DENVER | Main Development Thread #6

[Scottk]

Originally Posted by DownhomeDenver

NO FUCKING WAY!!! I hate that damn rendering. Our skyline looks like one big brown turd. Was the tower supposed to be glass? And 350 apartments in a 50 story building? Possible??

It also claims construction was supposed to start 7 months ago, so I wouldn't really trust the rendering.

The whole thing seems fishy. Even the wording on the website is strange.

[Robert.hampton]

Originally Posted by Scottk

It also claims construction was supposed to start 7 months ago, so I wouldn't really trust the rendering.

The whole thing seems fishy. Even the wording on the website is strange.

Yes the whole thing seems very bizarre. I guess what we know at this point is:

1 - DMPT purchased the property

2 - DMPT is backed by 58 wealthy foreigners who are trying to get green cards and eventual US citizenship through the EB-5 program

3 - Their ability to get said green cards requires something to be developed on the site which will employ at least 580 workers full time over 2 years (i.e. a pretty large project)

[Cirrus]

lol. OK. Someone is building a four story building at 15th and Market?

[navyweaxguy]

4 floors.... Makes me think of Orchard Tower in Singapore. DM if you want the unofficial name of OT. Lmao.

[Denver Dweller]

http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_29729567/plan-midtown-denver-at-i-25-broadway-wins

[BG918]

Originally Posted by Denver Dweller

http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_29729567/plan-midtown-denver-at-i-25-broadway-wins

Hopefully the build quality is higher than what they've recently built there. I know we complain about banal apartments all over Denver but the ones at I-25/Broadway are some of the worst. Whatever ends up going on the Gates property needs to activate Broadway.

[Cirrus]

I-25/Broadway is the most natural spot for a TOD in the time zone. It could become a second Cherry Creek North if they do it right. That is, a legit "big" uptown district. Looking forward to seeing how this one pans out.

[bunt_q]

There is, and it's already under construction. (Turn lanes and auxiliary lanes and such - I wouldn't go all streetblog and start talking about a "widening" like we're going all Houston-interstate on Broadway.) It is absolutely necessary. That area, with Mississippi being basically the only connection across Santa Fe and the river to southwest Denver, and now a major connection into redevelopment areas east of Broadway/the Sprouts etc., plus the whole I-25/Broadway/Lincoln interchange, is an absolute bottlenecked mess. There is simply no good argument other than blind anti-car dogmatic purity for opposing that project.

The bulk of that TOD, if it's to succeed on any large scale, is going to be west of Broadway, both sides of the tracks to the river/Santa Fe south of I-25, and extending all the way up to Alameda on the north. But it's all west of Broadway, so fixing Broadway is certainly not detrimental to what we're trying to accomplish. And I would say, necessary to accomplishing it - no developer with any brains would go near that site with its current access. Because no developer who actually has to put real money on the line thinks zero decent car access is feasible. Which is about what you have at that location now.

[Cirrus]

Is this how it's changing? Am I understanding the graphic right? Because there's no universe where 10 lanes is a reasonable urban main street. 10 lanes is a pedestrian barrier, with serious negative consequences to walkability, and thus to the overall success of the TOD. If a 10 lane Broadway is the plan, that's an admission that something else matters more than the TOD here. The Champs-Élysées is not even 10 lanes.

Maybe that's necessary to support downtown. Maybe it really is a higher priority. Fine. But if so, let's be honest with ourselves. If that's the compromise we must make in order to get the bigger vision, fine, but let's at least admit it's a compromise. If we're going to intentionally plan for the main street to be to the west, and for Broadway to be more of a sewer for traffic between 25 and downtown than a main street, then let's at least admit that's what's going on.

[DownhomeDenver]

Originally Posted by DownhomeDenver

NO FUCKING WAY!!! I hate that damn rendering. Our skyline looks like one big brown turd. Was the tower supposed to be glass? And 350 apartments in a 50 story building? Possible??

Sorry I went off my meds yesterday. Now back to more sobering posts that align with my emotional well being.

There has got to be an apartment bust coming? No?

[bunt_q]

Originally Posted by Cirrus

If a 10 lane Broadway is the plan, that's an admission that something else matters more than pedestrians.

Something matters more than pedestrians at that location, crossing Broadway, yes.

Originally Posted by Cirrus

If that's the compromise we must make in order to get the bigger vision, fine, but let's at least admit it's a compromise. If we're going to intentionally plan for the main street to be to the west, and for Broadway to more of a sewer for traffic between 25 and downtown than a main street, then let's at least admit that's what's going on.

