When Denver needed a new transit hub, city leaders naturally looked at the city's aging Union Station. Now after a massive expansion, Union Station is a monument to multimodalism, and a beautiful architectural mix of ornate old and shimmering new.
(http://greatergreater.com/images/201507/282255.jpg)
The new Denver Union Station combines five transit modes with expansive new and refurbished public spaces, and a brand new transit-oriented neighborhood.
Historic depot building
The station is anchored by the beautifully renovated 1894 depot building, with its lovingly restored, bright, airy waiting room. The ground floor includes popular restaurants and bars, along with table shuffleboard sets and occasional live music performances. The upper floors now host a boutique hotel.
(http://greatergreater.com/images/201507/282306.jpg)
Plazas surrounding the outside of the depot building are well-landscaped, and integrate nicely with the bustling LoDo neighborhood across the street. They form the northern end of Denver's 16th Street pedestrian mall, and are a vast improvement over the surface parking lots that formerly occupied the same space.
Multimodal transit
The station brings together Amtrak, commuter rail, light rail, and local and intercity buses.
New commuter and light rail lines are the major components of Denver's impressive FasTracks plan, which is adding about 100 miles of new rail to the city's transit network. Union Station will be the hub.
Immediately behind the historic depot lie the new platforms for Amtrak and commuter rail. They're partially covered by the grandest train shed in America.
(http://greatergreater.com/images/201507/282333.jpg)
For now there's only a slow trickle of Amtrak trains using these platforms. But starting in 2016 when Denver's new commuter rail lines begin to open, it will bustle.
(http://greatergreater.com/images/201507/301009.jpg)
Beneath the train shed lies Union Station's subterranean bus depot, the closest thing Denver has to a subway.
The bus depot serves as both a transit terminal and a pedestrian walkway between the main station and the light rail platforms, further beyond the train shed. It's a long walk from one end to the other, but it's an attractive space.
At the far end, Denver's light rail. The city has had light rail since 1994, but it's expanding under the FasTracks program.
Beyond the light rail, active freight rail tracks pass by to the northwest.
(http://greatergreater.com/images/201507/252319.jpg)
Transit-oriented development
While the station itself is finished and open to the traveling public, the surrounding land is only half-complete. The former industrial railyards behind the station are being redeveloped as a new high-rise neighborhood.
Millions of square feet of development are planned, with thousands of new housing units in the pipeline. Multiple blocks of mixed-use infill development are under construction.
Denver is undergoing a population and building boom, so planners and developers anticipate high demand for the new units. The South Platte River Valley just to the north is also a fun and attractive part of the city, popular with tourists, cyclists, and shoppers visiting REI's flagship store on the left bank of the river, housed in the former power plant for Denver's streetcar system.
When it's all complete, Denver will have an impressive new urban neighborhood, fully integrated with and surrounding its new transit hub.
(http://greatergreater.com/images/201507/252321.jpg)
Nice.
I work intimately in the LoDo/Union Station area as part of what I do for a living. The pictures you posted capture several buildings my company has developed or is developing (we topped out core and shell on one this month, as a matter of fact). All of our deals are currently crossed as part of one holding company/JV, but our partner is the master developer for Denver's Union Station (which covers basically all of the blocks surrounding Denver's/RTD's Union Station project), and they were also the master developer for the adjacent Riverfront Park (900 condos, 1100 apartments current built or UC).
I have plenty plenty plenty of pictures of the area (that I have personally taken) I could work on uploading, and I also do have a wealth of knowledge of this project. Yes, indeed it is a fantastic urban development project perfectly tying in public agencies and private developers/investors, transit and development.
It's a smaller scale version of what San Francisco is doing for the Transbay Transit Center/Transbay District and adjacent Rincon Hill (equivalent to Riverfront Park in Denver) and SOMA (equivalent to LoDo in Denver). All of these can easily provide takeaways for both successes and failures (in process or implementation) for Jacksonville, and are wholeheartedly reasons why I would love it if Jax just quit paying attention to some of the other southern cities and started immediately looking at and paying attention to the western cities, all of which are FAR superior in my opinion to their mediocre southern counterparts.
If there was ever an example of what Jacksonville's grand Union Station could be this is it!
By the way, my mother went to undergraduate college at Denver University in Cherry Creek, not too far away, in the 1970s. The only thing worth coming to Downtown Denver for was the Brown Hotel (which is still there), for which she dated an heir to that family at the time. Apparently, according to her and many other people I have talked to, even into the early 90s you wouldn't be caught dead in the area within ~5 blocks of DUS (otherwise known as LoDo for Lower Downtown on one end, and vast open space until recently on the other). Car jackings, dilapidated old buildings, etc. Now the hottest area, by far, in Denver, which itself is such a hot market.
LoDo is where a lot of the tech companies are locating to, expanding in, etc etc. Overflow from Boulder, CO up the road. The highest rents, by far, in Denver are achieved in LoDo/DUS/Riverfront Park, both on the office side and the apartment side.
One thing that should be noted is that technically their LRT station at DUS is separate by a couple blocks, towards Riverfront Park. Their bus station is fantastic and was moved underground, and the rail you see immediately behind DUS is all Amtrak/future commuter.
