Plans have been announced for the construction of new affordable apartments in the growing city of Broomfield, Colorado. The Ulysses Development Group of Denver says that it wants to build 52 units on the north side of the city, at the intersection of 118th Avenue and Wadsworth Boulevard. What is being called the Harvest Station is expected to cost around $30 million to build and will include apartments ranging in size from one-bedroom to three-bedroom. The company additionally proposes to build a business center, community room with workstations, and indoor bike storage space. Exterior amenities will include a half-acre pocket park, playground, and community gathering space. The proposal comes as statistics show that the average rent for a one-bedroom unit in Broomfield is now at $1,769 per month, up from $1,379 in late 2017. The increase in Broomfield’s rents have coincided with a population jump taking the city from 38,200 two decades ago, to more than 74,100 today. The project, which has sparked some opposition from nearby residents complaining about its size, won the approval in December of the Douglas County Board of Commissioners. The Ulysses Development Group was launched in 2021 with a goal of building affordable, but quality, housing. The company has spearheaded projects in Colorado and Florida, including three senior living projects in the cities of Aurora, Greeley, and Sheridan in the Centennial State. By Garry Boulard
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Work could begin early next year on the renovation and upgrading of one of the most prominent buildings in downtown Grand Junction: the nearly 120-year-old Union Station, located at 119 Pitkin Avenue. Two real estate developers purchased the structure, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, for around $350,000 in 2016, with plans to restore the building, while also creating new restaurant and retail space inside it. The structure is now known as the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad Depot, after a new Union Station was opened in 1992. Designed in an Italian-Renaissance style, the building is composed of white brick with terracotta used for ornamentation purposes. The new owners, Dustin Anzures and his wife Veronica Sanchez, have applied for a Colorado State Historic Planning Grant, via the Grand Junction Downtown Development Authority, to fund the planning of the building’s restoration. If the state comes through with support, Anzures recently remarked to the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel, the proceeds will be used to “get the architect and the engineering team to start really building out a thoughtful plan about how to really remedy a lot of these issues that the building has.” Among the issues: installing a fire suppression system, placing new underlay underneath the existing roof, and reconnecting the building’s sewer line. If all goes well, it is thought that at least a segment of the historic station may be open to the public by the fall of 2024. Designed by Chicago architect Henry J. Schlack and built at a cost of $60,000, the building features a red tile roof and second floor arched stained-glass windows. The original waiting room was around 66 feet in length and 33 feet in width, with solid oak woodwork walls. At the time of its unveiling in the spring of 1906, the Sentinel noted that the station featured a ticket office with windows of steel lattice and counters of solid marble. The women’s restroom is “furnished in the most modern style,” while a gentleman’s smoking room “is similar in arrangement to the ladies’ room, but not as well lighted or as richly furnished.” By Garry Boulard Applications for grant funding for a farm market outreach program sponsored by the U.S. Department of Agriculture are expected to increase before an application deadline date of May 2. The Farmers Market Promotion Program is designed expand producer-to-consumer markets for American farmers through outreach efforts, training, and technical assistance. Upwards of $15.4 million in grant funding is being made available this year, with applicants required to request grants of no less than $50,000 and no more than $250,000. Launched in 2002 as part of that year’s Farm Security and Rural Investment Act, the Farmers Market Promotion Program was created in order to “establish, expand, and promote direct producer-to-consumer marketing and assist in the development of local food business enterprises.” The program is competitive: according to USDA statistics, exactly 320 applicants for funding were received in 2019. Of that total, the program funded 49. Eligible applicants include agricultural cooperatives, producer networks and associations, regional farmers markets authorities, and tribal governments, among other entities. Last year 55 grants were awarded through the program. Recipients included the City of Winslow in Arizona, which received just over $198,000 for a roadside farmers market, and the San Carlos Apache Tribe, recipient of a $231,288 grant for technical assistance with a producer-to-consumer program. The Denver-based Initium Health