Denver’s Central Platte Valley: A Dynamic Decade
New developments around Denver’s downtown are bringing the city back to its roots
By Mary Volez Chandler
The junction of the South Platte River and Cherry Creek is
where Denver began. It is where Native Americans and early
explorers met and traded, and where railroads found the
space needed to bring together miles of tracks that formed
the city’s early urban nucleus.
And now, with the majority of rail lines removed, the Central
Platte Valley is home to a new mini-city of upscale high-rises,
town homes, office buildings, and amenities. It is where the
city and passionate citizens have built new parks that offer
access to open space and the rush of water, and where
sports facilities bring crowds to cheer their football,
basketball, and hockey teams. And, with the redevelopment
of adjacent Union Station into a regional multi-modal facility,
the Valley has returned to its role as a center for
transportation.
Massive sections of Denver saw redevelopment in the late
1990s, but the Valley has grown almost out of nothing. As
visitors to the 2013 AIA National Convention will see, this
former black hole of gone-to-seed space is having a positive
impact on the vitality of downtown and the region. Acres of
land have shifted from dregs to diamonds in a decade, while
smart new connections have removed manmade and natural
impediments between downtown and the neighborhoods to
the northwest. New streets have been built and others have
been extended, creating a grid that defines a dense
Waterside Lofts, designed by OZ Architecture
with Shears + Adkins Architects. Image courtesy
of XXXX.
Museum of Contemporary Art Denver, designed
by David Adjaye, Hon. FAIA. Image courtesy of
XXXX.
neighborhood. As the Valley has grown, new development
also has moved to the north, including the residential area
called Prospect.
It is the role of bridges and other connectors that makes the
Central Platte Valley “one of the great downtown success
stories,” says Chris Frampton. As president of East West
Partners, one of the top developers in the Valley, he has
watched change come quickly.
“The bridges have been really interesting,” he says. Denver
Millennium Bridge, which helps anchor East West’s
Riverfront Park trio of residential towers, “has served a
couple of huge roles. The [South Platte] River was cut off
from downtown by train tracks. The bridge also brought
Riverfront Park closer to downtown visually, and it’s had an
important impact on the extension of the 16th Street Mall.”
Denver Tramway Company Powerhouse/REI
Flagship Store, designed by Stearns Rogers
Company, 1901; restoration by Mithun Partners.
Photo by XXX.
One of the best vantage points for viewing the sweep
of development in the Valley is at the Highland side of the
pedestrian bridge over Interstate 25. There, the
transformation becomes clear, illustrating how a tangle of
rail lines has become a community for work and play.
The Connections: Bridges and the Platte River Park System
Since the city began demolishing old viaducts in the early
1990s, numerous bridges and underpasses have been
constructed to span the old impediments of waterways and
railroad tracks.
Denver Millennium Bridge (16th and Little Raven streets;
designed by ArchitectureDenver, with Design Workshop,
2002). This futuristic 130-foot-long pedestrian bridge with a
towering white mast is a major part of the 16th Street
extension and a symbol of this reenergized section of
Denver. The bridge was followed by the Platte Valley
Pedestrian Bridge (Platte River at 16th Street, 2004) and the
Highland Pedestrian Bridge (Carter & Burgess, 2006). The
former is a much more straightforward span that crosses the
river at Commons Park; the latter stretches over Interstate
25 as the final link in the chain.
Brownstones at Riverfront Park, designed by
Humphries Poli Architects. Photo by Alan G.
Gass, FAIA, courtesy of the Denver Architectural
Foundation.
Colorado Ocean Journey, designed by Odyssea, a
joint venture between AndersonMasonDale
Architects and RNL Design. Photo by XXX.
Among the first things people learn when they come to
Denver is that people here love their parks. Not that
residents of other cities don’t, but other parts of the country
are not located in high plains deserts, where early settlers
encountered little vegetation and even less moisture to
make things grow. Some of Denver’s most cherished urban
oases are:
Confluence Park (bounded by Speer Boulevard and 15th,
Little Raven and Water streets; designed by EDAW, 1976;
updated by McLaughlin Water Engineers in 1990s; plaza by
Architerra Group, 2001). Confluence Park takes its name
from the fact that the South Platte River and Cherry Creek
meet at this point. Funded by the Greenway Foundation,
public interests, and the city, Confluence Park offers urban
folk a spot for reflection as well as events.
As development proceeded in the Valley, Confluence Park
has been augmented by other parks, including: Commons
Park (bounded by Little Raven, Platte, 15th, and 19th streets;
designed by Civitas, 2000), a 20-acre mix of wild and urban
landscape that serves as a “front yard” for residents of the
Lower Downtown (LoDo) neighborhood and the Valley; and
Northside Park (west of the South Platte River, at the
eastern terminus of E. 51st Ave.; designed by Wenk
Associates, 2000), created from 70 acres of land and
elements of a former sewage treatment plant.
