CREJ - Building Dialogue - September 2015
JE 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 executives 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 complex 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,” construction 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 development at Interstate 25 and Colorado Boulevard into a vibrant, transit-oriented 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 parking 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, including two office towers, two existing parking garages and an entertainment complex that features the United Artists IMAX cinema complex and Dave & Buster’s restaurant. Precast concrete will start being added around the core structures in late fall. Deliveries also will be a challenge to such a busy site, with theater patrons and visitors to Dave & Buster’s coming and going late into the night. The office tower construction will be less complicated than the second phase, Snelling said. By the time the retail Main Street and residential phase get underway, access will be even more limited and more will be going on at the site. Complicated site logistics and planning is familiar work to JE Dunn Construction, he noted, which has completed several projects in tight urban settings, such as the Spire, the city of Denver’s Crime Lab and, most recently, the new Balfour Luxury Senior Residences. To complete the residential build-out, “We have to get the parking garages open for retail and office tenants, so we can take the rest of the surface parking lot,” Snelling said. “We began work in June on the 200,000-square-foot, precast concrete office tower,” said McCarthy. It will include 15 stories of Class A office space, and 20,000 square feet of retail and service space. Six stories of above-grade garage space will provide parking for 400 vehicles. Retail, residential, office and entertainment options will be arrayed along an inviting central Main Street, with both downtown Denver and the Denver Tech Center 20 minutes away by light rail. The office tower will be crowned with a rooftop terrace, available for tenants’ use, with railing-to-railing views of the Front Range and downtown Denver. Completion of the 16-month project is expected in time for the 2016 holidays. The second phase of the project includes a 17-story, 280,600-square-foot residential tower. Its 259 for-rent apartments with full amenities include 294 covered parking spaces, two fitness centers, podium-level pool, resident lounge, outdoor terrace and a bike repair shop with storage, an element of the apartment tower’s LEED Silver requirement. Another 45,000 square feet of retail and service space completes the residential tower. This summer’s groundbreaking is the latest step in a long collaboration, McCarthy said. Our firm was awarded the Lincoln Towers project more than seven years ago, only to see it placed on hold during the real estate downturn. With the metro Denver real estate market hopping, owners Lincoln Properties and ASB Real Estate Investments have moved forward. The first office tower at Colorado Center dates back to 1987, with the entertainment complex and additional office space opening in 1999. Our West Region headquarters has been at Colorado Center for the last decade. Co-workers know firsthand how convenient the location is. “We’re able to jump on the light rail, get to downtown in 20 to 25 minutes, and not have to worry about parking or traffic,” McCarthy said. “Or we can go the other way, to the Denver Tech Center, very easily.” The office tower design by Tryba Architects of Denver is LEED Silver, featuring high-efficiency glass and mechanical systems. The project will be completed with 100 percent union labor, McCarthy said, with JE Dunn self-performing concrete work on site.