Announcing the First Project at the New Union Station

[Note:  I’m new to this whole blogging thing and can’t get these photos formatted so that you can actually see what you are looking at.  Denver Infill posted a picture on their site, and it’s a lot easier to see.  Click this sentence to see it.]

So, cool.  This weekend, we announced the first project that will be built at the redeveloped Union Station, the IMA Financial Building.  Located alongside the historic station, the project will be five stories tall, with about 100,000 square feet of rentable space.  The owner and primary tenant will be our good friends at IMA Financial, one of the city’s premier risk management companies.

The building is pretty, for which we’re glad to thank the hard working team at Anderson Mason Dale and Semple Brown Design.  The team has done a spectacular job of integrating the building into the existing street wall along Wynkoop and looking forward to the more modern design aesthetic that will define the whole neighborhood.

Of course, no one deserves more credit than the folks at IMA.  Their willingness to make such a large investment speaks volumes about the Union Station redevelopment as a whole, but even more about their civic commitment.  I’ll let Rob Cohen, the company’s founder, speak on their behalf:

“This is a unique opportunity to do something really special.  Union Station has always been this magical place of what could be when it happens.” Click right here for a little bit more.

One of the more complicated components of the Station’s redevelopment is the funding.  It’s a complicated mix of federal government loans repaid through add-on property taxes, direct payments for land, and annuities derived from sales taxes related to the FasTracks initiative.  Like any loan, the piece provided by the federal government is based on anticipated revenues.  In this case, those revenues are created by development.  Understandably, the borrower, in this case, the Denver Union Station Project Authority, is conservative when it comes to anticipating repayment.  Any development that happens in the station area immediately begins to create tax revenue to repay those loans.  This project comes in ahead of schedule.  That’s a big deal.

This project will create about $650,000 in property taxes annually.  That’s money to repay debt and it’s a lot earlier than anticipated.  With any luck, this good news will be the final piece of the puzzle that leads the government’s approval of these loans.  For a little background on where this stands, you could check out this article from the Denver Post.

A couple of cool notes about the project:

1.  The pedestrian bridge you can see toward the back of the project leads up what’s called the Kinetic Plaza.  That Plaza is one of the three access points for the tracks behind the historic station and leads on into the Central Platte Valley.

2.  The glass facade along the Plaza side is pretty neat.  It integrates the activity of the building with the activity of that plaza.

3.  The brick facade along Wynkoop integrates the historic influences that surround the site.

Our next step is to take this project to the Landmark’s Preservation Committee, which has purview over the land in front of the historic station, so some things will change.  But, all in all, what a great start!