{"id":1004,"date":"2012-01-24T12:03:31","date_gmt":"2012-01-24T19:03:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/?p=1004"},"modified":"2012-09-29T06:51:36","modified_gmt":"2012-09-29T12:51:36","slug":"developing-9th-and-colorado-part-7","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/?p=1004","title":{"rendered":"9th and Colorado Design Guidelines and the Question of &#8220;Feel&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The first 2012 meeting of the Colorado Boulevard Healthcare District Board on January 5 was dedicated to preliminary discussion of the design guidelines for the site. There was an informative presentation by the consulting architect (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.semarchitects.com\/about\/firm.html\">SEM<\/a>) and a senior city planner.\u00a0 This was an opportunity to get up-to-speed on the meaning of relevant design concepts and statements.\u00a0 The stated intent for 9<sup>th<\/sup> and Colorado is to create a pedestrian-friendly, urban neighborhood center having a \u201cvisually creative\u201d built environment.\u00a0 Five categories of standards and guidelines were discussed, including site design, building design, signs, lighting, and streetscape.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_1005\" style=\"width: 610px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/01\/9thColoPlan.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1005\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1005\" title=\"9thColoPlan\" src=\"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/01\/9thColoPlan.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"540\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/01\/9thColoPlan.jpg 600w, http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/01\/9thColoPlan-300x270.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-1005\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">9th and Colorado Plan (Sembler Company)<\/p><\/div>\n<p>The pedestrian and visual experience along 9<sup>th<\/sup> \u00a0Avenue, 8<sup>th<\/sup> Avenue, the \u201cNew Avenue\u201d running east-west between 8<sup>th<\/sup> and 9<sup>th<\/sup>, and the connecting streets running north-south will be enhanced in the following ways:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\u201cTerminating vistas\u201d (the end points of dead end streets) will be marked by visually interesting markers (e.g., a monument, a piece of public art, a \u201csignature\u201d architectural element);<\/li>\n<li>There will be city-encouraged streetscaping in the form of benches, patios, islands, awnings for shade, and other features;<\/li>\n<li>Vertical and horizontal architectural scaling elements will be used to break up the mass and humanize the scale of the retail stores, especially the Big Box;<\/li>\n<li>A concerted effort will be made to separate pedestrian spaces from loading spaces and service areas;<\/li>\n<li>There will be sufficient sidewalk width and \u201camenity zones\u201d aimed at producing a \u201cgrander pedestrian experience\u201d along these streets, especially 8<sup>th<\/sup> avenue.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>During the Q&amp;A citizens wanted to know about the use of sustainable building materials.\u00a0 The guidelines will encourage the developer to use materials that are both durable and sustainable.\u00a0 A preference was expressed for leaving the 8<sup>th<\/sup> and Colorado corner (extreme SW corner of the map) open instead of filling it with a small retail store.\u00a0 Questions were also asked about what the Big Box store between 9<sup>th<\/sup> and 11<sup>th<\/sup> will be like. \u00a0Answer: it will obey the same design guidelines as the smaller retail units, with space for unloading trucks located within the building and a full level of below grade parking.\u00a0 Concerns were expressed about noise and whether there would be any noise restrictions (No). A citizen wondered how inviting the planned patio fronting the 8<sup>th<\/sup> Avenue \u201crestaurant row\u201d will really be, given the amount of traffic on that road and the best efforts to disperse traffic along multiple paths.\u00a0 Response: it\u2019s an urban environment!!<\/p>\n<p>The best question of the meeting might have been the one that asked what the overall site would \u201cfeel\u201d like. \u00a0Answer: the city doesn\u2019t dictate architectural style, so this is primarily the responsibility of the developer. On that note, one local neighborhood association has posted a few <a href=\"http:\/\/bellevue-hale.ning.com\/group\/9th-colo-redevelopment\/forum\/topics\/development-of-the-large-format-store\">pictures<\/a> of what the Big Box store\u2014clearly an element that\u2019s bound to dominate the site\u2014could look like on the outside given other Big Boxes that can be found in the Denver area, including this one:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/bellevue-hale.ning.com\/group\/9th-colo-redevelopment\/forum\/topics\/development-of-the-large-format-store\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-1006\" title=\"LargeFormatPossib\" src=\"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/01\/LargeFormatPossib.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/01\/LargeFormatPossib.jpg 500w, http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/01\/LargeFormatPossib-300x225.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Let\u2019s hope it doesn\u2019t come to <strong><em>this <\/em><\/strong>(see <a href=\"http:\/\/denverurbanism.com\/2011\/06\/urban-big-boxes-around-the-country.html\">here<\/a> for alternatives).\u00a0 The next meeting of the CBHD Board will be on February 2, 4:00 pm, Molly Blank Conference Center, National Jewish Hospital.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The first 2012 meeting of the Colorado Boulevard Healthcare District Board on January 5 was dedicated to preliminary discussion of the design guidelines for the site. There was an informative presentation by the consulting architect (SEM) and a senior city [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1004","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-9th-and-colorado"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1H2bI-gc","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1004","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1004"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1004\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2071,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1004\/revisions\/2071"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1004"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1004"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1004"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}