Not the best of times and perhaps not the worst. But as 2008 comes to an end, I can’t help but hope for better days. This year’s winners and losers:
Our built environment is progressing. Though the jury’s still out, the emergence of the justice center campus east of Speer Boulevard, between 14th Street and Colfax Avenue, is a vast improvement over the surface parking lots and low-rise buildings dominating too much of downtown’s edge. Extending the Civic Center west to Speer realizes S.R. DeBoer’s 100-year-old vision.
Proceeding west on Speer to Buzz Geller’s Bell Park site, urbanites are both winners and losers. Losers are the architects, city planners and citizens who worked so hard to create LoDo’s Historic Urban Edge District. This thoughtful planning document enabled Geller to build a thin tower on a site strictly zoned for low-rise buildings. Geller and his architect, Curt Fentress, thoroughly abused the plan’s clearly stated intent, standards and guidelines by designing a structure nearly 20 percent larger than permitted.
Ultimately, the citizens of Denver may benefit from the Lower Downtown Denver Review Board’s decision to reject Fentress’ design, a strikingly poor imitation of Swiss architect Herzog & DeMeuron’s 56 Leonard Street in Lower Manhattan. Rather than reflecting the elegance of that building, Fentress’ awkward design echoed the bombastic overreach of his Convention Center at Speer and Stout, a bloated truck terminal on an important site. His derivative Bell Park tower would have been no better.
The region’s metro mayors deserve kudos for working on a package to present to President-elect Barack Obama’s economic team sometime next year. Despite their differences and exacerbated by RTD’s refusal to either tell the truth or reveal its plans, the mayors are exploring options to build FasTracks as promised and on schedule. These leaders realize this comprehensive metro transit system is key to the region’s economic vitality and environmental sustainability. Let’s wish the mayors well, since there is little chance RTD will persuade the legislature or the voters to cough up more money.
Junk, properly assembled, can be art. Architect Frank Gehry’s Santa Monica residence comes to mind. Closer to home, the disparate structures that combine to form the Denver Performing Arts Center, designed over 15 years by different architects, succeeds as a collection of individual parts.
One Lincoln Park, architect’s Buchanan Yonushewski’s clumsy 32-story tower at 20th and Welton, occupies a prominent site at downtown’s eastern edge. The building meets the street with a multistory parking podium — a bad idea poorly executed. The rest of the façade is a cacophony of material, design and detailing, topped by a strangely shaped cap.
Sometimes junk is junk.
Winners are urbanites who will benefit from a president who understands city is much more than a four-letter word.
Susan Barnes-Gelt (sbg13@comcast.net) served on the Denver City Council and worked for Mayor Federico Peña. She is a consultant to local architectural and development companies.
