On this nice-restaurant topic: I was surprised that I didn’t like Denver Union Station’s retail merchandising. It was fine for me, a well-off tourist hopping out of a California Zephyr sleeper cabin for an espresso & a jog while the train refueled. But Denver Union is also a regional bus/rail terminal, notably for intercity buses, and it was pretty jarring to see the contrast between the people passing through the station and the people for whom the seats were reserved.
I know how much it cost to build all of that, and certainly don’t begrudge the developers (whom I’ve met, splendid guys!) a fair ROI. But the precious building doesn’t need to be filled with precious retail; some quotidian chains are just fine, too. Save the fine dining for the upstairs hotel lobby, and let the people have popular pleasures along the shortest route between their buses.
Just a guess, but looking at the project website, this is probably some prerequisite work that needed to be done. The last FAQ mentions Duke energy burying their power lines on West.
Just to be clear, this would not be the high voltage lines on the Dillon side of West. I know that wasn’t said, but wouldn’t want anyone jumping to that conclusion.
This is the pre-req work you see in advance of significant construction projects. This is not repairing a water or sewer line or installing ‘cable, fiber, or any telecom’. Granted it could be burying this kind of stuff but those lines don’t go in the middle of the street. Most likely it is burying gas & electricity…maybe some water/sewer upgrades but this is the preparatory work for the towers.
This checks out with a memo that talked about RUSbus pre-construction work in GoTriangle’s board meeting from earlier this week. The status of this project is kinda confusing because, despite how we have some neat renderings like this one that shows how the public and retail uses of the ground floor fit each other,…
…this does NOT mean RUSbus is totally ready to build. There are still some details that have to be ironed out:
As of March 22, the FTA is still reviewing the joint development agreement between GoTriangle and Hoffman & Associates.
GoTriangle has to start construction this April (per funding contract with the US Dept. of Transportation), and expend all federal funds by Sept. 30, 2025 (as baked into federal law).
…and to comply with that requirement, the GoTriangle Board of Trustees should’ve* given Hoffman the green light to let its contractors enter “early construction activities” for the first phase of its construction work. The full first phase will include “asbestos abatement, demolition, mass grading, and erosion/sediment control”. This is probably what you’re talking about, Evan.
GoTriangle will pay Hoffman another $3.3M (this was budgeted, but not used 'til now) to continue advanced designing for the “public facility”. This seems to be related to how RUSbus is still going through administrative review in Raleigh, but maybe someone could reinterpret that part of the memo for me?
If the Joint Development Agreement falls through, GoTriangle will need to pay back Hoffman $300k for fees to design the private development portion of this project? (Did I summarize this slide correctly, here?)
*=this was recommended in the documents. But because I wasn’t at the livestream of this meeting and a recording isn’t publicly available, it’s not clear if they did that.
GoTriangle will pay Hoffman another $3.3M (this was budgeted, but not used 'til now) to continue advanced designing for the “public facility”. This seems to be related to how RUSbus is still going through administrative review in Raleigh, but maybe someone could reinterpret that part of the memo for me?
The memo says “at this time, staff recommends providing the Developer with authorization to complete the design development phase for the publicly funded improvements.” That means they haven’t even begun construction documents. I hope they’re close to moving into CDs, or else EOY construction seems optimistic. CD is the longest phase of design; it’s traditionally been about 40% of the architect’s fee. Where you draw the line between DD/CD phases is a bit arbitrary though; some projects begin CD further along than others.
Until that tower crane goes up, I’m still skeptical of these public private complicated partnerships. Seems like everything takes twice as long, and costs twice as much. I hope that once it is demoed we don’t have to wait another 2 years for everything to be settled for actual vertical construction to start. Yeah yeah grumpy cat emoji .