I do not think it is necessarily a compromise to get the bigger vision. I would say it's almost unrelated to the bigger vision, and at worst, helpful to it.

Broadway will not be the main street in the vision. It will be the boundary on the eastern edge of the plan area. If this "uptown" happens, it will most likely turn away from Broadway - there's too much ground between there and the transit station to effectively do both. We'll want to activate the station area first - I don't think we can do that, fill the space in between, and also activate along Broadway - that's trying for too much. In terms of priority, especially given the competing interests that Broadway has to serve, I think it makes perfect sense and is compatible with the vision to keep it as the edge, not the focus, of the district.

[The only people worried about that are the rich folks east of this area. And frankly, weighing what they want against how important that junction is for access to the south/southwest, I give zero shits about what the people of West Wash Park and Platte Park want. I am perfectly happy to make that compromise in favor of unclogging the auto sewer right there.]

(The visions north at Alameda, for the redevelopment of the massive shopping center and Denver Design Center, similarly turn inward first, with only some retail presence - likely to be a token facade anyways - along Broadway.)

[bunt_q]

Originally Posted by bcp

I'm not so sure bunt....more lanes won't fix Broadway for long - it needs a road diet, paired w better n/s options and new e/w connector streets as part of the project. Doubt it will happen, and this seems like a step backward for a TOD

Road diets are a sound-bite, not a solution to this particular problem. The challenge here is competing turn movements and geometry, not through-capacity. You can reduce two through lanes on Broadway southbound, north of this location (making it three through lanes, as planned), and this will still be where the problem will be if you don't fix this. That's the point of the plan. There was really no controversy about this except in the most anti-car extreme segments of the streetsblog-loving world.

There are no other north-south options to the west until you get to Federal. Except for Santa Fe/I-25, which are highways. That's why this problem exists. You can't fix that - there are choke points, and this is one. It has nothing to do with the TOD.

And new e-w options? How? There's a river and railroads - are you going to construct a half-mile flyover? You can't just wave a wand and create a complete grid where none exists. The next e-w through-street to the south is Evans. To the north is Alameda. That's a *big* gap.

[Cirrus]

Originally Posted by bunt_q

I do not think it is necessarily a compromise to get the bigger vision.

It absolutely is a serious compromise. Urban places separated from the surrounding neighborhoods by barriers always suffer. Unless they have extremely high density (higher than at 25/Broadway), they lack the critical density for a positive feedback loop of multimodalism, and end up as islands of urbanity. Islands by their nature increase demand for parking and car lanes, contributing to the negative feedback loop whereby more car stuff is needed so everything else gets pushed to the sides. Meanwhile, surrounding neighborhoods that should be as connected/walkable to the center as LoDo is to downtown Denver are instead deprived of their connections and end up as drive-first islands unto themselves, pushing them towards the negative feedback loop too.

Downtowns surrounded by highways are markedly, significantly more car-focused than downtowns that aren't. This absolutely matters.

Maybe it's still a compromise we want to make. Maybe we need that compromise at this stage of Denver's development. I'm not ready to say we don't. But a road barrier does create serious negative effects to the TOD.

This is not a have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too situation. This is a trade-off.

[bunt_q]

Originally Posted by Cirrus

It absolutely is a serious compromise. Urban places separated from the surrounding neighborhoods by barriers always suffer. Unless they have extremely high density (higher than at 25/Broadway), they lack the critical density for a positive feedback loop of multimodalism, and end up as islands of urbanity. Islands by their nature increase demand for parking and car lanes, contributing to the negative feedback loop whereby more car stuff is needed so everything else gets pushed to the sides. Meanwhile, surrounding neighborhoods that should be as connected/walkable to the center as LoDo is to downtown Denver are instead deprived of their connections and end up as drive-first islands unto themselves, pushing them towards the negative feedback loop too.

Downtowns surrounded by highways are markedly, significantly more car-focused than downtowns that aren't. This absolutely matters.

Maybe it's still a compromise we want to make. Maybe we need that compromise at this stage of Denver's development. I'm not ready to say we don't. But a road barrier does create serious negative effects to the TOD.

This is not a have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too situation. This is a trade-off.

Agree to disagree. The "neighborhood" you are allegedly cutting it off from with two additional lanes of traffic is a single family neighborhood and inconsequential to the success of the TOD. If anything, the way we are doing TOD here is more akin to suburban zoning, where you intentionally push the multi-family nodes away from the single-family. Which probably isn't dumb when you're building tall nearby wealthy single-family residential. If there's anything we've proven in Denver, it's that we are not afraid to litigate existing zoning and plans that were just approved.

