DENVER | Main Development Thread #6

[Denver]

Originally Posted by PLANSIT

Look what showed up today:
Site Address and Description
1521 Welton St - 2015PM0000671 - Block 162

How were you able to find this?

[bunt_q]

I think it's going to be pretty hard to get a new tallest anywhere. Even with an FAR of 15, you need a pretty big parcel to get there, and pretty small floorplates, which requires even higher lease rates. If anything, folks should be looking at these half block parcels along 17th as the best opportunity we have left for a new tallest.

[CastleScott]

^ I was thinking the same that 17th St half blocks are the ones for the new tallest, the site of the old Kenmark hotel which is I think on Tremont would be a good site another where it could go would be the half block next to the food court on 16th (I think that's Stout or Welton-been awhile since I moved to Sac town in April).

Scott

[bunt_q]

Just back of the napkin calcs - let's say you could assemble a half block, which is 125' x 400' for a total zone lot of 50,000 square feet. Also assume you could cobble together all of the available floor area bonuses in the code to get to a maximum FAR of 17:1. (Could go up to 20:1 max if half the building was housing, but I'm assuming an office building.) That means your maximum building floor area is 850,000 square feet.

Average floor plates in 1144 15th Street are 24,900 square feet (which would cover half of our half block). That only gets you to 34 stories.

To get to 60 stories you'd have to narrow it to 14,200 square foot floorplates. That's a building roughly 120' square, or about 1/3 the building footprint of 1144 15th Street. That is incredibly narrow for Denver, and probably not very marketable. And only gets you to 60 stories. To really hit the sky, you'd need a full block.

[TheNightfly]

There seems to be a lot of negativity around block 162 and its rather bland and conventional architecture. Yet doesn't this add a lot to the block and the area for that matter? I think it ought to bring more shoppers to the 16th street mall which could potentially upgrade the overall experience of shopping and dining there. Further, doesn't filling up the city just create an incentive down the road for major developers to go tall?

I'm also not so sure it would be that great to have such a large building in that area. Bunt, what about blocks 001b, 029B, 176, or 207? Are those potential candidates for a 65+?

[corey]

The design of block 162 is very contemporary. It looks like a mash up of 1401 Lawrence and Glass House. I like it over all. I wish there was a rendering of the other side of the hotel to see what the top is like. It will be extremely nice to have that block entirely filled in, but I never saw it as such an important site that it was screaming for Denver's new tallest building. However, if the hotel is a Hilton you would think they could make it at least 40-45 stories to be as large as the Hyatt and the Sheraton. Does this hotel building reach is maximum height allowance? There are two 1/4 blocks on 17th St. and the Federal Reserve Bank block that would be ideal for the tallest building(s) some day.

[The Dirt]

Wow, Bunt, I didn't realize that our height restrictions in Denver were so... restrictive. I suppose it's not a huge deal right now since we still need more infill than height but, won't government be way behind the ball when height is needed? I suspect that by the time the rules are updated to accommodate the needs of one real estate cycle, we'll already be fully out of it.

[Denver Dweller]

http://www.denverrealestatewatch.com/201...p_cron=1448932394.8898160457611083984375

[DenverPoke]

Originally Posted by bcp

and part of why i say it won't be residential is that the floor to floor heights are usually 2' shorter than commercial....making it even tougher.

good example bunt - i think it would come in taller than 34 in that scenario as there are some setback requirements for downdrafts. also, denver offers a 10% height bonus for "ornamental" at the top.

For fun, let's say someone can eek out 70 stories with the 20:1 FAR with the residential bonus...and for fun, call it half commercial / half condo (a rare combo at that....)

35 @ 11' = 385
35 x 13' = 455
subtotal = 840
spire bonus = 84
Total = 934'

Even under these most "fun" and generous of assumptions....I'm going to make the call now - Denver will not see a 1000' footer by 2050.

Yes...very much out on a limb there

$100 says you are wrong.

It won't be in this real estate cycle, but it will happen in the next 35 years. I imagine it will be mixed use and include office, hotel, and residential. Something similar to what is currently being proposed in Seattle.



http://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/blog/...h-added-floor-newskyscraper-will-be.html

[The Dirt]

Originally Posted by Denver Dweller

http://www.denverrealestatewatch.com/201...p_cron=1448932394.8898160457611083984375

The judges declared the ruling “Not Published.”

That means the ruling will not set a precedent for future cases, according to the plaintiffs and their attorney, Greg Kerwin.

Why the heck not?

“Denver residents want sustainable, sensible neighborhoods, not multi-story, high-density apartment buildings that choke our streets. Many of our city’s residential neighborhoods are far from mass-transit corridors and have no way to accommodate this density,” Kerwin said.

Despite how misguided their rhetoric is, I think they do have a point about building higher density without having long term city-wide transportation plan in place. If we could say, on the one hand, E. Colfax will get 100+ midrises built in the next 10 years, but on the other hand, we'll have a streetcar system running down the street to accommodate the new density, it kind of kills a piece of the NIMBYs argument. Of course, they'll still have the "character of the neighborhood" and "mountain views" arguments but, it's much harder to quantify the former and justify the latter.

