DENVER | Bell Tower | 400 FT / 122 M | 34 FLOORS

[ramanboy33]

Bell Tower

* A proposed clear and green glass 400-foot residential tower
* Bounded by Speer Boulevard, Larimer, 14th and Walnut streets
* Designed by Fentress Architects
* Cost: $250 million

Newest Rendering - Building "slimmed" 18% from previous plans



Older, "wider", renderings





Images from denverinfill.com

[shakman]

Interesting design. I am not familiar with Denver. Is this in Downtown?

[ramanboy33]

Originally Posted by shakman

Interesting design. I am not familiar with Denver. Is this in Downtown?

Yes. It's on the western edge of downtown in a very prominent location.

[FrancoRey]

If you want to know EXACTLY where it is (if it's built) you can go to the link below:

http://denverinfill.com/main_map.htm

After you see the map, click on the neighborhood box "Lower Downtown" and then on the box numbered block 242. That is the spot of the Bell Tower. Good ol' Denverinfill.

BTW here is another drawing rendering of the tower, from an older Rocky Mountain News article in an elevation looking west towards the Pepsi Center (before the design was slimmed):

[aaron38]

Eh. It's interesting and all, I've just never been a fan of anything that looks like something I made out of legos when I was 10.

[Denver_Native]

Originally Posted by aaron38

Eh. It's interesting and all, I've just never been a fan of anything that looks like something I made out of legos when I was 10.

When I saw this design for the first time I cringed and I thought the exact same thing. However the more and more I look at it, (especially now that it is slimmer and lost the pin-stripes), the more I love this design. This building has just replaced Frankfurt's Messe Turm as my favorite building. I can't wait to see it get built.

[Dale]

I love it. Build it.

[wong21fr]

I've always liked the tower, Denver needs something different in the skyline as we are dominated by boxes with very little in terms of stand-out buildings. Buildings like these add a bit of outlandish flavor that's always needed.

But I think the location is terrible from a pedestrian standpoint. As it stands, the tower would very much be a building in a park fronting a boulevard, Speer Boulevard, that is a nightmare for pedestrians and this tower doesn't help. See the following overhead image (from DenverInfill.com):



The tower would be tucked into the upper right corner of the yellow-bordered parcel. There will be way too much open space to make this area pedestrian friendly if the Bell Tower is built and I don't see a possibility of the rest of the lot being developed as the residents of such a tower would not want anything disrupting the views that they paid handsomely for.

[rapid_business]

/\ That was exactly my thoughts. I don't mind the tower, but the pedestrian experience at grade-level with limited frontage, and a 'tower-in-the-park' design is frightening to say the least.

And I assume that is an above-ground parkade across the 'creek' from the tower?

[Paulopolis]

^Nope, that's an office building that will be built in conjunction with the tower. I prefer the original design of the office component.

[The Dirt]

Yeah, there's nothing wrong with more red brick, but the white building design was superior.

By design, this building caters to the super-wealthy, so a secluded tower in a park is exactly what they would want.

[FrancoRey]

As in Denverinfill, I third that opinion on the office building, Dirt. The original white facaded design would look much better in LoDo. The arches on the top floor are the best noted difference.

Heck, if you paired the red brick with the design of the white facade, even better!

[rapid_business]

Originally Posted by The Dirt

Yeah, there's nothing wrong with more red brick, but the white building design was superior.

By design, this building caters to the super-wealthy, so a secluded tower in a park is exactly what they would want.

Maybe. I'm just saying it's bad urban design/urban planning. That whole approach to planning and urban design died in the 70s and early 80s. You can have private green space on top of a pedestal or adjacent/attached lowrise, and not give up the importance of an active street frontage. Dozens of condos in Toronto here do exactly that.

[The Dirt]

Originally Posted by onishenko

Maybe. I'm just saying it's bad urban design/urban planning. That whole approach to planning and urban design died in the 70s and early 80s. You can have private green space on top of a pedestal or adjacent/attached lowrise, and not give up the importance of an active street frontage. Dozens of condos in Toronto here do exactly that.

I agree that it's bad urban design, but in this case I don't mind it too much. There are several factors that don't lend to street frontage at this area at this time.

1) Speer Blvd realignment - in a few years this will be realigned away from the building as well as narrowed, so building a street frontage now wouldn't make sense.

2) There is a view plane ordinance and reserved park space on this block which requires visual access to Bell Park (site of the former Denver town hall building).

3) Speer Blvd currently acts as an artery, not a downtown city street, and it's very wide, very pedestrian unfriendly, and has very little frontage of any kind. Thankfully, that is slowly changing (refer to point 1), and the new CU-Denver building on the opposite side of the road will fill in.

I think that in due time, there should be a something of a 1st floor retail frontage, 2nd floor building amenities, and rooftop private green space/park. Currently, it's just not going to work. Unfortunately, I doubt that this will happen until Speer becomes a retail corridor with far more development - 20-30 years.

[wong21fr]

Originally Posted by The Dirt

Yeah, there's nothing wrong with more red brick, but the white building design was superior.

By design, this building caters to the super-wealthy, so a secluded tower in a park is exactly what they would want.

Yet the super-wealthy flocked to the Four Seasons where there ain't a lick o' green. Asides from the greenbacks being used to light the Cuban cigars.

[wong21fr]

To be fair, a portion of the land is already a public park and has to remain so (on the side of the creek where the office building is located). But, there are plans to reconfigure Speer Boulevard to make it more pedestrian friendly that requires a major realignment of the street which would increase the green space around Bell Tower. This would make it that much more of a 'tower-in-the-park'.

Unless a requirement is put in to develop the additional land sometime in the future following the road realignment. Then I would be more agreeable with the current location of the tower.

[wong21fr]

^Hey, let's get it right. It's the new Metro/UCD building with Metro taking the majority of the space.

Gotta boost the school a little bit.

[The Dirt]

Yeah, I never understood how the UCD/Metro division worked. Also, what's up with the maps pointing to UCD as UCHSC - is that the undergrad program, with the grad program out in Fitz?

[wong21fr]

Basically, Metro and UCD share classroom space. Neither actually own their own buildings, rather they are managed and owned by the Auraria Higher Education Center. So, they could be considered tenants of Auraria. Of course, this will change a bit under the new Master Plan with each school having their own set of buildings for unique needs while continuing to share general classroom space and facilities like the library and athletic center.

UCD is the overarching university with the CU Health Sciences Center being a college/school under the main UCD banner.

[The Dirt]

Thanks for the clarification!

Back to the Bell Tower. I thought I should repost Ken's (DenverInfill) pictures from the Mountain West section to clarify the Speer realignment. The Bell Tower is the gray quadrangle above the "Speer Blvd" label in the rendering.



Courtesy of www.denverinfill.com