secured a grant of $229,100 for an effort designed to expand capacity and secure new markets for Colorado farms, while the City of El Paso received a grant in the amount of $99,000 for the establishment of a farmers market on the growing northeast side of the city. By Garry Boulard An auction is scheduled to begin on April 3 for an iconic office building on the north side of Phoenix. Located at 6030 N 19th Avenue, the modernistic one-story structure was built in 1962 and measures just over 6,000 square feet. The property also includes a separate 3-bay drive up facility. Located nearly 8 miles to the north of downtown Phoenix in a part of the city populated with retail and office space, the structure sits on a one-acre site. Designated as a Class C building, the structure has, until around four years ago, been the home to a Chase Bank outlet. The auction, with a minimum starting bid of $150,000, is scheduled to take place over a two-day period, between April 3rd and 5th, and is being handled by the Phoenix offices of realtor CBRE. Chase Bank closed nearly 130 branch offices nationwide during the Covid 19 pandemic. In the summer of 2021, the bank also announced plans to move out of its famous 40-story tower building in downtown Phoenix. By Garry Boulard The Albuquerque District of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is now tasked with the design work for a fire station to go up at the White Sands Missile Range. In late December, the project received $6.4 million in federal funding via the Omnibus Appropriations Agreement for Fiscal Year 2023. That funding was subsequently announced in a joint press release by New Mexico Senators Martin Heinrich and Ben Ray Lujan. The new station will replace a facility dating to the 1960s, and will be one of four such stations providing coverage to, at nearly 3,200 square miles, the largest military installation in the country. Those stations, on a base that is roughly 26 miles to the northeast of Las Cruces, are located at 155 Dyer Street, 23480 Nike Avenue, 34228 West Stallion, and Range Road 264. The station project is one of three projects at White Sands to have received federal funding via the omnibus bill. The other two include what is called the “Las Cruces Substation,” which received $6.4 million in funding. A third project will see the construction of a Missile Assembly Building, securing $3.6 million in funding out of Washington. By Garry Boulard Building and civil engineering codes pertaining to extreme weather events is the focus of a new Memorandum of Understanding between the American Society of Civil Engineers and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. In a statement, Tom Smith, executive director of ASCE, remarked that “addressing current and long-term challenges facing communities across the nation and globe from extreme weather events requires close collaboration among the science and engineering communities.” The agreement between the two agencies will see the NOAA providing key science data that can implemented for a wide range of building codes, standards, and best practices as developed by the professional engineers’ association. The partnership has taken on a new urgency in the wake of a report issued earlier this year by NOAA classifying the year 2022 as the third most costly year on record for climate and weather-related disasters. That report documented that there were some 18 extreme weather events costing more than $165 billion in property damages. Those events included epic wildfires in New Mexico in the spring and summer of last year, as well as unprecedented severe weather and hail storms in Texas. The report additionally noted that in the last seven years “122 separate billion-dollar disasters have killed at least 5,000 people, with a total cost of more than $1 trillion in damages.” The partnership will not only look at ways to make the nation’s buildings and infrastructure more extreme weather-resistant, but will also look at “inequities in climate resilience.” Notes a press released issued by ASCE: low-income communities have tended to suffer more damage as a result of extreme weather events. “Additionally, the effects of climate change on vulnerable populations are frequently compounded by exacerbating other risks, such as inland flooding, urban heat islands, and poor air quality.” By Garry Boulard A move to redevelop a former Sinclair gas station site into a drive-thru car wash in Fort Collins has been complicated by the ruling of a local commission deeming the building historically significant. The structure at 825 N. College Avenue is located on a commercial stretch in a mostly residential section of the city. Built in 1925, the building, according to the Fort Collins Historic Preservation Commission, is regarded as a “classic example” of what is known as the “Oblong Box style of architecture.” According to commission documents, oblong gas stations came into prominence after “petroleum corporation executives, with their architects and industrial designers, began rethinking the function and organization of the service station.” Such facilities, as seen with the N. College