West Colfax Neighborhood Concept Plan

This was a class project in which we developed neighborhood concept plans for the West Area neighborhoods in Denver. My team created a concept plan for the West Colfax neighborhood. Our client for this project was the West Denver Renaissance Collaborative, a nonprofit that focuses on the equitable revitalization of West Denver.

Our class as a whole decided on six guiding principles to create cohesion between all of the neighborhood concept plans. The project had three phases and at the end of each phase we compiled our concepts, images, and research into a written chapter.

During the first phase of the project we conducted an existing conditions assessment. My role during this phase included researching previously made plans that have impacted West Colfax. I also shared the responsibility of retrieving and analyzing West Colfax demographic data from the US Census Bureau. I created graphs that depicted some of the demographic data. A selection of these graphs are shown below.

I also used ArcGIS to turn a land use map of West Colfax that my teammate made into a map that also shows building footprints.

Finally, my team collaboratively conducted a SWOC analysis, which is shown below.

During the second phase of the project we created three different concept plans for West Colfax. Part of my role for this was to assist with researching case studies for inspiration. We then collaboratively developed the bare bones of three concept plans. Each concept had a different theme - empowerment, accessibility, and art and culture. Another part of my role was to flesh out the concept plan that focused on accessibility. This concept prioritized a safe and comfortable transportation system and improved access to healthy food. After we presented our three concepts, our team combined different aspects of each into a final neighborhood concept plan. An overview of the final concept plan is below.

A third part of my role was to create a few SketchUp renderings to illustrate different elements of our final concept. These are shown below.

The final phase of this project had two focuses. First, as a team, we worked together to create an implementation plan and timeline for our final concept plan. An overview of our implementation plan and timeline is below.

The second focus of this phase was to work with our entire class to combine all of our chapters for each neighborhood concept plan into one final report. We also compiled all of our final concepts into a single presentation. My role in this was to collaborate to create the slideshow presentation. The first slide of the slideshow is below. During our final class presentation, I described the West Colfax neighborhood concept plan that my team and I created.