We’re excited to share that Dairy Block has been recognized with a 2021 Americas Award for Excellence from the Urban Land Institute. We enjoyed designing this transformative project with clients McWhinney Real Estate, Sage Hospitality Group, and Grand American, and our design partners Crème Design, Johnson Nathan Strohe and Nine Dot Arts (to name a few).

Located in Denver’s rapidly-changing Lower Downtown (LoDo) neighborhood, and formerly home to Windsor Dairy, this site consisted of a mix of historic buildings, non-descript structures, and surface parking before redevelopment. In order to restore and revive the site while protecting its unique industrial history, the design team carefully crafted an urban infill plan that reused the site’s three historic buildings and added a contextually sensitive modern office building facing both sides of the block. The team also took advantage of the client-owned, vacated alley within the block, creating a Denver’s first activated urban alley offering prime restaurant and retail store frontage on the interior pedestrian connections.

ULI began the Awards for Excellence program in 1979 to recognize truly superior development efforts in the private, public, and nonprofit sectors. Winning projects represent the highest standards of achievement in the land use profession. This year, 72 projects and programs from across the Americas region were submitted for the competition. From this impressive field, the jury selected 23 finalists and, after speaking with the teams behind these projects and visiting as many as possible, chose the 12 winners.

Congrats to the team and full list of 2021 honorees! Check them out here.

Historic Windsor Farm Dairy to the right, new office structure to the left – with the block’s second, smaller activated alley in between.
Dairy Block
The Wazee Street elevation allowed for the establishment of a new, 20 foot-wide pedestrian sidewalk along the entire block, creating an enjoyable streetscape for the high traffic events of neighboring blocks.