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One Boulder Plaza, The New Address
On a sunny, summer afternoon in June of 2001 a group of people gathered under a white garden party canopy in the parking area of BankOne at 13th and Walnut to put in their bids for a new set of condominium residences that were to be built at the first address of the proposed One Boulder Plaza. The gathering had been arranged by Pre-Sales Development, specialists in real estate marketing. Within four hours twenty-five residences, ranging from $600,000 to $2 million were completely sold. As BankOne had agreed to lease the entire ground floor for their new BankOne Center (complete with drive-up services), additional tenants from the earlier BankOne building, including Salomon Design, also agreed to lease space. In short order, the first building of One Boulder Plaza at 1301 Canyon Boulevard was fully leased. By December of 2002 a Christmas Party was given in the nearly finished building as its sister building across 13th at 1801 Thirteenth Street was underway. At this point the 1801 building is in the finishing stages, and as with the 1301 building is already at 90% occupancy with the Boulder marketing firm of Sterling-Rice, The Reef Restaurant, Cafe Siena South, Wells Fargo, and ...doing a brisk business in their new offices and retail spaces. The design firms of CommArts and DTJ Design, both Boulder firms, have been absolutely central to the architectural style and engineering quality of these first two buildings. CommArts' sense of scale and freshness of design has brought an eclat to the Plaza that lets it serve as an extension of the Boulder Mall. The City generously granted a waiver to the usual street grid and allowed One Boulder Plaza to put a refreshing wave in 13th street between Canyon and Walnut. This wave provides the Plaza with a courtyard and expanded spaciousness that will serve as a sunny gathering place in fair weather and an ample ice skating rink in winter weather. The innovations of DTJ Design's modern turrets and elegant staging of floors in fine russet and decorative brickwork, bold ironwork, and clean Edwardian lines with very post-modern detailing makes the buildings of the Plaza both quiet and elegant...designs that will endure as the designs of the buildings along the mall have done as well. There are two more buildings to follow these first. The third will be a resheathing and completely new interior structure for the former BankOne building at Canyon and Broadway. This building and the fourth in the Plaza campus at Walnut and Broadway will incorporate interior atria and walkways that will allow the three last buildings to serve as an indoor mall and gathering place on a grand scale. The entire campus of One Boulder Plaza comprises some 400,000 square feet of residential, retail, and commercial space. The Plaza will evolve, no doubt, to serve as a village in the small city of Boulder. It represents an ideal mix of in-town living that is a lovely balance of calm at the center of thriving businesses in the heart of town. |
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