Trying to appease all parties about the Colorado History Museum’s proposal to move inside the grassy area of Civic Center, Mayor John Hickenlooper counter-proposed Tuesday that the museum move into the existing McNichols Building, then build a single-story instead of a four-story building to the south.
The museum, forced to move from 13th Avenue and Broadway in the next two years as the state judicial center expands, has proposed building a four-story, 48,000-square-foot building on the southwest corner of the Civic Center and putting cultural offices into McNichols, a former Carnegie Library.
Hickenlooper’s plan has the state renovating McNichols to house the museum, then erecting a building to the south with the same 16,000-square-foot footprint as the proposed four-story building.
Emphasizing that nothing has been settled definitively, Hickenlooper suggested at a news briefing Tuesday that the new building would be made of glass and would house an elevator and entrance-exit to the history museum’s underground vault, as well as cultural events, art and history exhibits or whatever would attract visitors to Civic Center and the museum.
The Colorado Historical Society offices could be in the permit center diagonally across the intersection of West 14th Avenue and Bannock Street if needed, he said. Excess space in the permit center would be rented out to nonprofits, such as Historic Denver, and the rent used to repair and clean up Civic Center.
Ed Nichols, president of the Colorado Historical Society, said he liked the proposal. “This process is moving forward,” he said, referring to the eight months of public hearings that have been held. “This keeps Colorado history out in the open.”
Opponents immediately cried out against the plan.
“It still violates the charter to put those uses into Civic Center,” said former city council member Cathy Donohue. “It’s still a big building on park space.”
Donohue on Tuesday filed an open-records request with the mayor’s office, asking him to release all correspondence from his office about the museum’s relocation. She also is seeking to place an initiative on the next ballot to change the wording of what is allowed in Civic Center.
Carolyn and Don Etter, former managers of the city’s parks department under Mayor Federico Peña, didn’t like the mayor’s proposal, and refused his request to publicly support it.
“I still think the permit center is the better site,” Carolyn Etter said.
At the news conference, no one could give an estimate of the cost of the proposal, nor could Hickenlooper say who would pay for what. He said the state would pay to renovate the McNichols Building and to excavate the underground storage space. But he hedged when asked who would build the new building and who would pay to renovate the city’s permit center.
Earlier in the year, the historical society said it needed to select a site and present a budget to the legislature by December. Hickenlooper said anything is possible but admitted timing is tight.
He said he would ask the City Council to vote on the project. “I’d never do a project like this without the City Council’s approval,” he said.
City Council member Jeanne Robb, who supports the proposal, said she doubts the council could vote this month on the project.
Then it would have to be approved by the legislature, which meets for five months starting in January. A spokesman in the governor’s office said it is possible to get legislative approval this session.
Mike McPhee: 303-954-1409 or mmcphee@denverpost.com