building, generally featured flat roofs, a front gable, and sometimes even a rooftop pylon. As gas stations, beginning in the 1970s, took on other functions such as serving as convenience stores, the oblong box stations were frequently reconverted into restaurants, coffee shops, offices, and barber shops. The N. College Avenue structure remained a Sinclair station well into the 1950s, but in recent years has been a Quick Lube outlet. It is not clear if plans to build the car wash, which would have to incorporate the oblong box service station into its design, will be altered to reflect the commission’s ruling. By Garry Boulard A press box original to the 45-year-old Aggie Memorial Stadium in Las Cruces, may be replaced if state funding for what is expected to be a $10 million project is secured. The project has been talked about for several years at an initial cost of $8.2 million. New Mexico State University official are hoping that capital outlay requests for exactly 13 projects totaling $16.8 million will win the approval of both state lawmakers and Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham this spring. Ironically, given the ever-increasing cost of labor and materials, the price tag for a new press box is more than double the $4 million it cost to build the entire stadium, which saw its first football game in September of 1978. Other NMSU athletic facility projects to be funded with the New Mexico State Legislature’s approval: locker room renovations, roof renovations, a new football video board, and new lighting for the school’s softball fields. The stadium saw the construction of a new 2,200 square foot covered skybox in 2015. By Garry Boulard The U.S. is one of three world regions tracked by the industry analysis firm Lodging Econometrics that saw an increase in hotel pipeline projects late last year. New figures compiled by the Portsmouth, New Hampshire-based company put Asia Pacific and Canada in the category of increased pipeline projects between the final quarter of 2021 and the last three months of last year. Altogether, the global pipeline as of the last day of 2022 stood at 15,267 individual projects, comprising just under 2.3 million new rooms. Leading into late 2022, Lodging Econometrics reports, the global pipeline “has remained relatively flat for three consecutive years, following the onset of the Covid 10 pandemic.” That flatness, continues the report, followed on the heels of “peak project and room counts” in the final quarter of 2019. As of late last year, the U.S. and China led the world in new hotel pipeline projects. China saw just under 3,600 new projects, for slightly over 675,000 rooms; while the U.S. had nearly 5,500 hotel projects in the pipeline, representing 650,626 rooms. In a distant third place was India with 383 hotel pipeline projects and 43,332 rooms. Three U.S. cities made up the top five cities with the largest construction totals: Dallas, at 176 projects, and just under 20,800 rooms; Atlanta, with 145 projects and 18,100 rooms; and Los Angeles, compiling 122 projects for 19,419 rooms. Companies leading the project list: Marriott International, with 2,656 projects representing just over 429,000 rooms; and Hilton Worldwide at 2,662 projects and 384,498 rooms. Third largest performer: the InterContinental Hotels Group with 1,736 individual projects in the pipeline, and 257,145 rooms. Adding up all of last year’s figures, Lodging Econometrics is reporting that some 1,842 new hotels opened in 2022, representing just under 285,000 rooms. By Garry Boulard Expanding its market in the West, the company Google Fiber has announced that it is building new infrastructure for its services in two large metro areas in both Arizona and Colorado. Members of the Westminster City Council in metro Denver have given their approval to a proposal that will see the company using the city’s rights of way and easements for construction. The project is expected to be completed sometime next year. Westminster is the second city in Colorado to work out a partnership with Google Fiber. Late last year the city of Lakewood also reached an agreement with the company. At the time of Lakewood announcement, Mayor Adam Paul remarked: “Internet connectivity is as important as having water and electricity, and we need to ensure we have robust systems in place to serve our residents and businesses.” At the same time, Google Fiber says it wants to build out a system in Chandler, Arizona, after earlier announcing plans to expand its fiber optic service in nearby Mesa, too. A part of the Access division of the Mountain View, California-based Alphabet Incorporated, Google Fiber has been slowly building out its footprint in select areas of the country. Last summer the company announced plans to build new infrastructure in some 33 metro areas. Dinni Jain, chief executive officer of Google Fiber, several months ago told the Reuters news service that while it has no plans to “build the entire country,” it did want to go into areas “based on the company’s findings of where speeds lag.” By Garry Boulard |
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