Alliance Center Renovation Goes High Tech

Building will pilot new 'hot-desk' office plan

A complete interior renovation of the historic Alliance Center building at 15th & Wynkoop streets in Denver's Lower Downtown aims to create a LEED Platinum "hot-desk" office environment that has not been tried anywhere else in the city. The open-interiors plan "intuitively co-locates" different groups of tenants who will share office resources such as computer networks, conference rooms, printers and technical services and even cubicle and desk space on a rotating basis, says Jason Page, the Alliance Center director. His firm, the Alliance for Sustainable Colorado, will manage the tenants when renovations are complete later this spring.

Page says the open concept should save both money and energy. It will also provide tenants with better networking opportunities and maximum flexibility in how they use the physical resources of the building. It works only in a nearly paperless environment, he says.

"This is a mission-driven concept," Page adds. "We hope to change office culture." Management retains the right to move tenants around within the building as space allocations and needs change. There is no "ownership" of a particular space or even of an individual desk on a regular basis. "It's a collaborative approach, one where the traditional sense of space is more blurred," Page says.

The five-story, 41,356-sq-ft building includes nearly 40 collaborative, flexible office spaces in various sizes and shapes, and 16 glass-walled conference rooms with occupancy sensors and integrated-lighting, audio- visual and HVAC controls. Each of the upper floors has expansive spaces filled with natural light and 20-ft-tall open-beam ceilings. The main floor offers digital signage and event space that holds up to 160 people for cocktails or banquet seating and can be leased by the public for special events.

The Alliance Center currently houses 20 to 23 tenants, most of them smaller nonprofits such as Conservation Colorado, Colorado Solar Energy Industries Association, Sierra Club, Bike Denver and eGo Car Share. The building's newest tenant is the Nonprofit Centers Network, which is relocating its main office from San Francisco to Denver.

The $3.7-million renovation, designed by Denver's Gensler and being built by contractor EJCM, with owner's oversight from Fitzmartin Consulting, will also be a high-tech, green showcase. It features three roof-mounted, wind-driven turbines "on steroids" that integrate with solar panels to provide the building's power, says Don Fitzmartin, owner of Fitzmartin Consulting. He says that, to his knowledge, this will be the first use of urban wind turbines in Denver. "The technology here is so sophisticated that it allows the tenants not to worry about technology," he says.

CU Denver Expands Architecture Program

Undergraduate enrollment growing on campus

The University of Colorado is more than a year into a bold transition. Starting in spring 2013, the university moved its undergraduate program in architecture from the Boulder campus to CU Denver. Academic leaders sought a better alignment with the existing master's degree program in architecture in Denver and stronger connections with local design firms.

"We expected in the first two years that most of the undergrads would be transfers from other campuses," says Michael Jenson, associate dean for Academic Affairs at the College of Architecture and Planning. "But instead, 90% of them came from outside the [CU] system and from 13 different states." The program had 119 students enrolled in spring 2014 semester.

Jenson says that on the Denver campus, "we were missing part of our culture, with the undergrads still up in Boulder." The goal is to have 400 to 500 students enrolled in the undergraduate program by spring 2018, with options for fourth-year students to focus on landscape design, planning, urban design and historic preservation. Department leaders would also like to offer more business classes for designers, add engineering components and implement capstone courses in construction management.

"We're trying to re-energize our curriculum and redefine the master's program with an emphasis on professional practice," Jenson says. As part of that, the college will pilot its "Prax Lab" this spring, an experimental think-tank that will explore a "multi-disciplinary dialogue between architecture, construction and engineering," Jenson says. "We're hoping it will become a networking tool for everyone involved in the built environment and a way to find out what the industry really needs for its new work force."