SEPTEMBER 2015 \ BUILDING DIALOGUE \
47
J
E Dunn Construction has begun work on a 15-story
office building at Lincoln Towers, the first phase of a
two-building project and the first new construction
at the Colorado Center complex in southeast Denver
in more than 15 years.
The site is literally in JE Dunn’s front yard, with execu-
tives in the contractor’s West Region headquarters able to
keep an eye on the site from their offices 12 stories above. We
relocated our office to Tower 1 of the Colorado Center com-
plex in 2005.
This creates challenges. An unrelated power outage in the
early days of construction provoked half a dozen phone calls
from the office, “wondering if we had hit something,” construc-
tion superintendent Eric Snelling said. “It’s the fishbowl effect.”
The office and apartment towers, developed by Lincoln Property Co. and
ASB Real Estate Investments, promise to transform the Colorado Center devel-
opment at Interstate 25 and Colorado Boulevard into a vibrant, transit-orient-
ed neighborhood.
“It will be a truly mixed-use project, where everything is right on site,” said
Bill McCarthy, JE Dunn vice president. “You can go down in the morning from
your apartment and go right to work in the office tower, or jump on the light
rail to work downtown or head south to the Tech Center, and in the evening,
walk to Dave & Buster’s, watch a movie or go out to a restaurant. It’s going to
be a very vibrant property.”
Wide sidewalks will invite strolling, and the new pedestrian bridge to the
Evans light-rail station will give a lift to the neighborhood on both sides of
I-25, McCarthy predicts.
As construction progresses, a complimentary valet service will cut down
on the parking hassles created by building on the former surface parking lot.
“We’ve done extensive parking studies to evaluate the impacts to not only the
office users but also the entertainment tenants,” McCarthy said. During major
movie premieres and other events, valets will shuttle visitors’ cars into the
existing garages.
To construct the two new towers and Main Street district, four freestanding,
220-foot-tall concrete stair and elevator cores will rise from the surface park-
ing lot starting in early September, Snelling said. The height of the cores will
create a complicated access scaffolding project with “a lot of stairs to climb.”
The work will be performed in the middle of a ring of existing structures, in-
cluding two office towers, two existing parking garages and an entertainment
complex that features the United Artists IMAX cinema complex and Dave
Diane M. Miller
Vice
President of
Marketing,
JE Dunn
FACING PAGE:
Rendering of Lincoln Towers
FOLLOWING PAGE:
Lincoln Towers is being built at
the Colorado Center.
