Page 46 - CCD Magazine - Winter-Spring 2019 Issue

The Class A office building going up at 32nd and Vallejo will break away from the neighborhood’s abundance of multi-family residential to offer work, retail, and outdoor gathering spaces as a conscious contribution to community. 46 | Colorado Construction & Design A Good Neighbor By Sean O’Keefe Adding to the mix in LoHi’s highly-walkable, amenity-rich neighborhood, 32nd and Vallejo takes shape. In the process of city building, there are opportunities and there are constraints. The way one development team versus another handles the choices to be made at each fork in the road is, fundamentally, what makes the finished building product distinct from all others. Regardless of program or profit, one of the most important things a quality development can be is a good neighbor. For a new mixed-used office development going into the ground at the corner of 32nd and Vallejo in Denver’s LoHi neighborhood, being a good neighbor means a lot more than simply keeping up the front yard. “The big idea here was to develop a project that both adds value to and gains value from the neighborhood,” says Angela Feddersen of Elevate Architecture, who is also invested as part of the ownership team. Located at a jog in the street grid, the new 53,334-SF building has been oriented to intercept southbound Vallejo and offers a form-perforating courtyard plaza as a welcome mat at the front door. The building is composed of a combination of approximately 28,000-SF of office space on the two upper floors and a mezzanine level with ground-floor retail and a below-grade parking structure which is integrated as the building’s foundation. “Adding places for people to work and play on the edge of an increasingly dense residential