Move over Lowry. Move over Stapleton.
Well, not exactly. Not on that scale, anyway.
But the West Side of Denver is getting its own reconfigured, revisioned, urban landscape — a $300 million redevelopment adjacent to Sloan’s Lake.
This was revealed at a public meeting Wednesday evening, Jan. 22, at 1400 Quitman St. (the old Yeshiva Toras Chaim).
If the landscape artists and architects are to be believed, the redevelopment will be just as beautiful, practical and envirofriendly as its sister neighborhoods to the east.
When St. Anthony’s Central Hospital announced that it was closing its longtime West Side facility, in favor of an expanded, brand new facility further west, uncertainty loomed.
What would replace it?
Would property values decline?
Would urban blight set in?
By all accounts — and after years of planning — the exact opposite looms. A new, mixed use neighborhood, complete with a boutique hotel, is scheduled for groundbreaking this year.
That is, after the demolition of St. Anthony’s is complete.
Speaking of which, 34,000 tons of concrete from the old St. Anthony’s buildings will be “repurposed” for use in the new streets and building foundations of “Sloans.”
Sloans.
That’s it.
That’s the name of the redevelopment.
Lowry. Stapleton. Sloans.
In fact, EnviroFinance Group, the developer of Sloans, the seven-square block parcel between Colfax and 17th Avenues and Perry and Stuart Streets, will salvage more than 250 cubic yards of stone and brick for reuse in the development.
The infrastructure is slated to be completed by spring, with construction of the new development slated to begin in the summer. Four of the seven square-block parcels have been sold by EFG.
One is called the Kuhlman Block Alliance, named after the one building on the St. Anthony’s property, the Kuhlman Bldg., that was not demolished.
The Kuhlman project will contain the boutique hotel, retail outlets along 17th Ave., facing Sloan’s Lake, and rental housing.
A word about that boutique hotel.
Denverites are well aware of the cheap motels along West Colfax Ave. They have hardly been a pull for visitors to the neighborhood’s Jewish community. The new hotel will afford the opportunity for families attending simchas in Denver to stay in the neighborhood, not to mention Shabbos guests.
Larimer Associates is designing the “alliance,” and Fulenwider is handling the rentals.
A two-square block parcel, under the development of Tramell Crow, will become “Alexan at Sloan’s Lake,” a four- to five-story rental apartment project. It will take two years to build.
Littleton Capital Partners and Weston Capital are partnering to build an office and retail center on the fourth parcel sold.
Cameron Bertron of EnviroFinance Group hopes that all or some of the remaining parcels will be bought for private homes, to balance out the planned rental housing.
A brief review with R & L, a specialist in landscape architecture and urban design, reveals plans for street scapes, foot traffic, trees and grasses that use little water and a reduction of “light pollution.”
Say you’re on the second floor of a rental unit and all of the street lights are on outside. This could disturb (“pollute”) your sleep. But the streets lights designed for Sloans will cast light only downward, not upward.
Copyright © 2014 by the Intermountain Jewish News
