5th place in a darts league on East Colfax back in 2005"

[SirLucasTheGreat]

Developer scraps Golden Triangle office project (955 Bannock) and plans apartments instead

The city wants more non-residential development in the neighborhood south of downtown but Alpine Investments said there was too much “uncertainty in the office leasing market.”

https://businessden.com/2021/04/27/devel...ad/#newsletter%23newsletter%23newsletter

[seventwentyone]

Originally Posted by bunt_q

There is only one solution for a society in which people view the 7News building as a "diamond in the rough." Towers of skulls. In modern parlance, "hitting reset." The only redeeming feature of that building is that it's somewhat defensible, relatively speaking.

I propose to revise the landmark ordinance as follows: if the City Council wouldn’t be willing to rebuild a structure after an aerial bombardment of our city, then it shouldn’t be preserved. (At least as a hostile preservation.)

Best we can do is change the ordinance to include diamonds in the rough.

Clearly Denver 7 needs to be presevered, because it is the most well known, most preserved, and most rare example of of the 30 plus years old style turd-itectue, contributuing to the culture of adjacent Wendys and maintaining the integrity of that urban district as a result.

[The Dirt]

30 years is just such an arbitrary and low number. The east coast is laughing. In 20 years, we'll be preserving slot homes.

[davedensf]

I'm not necessarily a Fanboy of Casa Bonita but has been beloved by lots of people - especially children - over the decades.

I hope Casa Bonita isn't torn down, but then I'm a child at heart. I have great memories of my adventures there from the 1970s.

--Dave

[EngiNerd]

Originally Posted by The Dirt

30 years is just such an arbitrary and low number. The east coast is laughing. In 20 years, we'll be preserving slot homes.

...and this, where it will hailed as "industrial chic with hints of shipping container"


courtesy of SirLucasTheGreat

[TakeFive]

We have a deal


Image courtesy Johnson & Wales University Denver Campus

BusinessDen and others are reporting that Denver Urban Land Conservancy will acquire the Johnson & Wales University campus in Denver.

[mr1138]

Originally Posted by The Dirt

30 years is just such an arbitrary and low number. The east coast is laughing. In 20 years, we'll be preserving slot homes.

Agreed. And this is not to mention what people in Europe must think about this sort of thing.

Recently I have been living a bit vicariously through the Rotterdam discussion forum over on Skycrapercity after kind of falling in love with the place when I visited several years ago. It's fascinating to read their discussions. Their entire city center was rebuilt in the 1950s (after being completely destroyed during WWII) into a sort of real-life realization of Corbusier's "Radiant City," complete with the total separation of residential from the Centre - turning it into a very American style Central Business District with giant traffic arteries.

The cornerstone of the 1946 plan was a shopping district called the "Lijnbaan," which was one of the earliest pedestrian malls ever built that I'm aware of (it predates Strøget in Copenhagen by well over a decade). Despite the huge success of Lijnbaan as a shopping district, the architecture leaves a LOT to be desired. For most of the second half of the 20th Century, the city had a reputation as the "armpit" of The Netherlands - kind of like how Americans talk about the "Rust Belt."


image from: https://wederopbouwrotterdam.nl/en/

Today the city is experiencing a kind of renaissance and is completely re-assessing the decisions made in the 1946 "Basis Plan." It is quite interesting to read the commentary from their local urban planning enthusiasts about how they feel about mid-century planning and architecture. While I have seen some of their forumers make the case that the Lijnbaan buildings are "historic" due to the success of the shopping district and connection to WWII reconstruction, many others are EXTREMELY derisive of these "ugly" buildings. The notion that buildings less than a century old and with poor urban design qualities are "historic" is downright laughable in a country that has UNESCO world heritage sites like Amsterdam a stone's-throw away. They actually got a version of Corbusier's urban planning vision, and seem to have decided that they don't like it and it's not worthy of preserving.

The city government itself seems to have decided that the vast majority of the reconstruction-era buildings are nothing more than development sites for newer buildings that create a better urban environment. The concept of segregated land uses, streets used as traffic sewers, and an emphasis on horizontal lines has been abandoned in favor of more post-modern ideals - like human-oriented streets with traffic calming that puts American cities to shame, the return of residential to the Centre, and giving Dutch architects a place to look toward the future and not the past (including SKYSCRAPERS!).


Image from: https://www.rotterdamarchitectuurprijs.nl/prijs-2021

Sorry for the long post, but given that Denver is less than 200 years old, and we are talking about the preservation merits of 30-year-old structures, I think this kind of perspective can be very important.

[seventwentyone]

Originally Posted by EngiNerd

...and this, where it will hailed as "industrial chic with hints of shipping container"

How'd we get the Ever Given into Colorado anyways?

[The Dirt]

Unpopular opinion, but I think it's looks Fine(TM). Like, it's just big bulky infill because the city and lenders require 100 million parking spaces per person.

[gopokes21]

Originally Posted by TakeFive

This is fair, reasonable


But all these side arguments aside, there's only two key questions to be decided.

