CREJ

88 / BUILDING DIALOGUE / December 2020 / McGregor Square / funded the land acquisition and built the stadium, with the Rockies responsible for ongoingmaintenance. However, there were no funds available for future capital needs, especially those needed for decades to come. The city of Denver and the stateof Coloradowere innopositiontoponyup the funds. And nobody had the desire to go to the taxpayers. The idea of developing the West Lot cropped up as a viable option thatwould solve the Rockies’ problems by generating a projected $125million over the next 30 years. At the time, no one remembered the concept sketched out in 2006 byMcGregor. Chalk it up to coincidence or great minds think alike. And after a few rounds of requests for proposals, Stantec Architecture was selected as the design firm to move the project forward. “This became a creative way to do a land lease of this prop- erty and fund maintenance of the stadium district over the next 30 years,” says John Yonushewski, senior principal with Stantec. “So, that’s when the Rockies said rather than give this up to a development group, we’d like to have control over this and treat it as an extension of the Coors Field experience.” According toYonushewski, ininitialmeetingswiththeRock- ies, Stantec was urged to conduct neighborhood outreach to properly gauge the needs of the Ballpark and LoDo neighbor- hoods. “The overwhelming response that we heard through can- vassing the neighborhood groups and residents was the need for an open space to gather for activities,” says Yonushewski. “And that was in line with the goal of the Rockies to energize this area andmake it a full-time community.” Yonushewski explains that Stantec and the Rockies viewed the rarely used Wynkoop Walkway as being ripe for utiliza- tion and planned to create “something similar to Manhattan’s Rockefeller Center, where a more passive plaza is paired with an activated plaza.” That input from the locals was not only welcomed but im- plemented. “We spent a year, going back and forth with the neighbor- hoodgroups todevelop thevisionofwhatmakes sense.Where should these buildings be? What form should they take? What size should these plazas be? What kind of connection should the content plaza have with Wynkoop Plaza? But, also, what kind of relationship should we have back to Coors Field? And within those discussions, quite honestly, the diagonal cut-