For Part 2 of my series, we will be covering the Colorado National Bank hotel conversion. If you remember back in 2009, Stonebridge Companies bought the historic building on 17th and Champa. Then, back in 2011, we reported on DenverInfill that construction was to begin. (Head on over to the 2011 post for some renderings and interiors of the historic structure)
Present day, construction is now visible and being taken on by Alliance Construction. Construction fences and banners are always a good start! Remember, the plan calls to add two more stories to the current structure.
Here are some more ‘visible’ construction shots showing equipment has been moved on site. I’m sure there is a lot of interior restoration going on as well. The gold doors are going to be quite the grand entrance into this hotel once it’s complete.
The Colorado National Bank Building is the second historic structure under construction to become a hotel; Denver Union Station being the other. Over on 15th Street there is another building being converted into a dual-brand hotel. We’ll cover that next!
Remind me what building on 15th is being converted to a dual-brand hotel.
It’s the old Xcel Energy building on 550 15th Street.
This is great. Lived a block away for two years, and this building was just sort of a black hole and sucked the life out of that area. It’ll be nice to have another 24 hour presence around there, as opposed to just offices that are only populated 9-5, M-F.
Ryan, sort of an obscure question, but here goes anyway – the ground floor on Champa faces a bus stop. Before the construction fence went up, people basically used the building’s ledge facing the bus stop as a bench. As a result, people just seemed to hang out there all the time, and the walls and windows became covered in graffitti and there was trash everywhere. As the prior blog post described it, the side facing Champa was “particularly shabby.” Did the architects build in any design elements to prevent/discourage this behavior? Or is the hotel just going to rely on security and more people on the block to achieve the same end? Either way, a boutique hotel can’t allow that area to return to the way it looked pre-construction, so it would be interesting to hear of any creative design elements incorporated into the building’s redo.
This is a good question. When I first caught word of the project I read that they were going to be doing some ‘creative’ landscaping along Champa to keep people off the building. Possibly benches, planters, tress etc. I could see some very large and long planters along that side. I wish I had a rendering of that side for you but I can’t come across one!
Thanks Ryan. It’ll be interesting to see what they come up with. Planters that block that entire ledge are a great idea – certainly better than the little metal strips with blunt spikes that the federal buildings seem to favor.