First
is the subject property (really) a good candidate for historical preservation?

Second
is it reasonable for the Denver City Council to rob the property owner of its "fair and present" value. If the DCC and/or others are willing to compensate the owner for its fair market value then FINE (to piggyback on a point The Dirt has made). If not then don't be screwing with a party's property rights. In fact, the Supreme Court has typically taken a very dim view of government confiscation of private property.

Based on this rationale, we must eliminate any and all zoning and preservation requirements because they impact the appraisal's "fair and present" value conclusion. Nevermind that we have decades of precedent, "investment-backed expectations" even, of developers expecting to navigate a sophisticated entitlement process to build in Denver.

Then the YIMBY bros can finally turn this into Mile High Dallas. I guess we can debate the preservation of merits of entire neighborhoods of Texas Donuts here in 30 years.

Most of you are just reacting at an instinctual level to good or bad, rather than actually imagining how the contributing mid-century elements can be beneficially incorporated. All naysayers see is Channel 7, which this has nothing to do with.

[EngiNerd]

Originally Posted by The Dirt

Unpopular opinion, but I think it's looks Fine(TM). Like, it's just big bulky infill because the city and lenders require 100 million parking spaces per person.

I think its a fine filler, just making a statement about what might be considered "historic" in 30 years using one of the many landscrapers cruise liners to be built in recent years.

[The Dirt]

Originally Posted by gopokes21

Based on this rationale, we must eliminate any and all zoning and preservation requirements because they impact the appraisal's "fair and present" value conclusion. Nevermind that we have decades of precedent, "investment-backed expectations" even, of developers expecting to navigate a sophisticated entitlement process to build in Denver.

Then the YIMBY bros can finally turn this into Mile High Dallas. I guess we can debate the preservation of merits of entire neighborhoods of Texas Donuts here in 30 years.

Most of you are just reacting at an instinctual level to good or bad, rather than actually imagining how the contributing mid-century elements can be beneficially incorporated. All naysayers see is Channel 7, which this has nothing to do with.

I'm going to just go ahead and be a YIMBY bro and embrace Mile High Dallas development. Honestly, at this point, give me Calcutta slums just so that we can get over our high opinion of ourselves and our baby of a city.

[Sam Hill]

Originally Posted by The Dirt

Unpopular opinion, but I think it's looks Fine(TM). Like, it's just big bulky infill because the city and lenders require 100 million parking spaces per person.

Interesting. We all see things through a different lens. I have a hard time imagining how it looks through your lens. It looks extraordinarily hideous to me. I was confused by it for the longest time. It took months after construction had ended for me to realize it wasn’t under construction anymore.

[Cirrus]

Fun fact: Dallas is filled with ugly 20th century office buildings.

There is some serious cognitive dissonance going on in this thread.

[mojiferous]

Originally Posted by gopokes21

Based on this rationale, we must eliminate any and all zoning and preservation requirements...

Now you're getting close - zoning is a real problem because it is used almost exclusively as exclusionary in this country. Historically it has been used to prevent people you don't like from moving in nearby (like the poor/renters) and to prop up precious property values (see: many of Denver's city-center neighborhoods that are most resistant to density)

Preservation requirements are another matter - they started as a good thing, preserving some of the city's early history, but they have become a tool of current landowners and the rich to prevent ANY change in their neighborhoods and increase their property values. I think what we're all saying here is that there should be a lot more than just age in a preservation judgment, but historical, cultural, and architectural value. Does the building mean something to the community, did something meaningful and noteworthy happen there, and is the architecture worthy of preservation? The answer in all three cases for Denver 7 is no. This shouldn't be a "these three people don't want more apartments so they stopped a building" kind of process, but that's what we have.

Originally Posted by Cirrus

Fun fact: Dallas is filled with ugly 20th century office buildings.

There is some serious cognitive dissonance going on in this thread.

I don't think anyone is seriously defending Dallas or their shiny glass cubes here - it's just that even a PVC-siding brown donut is better looking than the brown concrete turd-prison that is Denver 7. And in my experience every city across the world is filled with ugly 20th century architecture - New York is 90% featureless cubes, same with Paris beyond the 12th arrondissment, Tokyo, London... It is a curse and bane on us all, no? Almost every thread on every forum in this place is full of people consciously ignoring the frighteningly ugly parts of their cities - it's just harder for some of us because our cities are so full of international-style dullness.

[Agent Orange]

Originally Posted by mojiferous

At some point you need to acknowledge that you came here for the mountains and the lifestyle and you want other people to stop moving here and don't want Denver to urbanize.

As usual, mojiferous says it best, that entire post should be framed for future NIMBY visitors to our "blog". All the better coming from an actual Denver native (iirc) who knows how things "used to be". That's just it, nearly everyone wants to move to Colorado from their backwards, boring or overpriced states (me included), and then draw up the gates and keep things exactly as they found them when they arrived. Except home values, they're happy to see those double every 6 years.