[DenverInfill]

Originally Posted by The Dirt

Wow, Bunt, I didn't realize that our height restrictions in Denver were so... restrictive. I suppose it's not a huge deal right now since we still need more infill than height but, won't government be way behind the ball when height is needed? I suspect that by the time the rules are updated to accommodate the needs of one real estate cycle, we'll already be fully out of it.

It's not really our height restrictions. Most of the CBD between 14th and 18th has no height limit. The limit is Floor Area Ratio. As Bunt said, 17:1 is the max FAR for office only, with 20:1 the highest with at least 50% residential. In theory, on Bunt's hypothetical block, the 850,000 gross sf could be developed as an 85-story building with 10,000 sf floor plates and there wouldn't be any problem with the height. It's really just the demand for buildings that tall isn't here yet in Denver and/or the floor plate size to get to those heights isn't practical or economically feasible.

I've also heard, but haven't confirmed independently, that no skyscraper in downtown has maximized the available FAR; that is, no one has developed a building in the CBD that took advantage of all of the density bonuses and built the max allowable square footage. That may be true, I don't know. Would not be surprised if it was true, so I don't think increasing the FAR to a higher ratio will result in the near-term in taller/bigger buildings as developers are already leaving square footage on the table.

But has already been said, with 100+ surface parking lots in the downtown area still, our most immediate concern from an urbanist perspective is filling in as many of those as we can and not on achieving new tallest buildings. In time, that will happen, but not until land values are substantially higher.

[Denver]

So who wants to guess where this project is? From the renderings it looks like the proposed condos on Huron St. in Prospect Park. The SAR website has this listed as an "undisclosed project."




source:http://sararch.com/projects/in-progress/undisclosed-project/

[comoneymaker]

DTC lol

[mhays]

Building size can be limited by a lot of things, such as:
--Height limits
--FAR
--Setback requirements
--The market
--Parking capacity

Parking capacity is a big one. Sometimes 500 spaces will fit reasonably, but 20% more spaces would increase the parking cost by 50% or 100% due to basic geometry, soils, shoring solutions that require easements, etc. Or you run into City limits for how many levels are allowed above-grade or something (if applicable). Sometimes a developer would rather hit certain metrics than go bigger without increasing parking, or with higher costs per square foot. Does any of this jibe with current projects?

Otherwise, maybe Denver's zoned capacity is large enough that not every project needs to maximize square footage. That has some major advantages.

[bunt_q]

In our downtown core we do not have height limits, parking, or setback requirements. It's generally just the market limiting us. (Including market demand for parking.)

[EngiNerd]

Originally Posted by CastleScott

^ Agreed more non-interesting designs-just more boxy stuff that looks like it came out of 1985 (I was a student at Metro State in 1985 studying community planning/urban studies and business management)..Although maybe there will be some blue or green glass. Its too bad that Denver's new tallest isn't being built on that site.

Denver's new tallest cannot be built on that site, it is in Sunlight Preservation Area #1. While this area does not specifically have a max height limit, it instead has a complicated calculation of shadows on the 16th street mall during a certain time of year (test period), which limits height and form, but also gives bonuses for setbacks and such.

In case you want to read about it, starts on page 8.3-1 through 8.3-5
https://www.denvergov.org/content/dam/de.../Zoning/DZC/Art8_Downtown_DZC_070615.pdf

[The Dirt]

Thanks for the explanation, Ken! I was referring to FAR rather than direct height limits. It just seems like such an odd and needlessly complicated system.

[bunt_q]

Originally Posted by EngiNerd

Denver's new tallest cannot be built on that site, it is in Sunlight Preservation Area #1. While this area does not specifically have a max height limit, it instead has a complicated calculation of shadows on the 16th street mall during a certain time of year (test period), which limits height and form, but also gives bonuses for setbacks and such.

In case you want to read about it, starts on page 8.3-1 through 8.3-5
https://www.denvergov.org/content/dam/de.../Zoning/DZC/Art8_Downtown_DZC_070615.pdf

Are you sure? It doesn't seem that height would matter above a certain point- either it's in the shadow on the reference date, or it's not. Width would seem to affect that more. I assume the buildings planned for Block 162 are tall enough to shadow 16th as they are proposed.

[DenverInfill]

Originally Posted by bunt_q

Are you sure? It doesn't seem that height would matter above a certain point- either it's in the shadow on the reference date, or it's not. Width would seem to affect that more. I assume the buildings planned for Block 162 are tall enough to shadow 16th as they are proposed.

I agree. The only portion of the building that matters is the part that casts a shadow on the mall which I think would be the bottom part of the building and, as buntQ said, width would probably be the bigger factor. A thinner tall tower would probably cast less of a shadow on the mall than a wider short one.

[RyanD]

If there's any block that could do it taller than anything else, it's 162. As everyone has been saying, we could do an office / hotel / residential tower, get right up to 1000' and hell, throw an observation deck on it! This project still has an ugly podium, just like how Denver likes to do it! Put the skinny side facing the mall. Where are the Chinese / Koreans when we need them? They like to build stuff like this!

For reference, this is the 73-story, 1100ft, Wilshire Grand project in LA, which is going to be crowned the tallest tower on the west coast real soon. IIRC, this parcel and others around it have a minimum height of 600 ft or so...


[This is in LA]