Art residences to house Mizel Museum

John Rebchook, Rocky Mountain News

Published December 13, 2005 at midnight

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The Mizel Museum, started by home builder Larry Mizel almost 24 years ago, will move next year to the ground floor of the Museum Residences luxury condominium development under construction in downtown Denver.

The museum, originally called the Mizel Museum Judaica, will move to the new 6,000-square-foot space in the fall of 2006. The 56-unit condo development is the first residential project in the U.S. by architect Daniel Libeskind, who also drew the master plan for the World Trade Center site in New York.

Libeskind designed the Fred C. Hamilton wing under construction at the Denver Art Museum.

The Mizel Museum, like the condos, will wrap around a parking garage at West 12th Avenue and Acoma Street, west of Broadway.

Larry Mizel, chairman of Denver-based MDC Holdings Inc., parent of Richmond American Homes, was out of the state on Monday and couldn't be reached.

"The Mizel Museum brings another facility to add to the art museum," said George Thorn, principal of Mile High Development, the co-developer of the Museum Residences. "It's good for that part of the city."

The Mizel Museum will open onto a plaza between the condominium development and the art museum, he said.

"It's at a very strategic, interesting and urban position. It is not just a box," Libeskind said about the Mizel Museum in a phone interview on Monday. "It's another wonderful piece, attraction and cultural amenity that will cement this site as the new center of the city."

The Mizel Museum, which attracts more than 30,000 visitors each year, currently is housed at 400 S. Kearney St.

With the proximity of the Mizel Museum to the DAM, it will be almost like having a museum within a museum, said Lanny Martin, who retired last month as the CEO of Denver-based Titanium Metals, the Denver titanium company that donated the expensive metal for the sharply angular panels on the Hamilton wing.

Martin said he probably will donate a retail space he bought at the Museum Residences to the art museum.

"Hopefully, many more people will attend the Mizel Museum because of its proximity to the art museum," Martin said.

Steve Farber, a partner with the Brownstein, Hyatt & Farber law firm, noted that the Mizel Museum is "more than just a museum of Jewish history" and features numerous cultural exhibits that aren't necessarily tied to religion.

Farber, an original board member of what is now the Mizel Museum, said the bigger space will allow it to take numerous exhibits out of storage. It also will feature interactive exhibits.

The Mizel Museum was founded in 1982 by Mizel, his wife, Carol, and Rabbi Stanley Wagner, who visited a museum of Judaica in the late 1970s in London and wanted to launch a similar one in Denver. Originally, it was housed in Denver's BMH synagogue.

"We have been looking forward to this new home where we can create an atmosphere for education, learning and creative exhibitions," Ellen Premack, director of the Mizel Museum, said in a statement posted on the museum's Web site.

rebchookj@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-892-5207

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