The station itself is now a hotel with shops and restaurants, flanked by two new mirror image office buildings of ~100K sf each (one taken entirely by an energy company). Across the street is Wewatta, which is the spine and main street of LoDo, and lined with cool restaurants/bars topped by boutique creative office space and lofts. This street looked like Harlem of the 1980s not 10-15 years ago, and is now super cleaned up and pretty amazing.
From DUS, the 16th street people mover (a bus) runs every ~30 seconds and takes passengers into downtown/midtown where the bulk of the office towers are. Otherwise it's really only a 5-15 minute walk.
To get from Highland Park (like a Riverside), across the pedestrian bridge over the Platte River, through Riverfront Park master developed neighborhood (would be like a massive Shipyards without the shipyards component), over another pedestrian bridge into Denver Union Station, past all that through LoDo into Midtown or Downtown to one's office could be a ~30 minute, super pleasant walk. Would be akin to walking from Five Points into downtown, but passing through super pleasant pedestrian oriented neighborhoods. And this is just one direction into Denver's CBD. The area is super connected and walkable in almost all directions.
I visited Denver for a couple of days in 1998 - it was for a work thing, so I didn't get out much. But I was really impressed with the downtown back then.
Quote from: simms3 on July 30, 2015, 04:25:48 PM
All of these can easily provide takeaways for both successes and failures (in process or implementation) for Jacksonville, and are wholeheartedly reasons why I would love it if Jax just quit paying attention to some of the other southern cities and started immediately looking at and paying attention to the western cities, all of which are FAR superior in my opinion to their mediocre southern counterparts.
I agree 100%. The similarities to what Denver's Union Station and the surrounding area used to be like to what the Jacksonville Terminal and surrounding area looks like now is striking. If they can do it, there shouldn't be any reason why we can't do it too.
Ocklawaha has a great collection of Denver Union Station images:
http://www.metrojacksonville.com/article/2014-nov-denver-union-station-a-real-transportation-center
http://photos.metrojacksonville.com/gallery/43704804_KjkZ3p#!i=3466449470&k=6kW64cZ
Quote from: finehoe on July 30, 2015, 09:14:31 PM
Quote from: simms3 on July 30, 2015, 04:25:48 PM
All of these can easily provide takeaways for both successes and failures (in process or implementation) for Jacksonville, and are wholeheartedly reasons why I would love it if Jax just quit paying attention to some of the other southern cities and started immediately looking at and paying attention to the western cities, all of which are FAR superior in my opinion to their mediocre southern counterparts.
I agree 100%. The similarities to what Denver's Union Station and the surrounding area used to be like to what the Jacksonville Terminal and surrounding area looks like now is striking. If they can do it, there shouldn't be any reason why we can't do it too.
I'm praying AAF makes a ton of cash with their Miami/Orlando project and decides to extend up the east coast to Jax. If you want something like Denver's Union Station in Jax, you're going to need an entity like that to come in and get it done.
Quote from: simms3 on July 30, 2015, 04:25:48 PM
All of these can easily provide takeaways for both successes and failures (in process or implementation) for Jacksonville, and are wholeheartedly reasons why I would love it if Jax just quit paying attention to some of the other southern cities and started immediately looking at and paying attention to the western cities, all of which are FAR superior in my opinion to their mediocre southern counterparts.
You make an extremely compelling point. I think the reason to pay attention to other southern metros is because of similar obstacles. But indeed for a best practices type of lesson I agree to look West.
I'm not sure Jax really pays attention to any metro....other than Atlanta and Orlando. Just about everytime I mention something some other place has had some success in implementing, all I get back is excuses on why Jax is so different and how Jax doesn't have anything in common with said community. Yet the more I travel, the more similarities in certain areas that I notice....doesn't matter if the city is Nashville, Norfolk or freaking Reno.
Quote from: Adam White on July 30, 2015, 05:20:44 PM
I visited Denver for a couple of days in 1998 - it was for a work thing, so I didn't get out much. But I was really impressed with the downtown back then.
the changes took off with the opening of Coors Field
Quote from: tufsu1 on July 30, 2015, 10:26:33 PM
Quote from: Adam White on July 30, 2015, 05:20:44 PM
I visited Denver for a couple of days in 1998 - it was for a work thing, so I didn't get out much. But I was really impressed with the downtown back then.
the changes took off with the opening of Coors Field
Perhaps I was just impressed in comparison to Jacksonville (and Hartford, where I was working at the time) - but I recall it being very vibrant with public works of art, etc. Seems a lot would've happened in a few short years.
Quote from: tufsu1 on July 30, 2015, 10:26:33 PM
the changes took off with the opening of Coors Field
How to Build a Successful Downtown Stadiumhttp://www.citylab.com/work/2012/03/how-build-successful-downtown-stadium/1593/
Quote from: finehoe on July 31, 2015, 08:07:39 AM
Quote from: tufsu1 on July 30, 2015, 10:26:33 PM
the changes took off with the opening of Coors Field
How to Build a Successful Downtown Stadium
http://www.citylab.com/work/2012/03/how-build-successful-downtown-stadium/1593/
Sounds like the answer quite simply is to build a more successful downtown first lol. Get the ball rolling on more urban-centric development so that the stadium can maintain the positive inertia.
That's a good article and an extra amount of analysis that municipalities typically overlook. One can come to the same conclusion with our arena and ballpark. They've been around for over a decade now and both are great facilities but nothing has really changed in the sports district.