DECEMBER 2015 \ BUILDING DIALOGUE \
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WORDS:
Eric Peterson
A
s it always has, Denver is changing. This time around, the city is getting denser
and more urban.
And the city’s fast-changing shift from car-centric sprawl to walkable density
is remaking the urban fabric with infill projects replacing blacktop throughout
downtown and the adjacent neighborhoods.
Case in point: MOTO, the newly built apartment building at 820 Sherman St.
developed by Denver-based Elevation Group LLC.
“This site was a parking lot before,” says Matt Meunier, project manager for Den-
ver-based PCL Construction.
Now the once-empty space is home to a distinctive apartment tower, with four wood-
framed stories atop two levels of concrete, featuring 64 rental units and 84,000 square
feet in all. It’s all wrapped in a slick metal facade, with an eye-grabbing design that
resembles an artfully skewed stack of building blocks.
“It steps in and out as it goes up,” says Meunier. “It made it more difficult to build,
but it makes it a very unique building.”
But that was just one of many headwinds. “There were no shortage of challenges,”
concedes Meunier, noting that meant there was only 10 feet of leeway to the prop-
erty line. “It’s not your typical stucco building with as many units as you can pack
into it.”
The project aimed for consistency with “the neighborhood, present and future,
and the tenant, present and future,” says Nick Seglie, an architect with Gensler in
Denver. Another goal involved “playing with the mass,” he adds, to avoid an overly
vertical aesthetic.
“We didn’t want to look at this as an apartment building, we wanted to look at
it as a piece of sculpture that fits well with the neighborhood,” Seglie says. “We
looked at a lot of crazy ideas.” They settled on the offset design that “didn’t make
it easy for PCL.”
Short for “Middle of Town,” MOTO is in the heart of Denver. The Colorado
State Capitol is just up the street. There are dozens of bars and restaurants
within an easy stroll.
MOTO has five different room layouts, and about 30 percent of the units
feature balconies. The apartments are named for local music venues – from
the Ogden studio to the two-bedroom Paramount – and have upgraded fur-
nishings, mild contemporary decor, and alternating color schemes on the
even and odd floors. There are beetle-kill pine barn doors that slide to hide
bedrooms and washers and dryers, and other sleek and unique details in
the design.
There’s a common lounge, bike-sharing program for tenants and a pool
deck with the requisite shady cabana with a fire pit. The building’s ground-
floor retail space is leased to Black Eye Coffee and a Proper Barber Shop.
Infill Gem MOTO
Apartments
MOTO is a model infill
project for central Denver
