New project at 28th and Blake to have big garden
Industrial buildings, street art and hip bars and restaurants are some of the first things that come to mind when thinking about Denver’s River North Art District. Come next summer, the trendy urban neighborhood will get a dose of greenery courtesy of a developer involved in some of the area’s marquee projects.
Formativ on Wednesday announced plans for a 45,000-square-foot adaptive reuse project in a warehouse building at the intersection of 28th and Blake streets that once produced industrial pumps. The crown jewel of the project isn’t what’s planned for inside, the company says, it’s what will be going on outdoors.
The Lot Twenty Eight project will feature a 20,000-square-foot urban garden meant to host a variety of events and encourage interaction and activity in RiNo.
“The goal with Lot Twenty Eight is to create a community gathering space; a place that is additive to the neighborhood and inspires connectivity,” Formativ CEO Sean Campbell said in a news release.
The garden will feature three distinctive zones designed to host various types of programs and events at all times of day, according to the company. Growing fruits, veggies and herbs will likely not be part of the equation, though visiting food trucks might.
“There will be varying green spaces for folks to enjoy from a visual and sensory perspective,” said Alison Nestel-Patt, Formativ’s director of community development. “Things like yoga, private events, or bike-in movie nights are examples of activations and events we see taking place out there.”
Inside, the building will feature all the uses people have come to expect in RiNo: artist/maker space, room for restaurants and bars, and some street-facing shops. Formativ has vowed to preserve the building’s “ad hoc” exterior which, in the vein of much of the RiNo neighborhood, includes brick, stucco and metal.
The artists/maker spaces will be broken into small and mid-sized rooms available for rent by groups or individuals. Regular building-wide programming will be part of the offerings available to tenants and visitors. It will feature 2,300 square feet of event space that will host everything from corporate events to how-to classes, Formativ said. When not in use, the space will serve as a rotating gallery.
Formativ is not saying how much money
it is pumping into the redevelopment.
RiNo’s own Oz Architecture and Fort Collins-based Brinkman Construction will work on the project, which is expected to open in 2018.
Formativ was involved in development of the Industry Denver coworking space at 3001 Brighton Blvd., one of the most visible structures in the fast-growing neighbor- hood. The company also is leading work on what promises to be a landscape changing project: a future mixed-use RiNo campus for the World Trade Center Denver planned for the intersection of 38th and Walnut streets.
The first phase of that project is expected to cost $175 million to $200 million and include upwards of 300,000 square feet of new construction.