Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava on Thursday will unveil designs for the first phase of a redevelopment of Denver International Airport’s south terminal area. The project is expected to cost up to $650 million.
Calatrava has prepared a soaring design that integrates a new $176 million Westin hotel with a FasTracks commuter-rail station and a large public plaza just south of the existing airport terminal.
Calatrava also will present a sleek design for an arched commuter-rail bridge over Peña Boulevard just east of the road’s intersection with E-470.
The proposed design for the hotel, train station and public plaza is expected to rival the existing tented roof of the DIA terminal as an architectural statement, with the 500-room Westin perched above the train station and plaza.
If the south terminal project incorporates Calatrava’s designs, the hotel-train station-plaza complex will dominate the view of the terminal from the south, but those driving to DIA will retain a view of the terminal tent through a low, saddle-like space between the hotel’s twin towers.
On Wednesday night, as many as 1,000 people converged on the Denver Art Museum to attend a lecture by Calatrava sponsored on the Denver Office of Cultural Affairs.
The museum’s auditorium was able to accommodate only about 250 of those who came to hear Calatrava’s discussion of his 30-plus-year career in art, engineering and architecture.
He and Erin Trapp, director of the city cultural affairs office, apologized to the hundreds of people who could not get in the auditorium.
“We knew he would be popular, but we had no idea this many people would come,” Trapp said of the hundreds of architecture and Calatrava aficionados who were turned away.
Calatrava’s address was filmed by Denver’s Channel 8 and officials said they hoped to get it posted for public viewing within a couple of weeks.
Trapp said the architect’s next talk should be held in the Ellie Caulkins Opera House in order to accommodate the large number of people who are interested in his work.
In his hour-long presentation, the 59-year-old Calatrava used still photographs and video to show the progression of his work from sculptures produced beginning in the late 1970s that he used to explore engineering techniques later incorporated in his bridge and train-station designs.
The designs he will present Thursday for the DIA train station and plaza, and the commuter-rail bridge over Peña Boulevard, are reminiscent of those he has used on train stations in Liege, Belgium and Lyon, France, and on bridges he has designed in a number of cities around the world.
Some people see bridges merely as “utilitarian,” Calatrava said, but historically they have been “essential in the functioning of a city” — structures that help “make places unique and outstanding.”
As he spoke, images of bridges he designed in Buenos Aires; Jerusalem; Seville, Spain; and Orleans, France, flashed on the screen.
DIA still must determine if it can afford the Calatrava-designed commuter-rail bridge over Peña Boulevard.
The airport has proposed “enhancing” RTD’s design for the bridge and paying the difference between the “base price” the Regional Transportation District will budget for the bridge and what it would cost to build it according to Calatrava’s design.
RTD recently selected a consortium of private companies to build the $1.2 billion East Corridor train from Union Station to DIA under a public-private partnership.
On Aug. 12, RTD and the firms will be able to identify the amount of money they have for the rail bridge after they complete financial terms of the public-private partnership, said RTD spokeswoman Pauletta Tonilas.
DIA will have until Jan. 31 to decide whether it can afford to pay the difference between the base price for the bridge and the amount needed to realize Calatrava’s design, DIA manager Kim Day said. When an early Calatrava design came in around $60 million, airport officials said they could not afford that price.
Jeffrey Leib: 303-954-1645 or jleib@denverpost.com
