Voelz Chandler: Expansion drives momentum of Taxi

Saturday, January 21, 2006

Something about just the concept of Taxi is intriguing. So what if it seems to be in the middle of nowhere?

As the city grows, and people discover an area as gritty as it is convenient to downtown, Taxi finds itself more on an edge than in a wasteland.

Zeppelin Development purchased the old Yellow Cab terminal in 2000, and envisioned the rambling structure at 3455 Ringsby Court as a magnet for creative enterprises. That has held true, with design firms and the Architectural Laboratory/Denver among the tenants of a complex where the old dispatch tower serves as a sign and the cab washing shed a memorial.

Now Taxi, which was renovated in 2001 by architects Alan Brown and Semple Brown Design, is expanding, a project that involves four architects (Will Bruder, Harry Teague, David Baker and Alan Brown) and one general contractor/architect (M.A. Mortenson, with its multi-dimensional imaging technology). The goal was to create a master plan and design for the Phase 2 complex of retail, offices and live-work spaces.

As developer Mickey Zeppelin explained it, Brown is addressing work spaces, Bruder is the primary architect of the exterior, Teague is responsible for the first-floor design (including the lobby), and Baker the residential aspects. Weathered metal and glass are among the materials in play.

Wenk Associates is addressing the landscape for the project, which makes sense.

That firm designed perhaps the city's most unusual new (or old) park, sort of in the Taxi neighborhood. Northside, at Franklin Street south of 58th Street, is a green space carved out of an old sewage treatment plant - and ruins remain to tell the story.

Not much has happened on Phase 2 of Taxi since a groundbreaking Nov. 22, though some permits are in hand and construction should be evident by May with completion by the end of November.

The Taxi we know will be on the Jan. 28 River North Art District tour, with a model on view and architect David Baker in attendance. He will be in Denver for some "fine-tuning" of the design, as he put it. Some of that is to address budgetary issues, the constant process otherwise known as value engineering.

And some is to further craft a dish that has involved a lot of cooks, from a lot of places, meeting often to work on what is being termed Phase 2: the first of a series of bar-like buildings constructed on the 9-acre Taxi site. (That has recently been expanded with the purchase of the adjacent 6-plus-acre USF Dugan Inc. trucking site.)

"We were an unusually compatible group," said Baker, who is based in San Francisco.

"It was collaborative," he said in a call from his office, though it had its "cumbersome" moments, too.

Baker said one of his contributions was to elevate the residential component, allowing for skylights. "Let's put residential on top and offices on the middle floor." The configuration had begun as one residential building and one office building.

The plan now involves 30,000 square feet of office space, and 20,000 square feet of studios, with 44 housing units. The budget is about $20 million.

Bruder, who is based in Arizona (home to many of his designs), and Teague in Aspen (home to many of his designs), were in Denver for the groundbreaking. That morning, they spoke about the collaboration.

The impetus for the Taxi expansion came from a project in Amsterdam that has involved creating housing on newly constructed islands, said Bruder. Members of the team visited for two weeks, a trip Teague described as inspiring.

And thus began a series of charrettes, or work sessions. The first two, Bruder said, were to generate a scheme, and figure out who would be the community in such a place. Then there was the issue of how to arrange the bar-like buildings, a structural form that Teague claims. From being set in parallel rows, they evolved into being kicked askew, which Bruder claims. "How about if we just moved them?" he recalls asking, thus improving views of the mountains and adding to a sense of spontaneity.

Dropped into the spaces around the bars are various yellow structures that the architects are calling taxi forms, a series of buildings in a repetitive shape that will house amenities for those who live and work in the second phase.

"All of us share a philosophy about these experiences," Teague said, what Bruder called "not building buildings, but a neighborhood, a community and a village."

Creating a process that combines the design philosophies of so many architects has proved "a really interesting experience," Zeppelin said.

What started as a "Gothic village kind of thing" turned into an industrial building that plays off the diagonal of the Platte River.

"There have been some fabulous highs, but there have been some periods where I said, 'What have I gotten myself into?' "

In December, we'll see.

Do the tour

• What: a series of open studio events planned by the new group, River North Art District.

• When and where: 1 to 5 p.m., Jan. 28; an area north of lower downtown roughly bordered by Park Avenue West and 38th Street.

• Cost: Free

• Party: After the tour at 5:15 p.m., the group will throw a party and raffle at Ironton Studios and Gallery, 3636 Chestnut Place.

• Stops include: Ironton, The Sliding Door Gallery, the TarFactory, Atelier, Taxi, Weilworks, Z Wick Place, and +Gallery, with several artist studios or small design firms.

• You'll see: Sliding Door, a membership gallery, is featuring an installation of Polaroid photography by Eric Havelock-Bailie. It's his first solo show here since 1997, and worth a stop for the immediacy of the imagery and its clean presentation. Ironton, meanwhile, is showing "Marking Three Paths," an exhibition that includes scarred-wood wall-hung sculpture by Bill McDonald, as well as inventive works on paper by Tonia Bonnell and Jennifer Bowes. And + Gallery is doing a solo installation of work by painter Frank Martinez, who last exhibited there in 2004.

• Information: For a complete list of all tour stops and a map: www.rivernorthart.com

Mary Voelz Chandler is the art and architecture critic. Chandlerm@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-892-2677.