Celebrity mogul Donald Trump is only one of 11 developers bidding for Denver’s $800 million-plus Union Station redevelopment, but his fame and hairdo have boosted the visibility of a project that looms among the city’s most far-reaching.
The vision is a downtown transit hub for FasTracks travelers, with 1.4 million square feet of new offices, residences and retail space.
Trump International Hotel & Residences made a last-minute entry Aug. 22, joining 10 other candidates seeking to become master developer of the project.
An executive oversight committee representing the Regional Transportation District, Denver, the Denver Regional Council of Governments and Colorado Department of Transportation will winnow the applicants to five or six during the next six to nine months. The city and DRCOG both kicked in cash to help RTD buy the station and 19.5 surrounding acres for $49.5 million.
“We already have a master plan,” said Cal Marsella, RTD general manager. The idea is to work “hand in glove” with the master developer so construction of transit facilities “complements and doesn’t present an impediment” to commercial development of the site, he said. A good portion of the transit facilities, including light rail and bus, will be underground.
RTD hopes to sell the block bounded by 16th and 17th and Blake and Market streets and use the proceeds for an RTD management center where it can consolidate offices now housed in several buildings. He said the Union Station project will be part of “an extraordinary new set of developments that are really going to redefine the Denver skyline and the city of Denver in general.”
Indeed, John Huggins, the city’s director of economic development, can hardly maintain his enthusiasm. “Denver’s interest, in addition to wanting the transit portion to work well, is we want to make sure the vertical development of the other parts of the station make it a crown jewel for downtown,” he says. Mayor John Hickenlooper’s concern is that the redevelopment, an “enormously complex project” with many challenges and opportunities, be completed in accordance with a vision plan produced by the Union Station Advisory Committee, Huggins said.
A touch of razzle-dazzle from Trump has put the bidding process in the spotlight. With or without him (his initial application apparently was a case of less than meets the eye), we trust the competing developers will inspire a Union Station for a new century.