If we cared about integration, that plan would be flipped on its head - the density would be between Broadway and the station. The less-desirable parcels across the tracks would be lower density. Instead, the lowest density is along Broadway, and we maximize our density on the land sandwiched between the freight rail, the highway, and Santa Fe. The entire plan is built around a barriered off mindset, because we are no fools, we know the only way this possibly gets done is to protect the TOD from the neighbors.

[Cirrus]

Originally Posted by bunt_q

If we cared about integration, that plan would be flipped on its head...we know the only way this possibly gets done is to protect the TOD from the neighbors.

Sure. And from the perspective of building a high-quality urban place that maximizes multimodalism and does the most to reduce pollution and congestion, building the LRT station closer to Broadway and flipping the plan on its head would have been better. We didn't do that because many compromises are necessary to make it happen at all, including reassuring the single-family homeowners that they'll never see or hear any of this density that's going to triple their home values. Fine. We make the compromises we have to make to get the project done. But it's not ideal.

At some point there's a line where "necessary but not ideal compromise" becomes "too much for the basic idea to work at all." I think even with the widening we're still well on the positive side of things for this project. But at some point there is a line, and we end up with worse projects if we don't at least acknowledge it when we're making trade-offs.

[bunt_q]

I still don't think this affects the project in any way but a positive one. Hell, there isn't even a project today. There is no developer, nor any plan for getting one. A little investment in the roads certainly isn't going to hurt that effort. Not in a city that still isn't going to touch office space without a massive amount of parking attached to it. And I see little-to-no value in connecting whatever does get built to the east.

[Cirrus]

This is going to have a hard time marketing to offices regardless. The office market is contracting even as the economy grows. If you want access, you go downtown. If you want cheap, you go to an exurban office park. Places like this are increasingly ending up with nothing.

That's going to be another difficult compromise we have to make in a lot of places over the next generation. Do we hope for a perfect mix of uses, demand office, and wait decades because that demand never materializes? Or do we roll with the never-ending demand for residential and just let it be a bunch of apartment buildings? I suspect, left to the market, we'd have a lot of apartments here pretty quickly if we let it happen.

[wong21fr]

Originally Posted by bunt_q

I still don't think this affects the project in any way but a positive one. Hell, there isn't even a project today. There is no developer, nor any plan for getting one. A little investment in the roads certainly isn't going to hurt that effort. Not in a city that still isn't going to touch office space without a massive amount of parking attached to it. And I see little-to-no value in connecting whatever does get built to the east.

I don't think it effects the project in any negative way because the widest point of Broadway will be in the area that's least accessible to the neighborhoods to the east. The only way that you change this is by adding pedestrian connections over I-25, but if it's that much of an issue to increase connectivity than just extend the connection over Broadway as well.

[enjo13]

Originally Posted by Cirrus

Or do we roll with the never-ending demand for residential and just let it be a bunch of apartment buildings? I suspect, left to the market, we'd have a lot of apartments here pretty quickly if we let it happen.

Which describes most European cities.

[bunt_q]

Originally Posted by Cirrus

This is going to have a hard time marketing to offices regardless. The office market is contracting even as the economy grows. If you want access, you go downtown. If you want cheap, you go to an exurban office park. Places like this are increasingly ending up with nothing.

That's going to be another difficult compromise we have to make in a lot of places over the next generation. Do we hope for a perfect mix of uses, demand office, and wait decades because that demand never materializes? Or do we roll with the never-ending demand for residential and just let it be a bunch of apartment buildings? I suspect, left to the market, we'd have a lot of apartments here pretty quickly if we let it happen.

That doesn't appear to be our experience here. Colorado Center (I-25/Colorado) is adding office. Cherry Creek is adding a ton of office. I think this location will be able to attract office as well.

Residential alone is pretty unsatisfying since we only have rental as an option. This whole discussion is moot in my opinion if we think the only use we can attract is another isolated apartment ghetto like Prospect. Leave a few spaces for a bar and a liquor store, make sure we preserve the park-n-ride, and call it good. Wash our hands of this and move on the to the next spot. You're never going to have much of a neighborhood when it's a couple thousand transient residents unless you're pulling in from the outside.

If we are writing off office and for-sale residential options, you can forget a perpendicular retail street. This isn't downtown, what we'll get is another Englewood Station.