CREJ - Building Dialogue - September 2016
Daily commuters driving along the Interstate 25 corridor near the 210B exit will notice something different if they look at the surrounding landscape near the existing Denver Steam Plant. The abandoned warehouse located just north of the steam towers at 1401 Zuni St. is evolving. The large lead-poisoning awareness advertisement that once covered the building’s exterior in white paint and its windows with children’s faces has been removed, revealing the original bricks of this 100-year-old building. The paint removal process on the 1401 Zuni warehouse initiated Phase 1 of STEAM on the Platte, a mixed-use development sitting on 3.2 acres along the Platte River. The development marks the revitalization of an area that has sat vacant since in early 1980s. In addition to the 1401 Zuni building, STEAM on the Platte will include the redevelopment of an existing building adjacent to the river that features a bowstring roof. Plans for the bowstring building include a restaurant use with vibrant outdoor space that will overlook the Platte River. Redevelopment of the bowstring building is slated to begin early 2017. Future phases of development include new construction commercial office and residential space. STEAM on the Platte is being co-developed by White Construction Group and Urban Ventures LLC. Joining the team is tres birds workshop as architect on the renovation of the site’s signature warehouse building and Wenk Associates as the project’s landscape architect. “STEAM on the Platte provides WCG and our partners at Urban Ventures with another great opportunity to participate and contribute to the renaissance that is occurring in Denver,” said Tim White, president of White Construction Group. “The 1401 building is rich with adaptive reuse opportunities and we can't wait to share these reuses with the public in the near future.” WCG began Phase I with the paint removal process and a major cleanup of the 1401 building, along with site demolition. Special attention took place during the restoration of the exterior masonry. “Most of the masonry surfaces needed to be tuck pointed, but the first phase of the brick repair was to tighten up the parapet and the top 5 feet of walls on the east elevation,” said Don Gillmore, president of Rocky Mountain Building Restoration. “Large areas on the south end of the building were missing quite a bit of mortar from the mortar joints and were also tuck pointed. The parapets had missing brick, loose brick and missing mortar and was in danger of falling apart. Used bricks were acquired which matched the brick on the different buildings and were installed where needed.” WCG teamed with Enviro-Tech Solutions during the nine-week process that cleaned up the historic brick and timbers inside the 65,000-square foot warehouse at 1401 Zuni. Two different blasting processes were utilized to clean and restore various surfaces inside the abandoned warehouse. For the metal beams and wooden surfaces, abrasive blasting was used with recycled crushed glass as the blasting medium. On the brick surfaces, the metal press and the pump, Enviro-Tech Solutions employed a technique called soda blasting, during which sodium bicarbonate was applied. Over 170,000 square feet of wooden surfaces and 30,000 square feet of brick surfaces was blasted and cleaned. Reviving the physical character of 1401 Zuni highlights the building’s and the site’s long history. From the late 1800s, the site was booming with energy from a variety of industrial users. Historical resources indicate that there appeared to be a former tannery on site. In the 1890s, the land featured a main building with a hair rope walk and two smaller buildings consisting of straw storage and lumber. In the early 1900s, the property was developed between West Colfax Avenue and West 14th Avenue with approximately 22 dwellings, three stores, one school, a congregation, a print shop, Rosenbraums Bathhouse, and hay and feed storage. The Johnson and Bremer Soap Factory was located on the southeast side of the property, along the intersection of West 14th Avenue and South First (now Zuni Street.) Since then, the property’s uses evolved and included coal and oil companies, Congregation Zera Abraham and ceremonial bathhouse, rag baling facilities and others. Beginning in the 1940s, discards from Goodwill and other thrift stores were recycled using three different baling machines. At the height, the machines processed 1 million pounds of material per month and produced 40 bales per day. One of the rag balers still sits in the warehouse and will be one of the focal points when entering the building. “Redeveloping this site with White Construction Group is an exciting process,” said Susan Powers, president of Urban Ventures LLC. “We are breathing new life into existing buildings, honoring their character while adapting them for new uses.”