The Alliance Center is a survivor building, along with many others in Denver’s LoDo (Lower Downtown) district.  The post-war urban renewal movement had marked the run-down area for destruction, but those plans were fortuitously abandoned and in 1988 the Lower Downtown Historic District was formed to protect the historic, architectural and economic value of the buildings located within its 23-block boundary. Among those buildings was the former Kennicott Patterson Transfer & Storage Company building, as the Alliance Center was called when it was built in 1908.

A “transfer and storage” building, of course, is a warehouse. LoDo was a warehouse district served by nearby Union Station and the railroad lines and spurs that allowed goods to be moved into and out of the growing city—by 1890, the second-largest in the West (after San Francisco). Period photographs show locomotives idling in front of the building, and bits of the old rail spur can still be seen peeking through the asphalt of Wynkoop Street.

The Center’s status as a “contributing building” to the LoDo Historic District means that certain restrictions intended to preserve the building’s character constrain what may be done in the way of remodeling and renovation. For example, the windows in place when the high-performance renovation was launched were installed prior to LoDo’s designation as a historic district and would not be permitted today. Likewise, any more modern windows meant to replace the previous set would have to meet both energy-performance and historical-accuracy standards. Historic buildings are also meant to be preserved in something like their original state and in ways that maintain their functionality and safety.

That’s the purpose of a historic structure assessment and preservation plan. Such an assessment was carried out on the Alliance Center in late 2010 by the Denver firm of SlaterPaull Architects. Their 250-page report, completed in early 2011, documented a thorough examination of the building’s foundation, walls, structural systems, masonry, drainage features, doors and hardware, windows and hardware, finishes, heating and cooling systems, plumbing, wiring, lighting, fire and security systems, and materials—just about every conceivable piece and aspect of the entire structure. It noted the condition of each feature and categorized all of them according to whether they needed repairing, replacing or other work. Features needing attention were further labeled as critical, serious or minor deficiencies, routine repair work, or discretionary work, with critical deficiencies to be addressed immediately, serious ones within two to five years, and so on. The report concluded with an estimate of the total cost of the recommended work and a plan for phasing it, beginning with those measures that were eligible for Colorado State Historical Society funds.

The list of recommendations is too extensive to repeat here, but its depth and comprehensiveness can be glimpsed in the following items, from the “critical” deficiency list:

  • Scrape, prime with rust-inhibiting primer, and paint all elevated walkway steel structure, handrails and guardrails.
  • Provide continuous fireproofing and fire caulking around penetrations in the electrical and storage rooms of the basement addition.
  • Remove existing, inappropriate caulking at stone cap and repoint all joints of the cap with mortar to match the original mortar.
  • Provide new roof membrane, gravel ballast, and sheet metal flashing at lower roof sections of the elevator tower addition.
  • Remove existing caulk joints and provide appropriate caulked jolints to match metal cap at south and north parapets.
  • Remove ancillary furniture, equipment and stored replacement lamps from electrical rooms to comply with the National Electrical Code.
  • Provide labeling for electrical disconnects and transformers to identify where the equipment is fed from and what is fed downstream.

In all, the report identified well over a hundred separate measures to be taken over a period of several years. Most of the “critical” items were addressed prior to the construction phase of the high performance renovation.

For the full report click here.