The mast of Millennium Bridge, designed by
ArchitectureDenver with Design Workshop, rises
next to DaVita Headquarters, designed by MOA
Architecture. Photo by Alan G. Gass, FAIA,
courtesy of the Denver Architectural
Foundation.
Historic Buildings
Not everything in the Central Platte Valley is new. Historic
buildings include:
Moffat Depot (2101 15th St.; designed by Edwin H.
Moorman, 1906). This small Neo-Classical structure was the
Denver terminus for David Moffat’s short (and short-lived)
Denver, Northwestern & Pacific Railway. Empty for years, it
is now being developed into a senior care complex, and is on
Mark Falcone Residence, designed by David
Adjaye, Hon. FAIA. Photo by Alan G. Gass, FAIA,
courtesy of the Denver Architectural
Foundation.
the National Register of Historic Places.
Denver Tramway Company Powerhouse/REI Flagship
Store (1416 Platte St., designed by Stearns Rogers Company,
1901; restoration by Mithun Partners, 2000). A purely
industrial structure meant to create electricity for the
Denver Tramway, this building features elaborate decorative
elements. After years of housing a museum, the powerhouse
was restored to host outdoor equipment outfitter REI.
New Buildings North of 15th Street:
Riverfront Park Towers (designed by 4240 Architecture,
2002). This group of high-rise towers—Riverfront Tower,
Riverfront Plaza at Little Raven Street, Promenade Lofts, and
Park Place Lofts—set the tone early on for the design
vocabulary in the Central Platte Valley. All rely on brick,
glass, and stone used in ways that stress Modernist design
and the forward-thinking nature of this reclaimed
neighborhood.
Brownstones at Riverfront Park (Little Raven and 18th
streets; designed by Humphries Poli Architects, 2005). This
16-unit development farther up Little Raven displays a
human scale and intriguing geometric compositions
expressed in polychrome buff brick, metal, and glass forms
and planes.
DaVita Headquarters (2000 16th St.; designed by MOA
Architecture, 2012). The corporate home of this healthcare
company stands out as the flashier younger brother of
nearby 1900 16th St., with a tilted roof and a wedge-shaped
element on one façade.
New Buildings South of 15th Street:
Museum of Contemporary Art Denver (1485 Delgany St.;
designed by Adjaye Associates, with Davis Partnership,
2007). From the outside, this serene cube-like structure
reads as a smoky gray-black glass container, but the interior
of David Adjaye’s, Hon. FAIA, first U.S. building tells a
different story. Those glass walls are lined with white
MonoPan, a polypropylene sandwich panel that allows the
hallways and galleries to glow within during the day, and
ONE Riverfront, designed by 4240 Architecture
Inc. Photo by Ed La Casse, courtesy of the
Denver Architectural Foundation.
1900 16th St., designed by Tryba Architects.
Image courtesy of XXX.
emit diffused light at night. Clear windows are strategically
placed to frame city views.
This tight site also holds three residential complexes that
appear to caress the museum. They include the ArtHouse
Townhomes (1460 Delgany St.; designed by Studio
Completiva and Adjaye Associates, 2007); Monarch Mills
(1475 Delgany St.; designed by Studio Completiva, 2007),
and the nearby Delgany Lofts (1401 Delgany St.; designed by
4240 Architects Inc., 2005). Adjaye designed a Corten steel–
clad town home for the developer who donated the land for
the Museum of Contemporary Art, Continuum Partners CEO
and founder Mark Falcone.
Waterside Lofts (1401 Wewatta St.; designed by OZ
Architecture, with Shears + Adkins Architects, 2002). This
early project forms an edge on Speer Boulevard; its design
and materials help link the historic buildings of lower
downtown with the contemporary design ethos of the
Valley.
Colorado Ocean Journey/Downtown Denver Aquarium (700
Water St.; designed by Odyssea, a joint venture between
AndersonMasonDale Architects and RNL Design, 1999). With
its mix of brick, steel, and glass, Colorado Ocean Journey
helped set a contemporary design standard for the area,
with curving walls, vast expanses of windows, and a
wraparound observation deck. Ocean Journey, however,
went belly up, and was acquired by a prominent restaurant
chain in 2005. Modifications ensued, but the structure
remains one of the most successful buildings constructed in
1990s Denver.
Denver resident Mary Voelz Chandler has written about
architecture, preservation, art, and design for more than 20
years. She is the author of the Guide to Denver Architecture
and was formerly the architecture writer at the Rocky
Mountain News. She was also a writer at Fentress Architects,
where she completed two books on the firm’s work, and is
currently a business development communications specialist
at GH Phipps Construction Companies. Chandler received the
AIA Colorado 2005 award for Contribution to the Built
Environment by a Non-Architect, and was honored by the
Denver Art Museum in 2012 with the DAM Contemporaries
DAMKey Award.
Recent Related:
Civic Center: Denver’s Civic and Cultural Heart
Modernist Ideals Thrive in Suburban Denver
Reference:
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