The Award
This award showcases buildings that set a precedent and stand the test of time. Recognizing a built structure that has catalyzed, reimagined, and advanced communities in Colorado, enhancing the public’s appreciation and beneficial use of architecture. These honorees continue to set standards of design excellence and architectural significance. Eligible nominations must be: located in Colorado, built at least 25 years prior to the date of submittal, and still in active use.
Coors Field – as awarded by Scott Rodwin, AIA, 2024 AIA Colorado President-Elect.
Kevin Kahn, Chief Customer Officer & Vice President, Ballpark Operations, Colorado Rockies, accepted the award on behalf of the Colorado Rockies.
We’ve had many examples of truly remarkable projects since first giving this award in 1994. On this 30th anniversary of the AIA Colorado 25 Year Award, we honor an organization that themselves just celebrated 30 years in business in 2023. But this is no ordinary business, and their headquarters is anything but a traditional corporate campus. It may be one of the most successful recruiting wins to locate a national expansion franchise that this state has ever seen and changed its neighborhood for generations to come.
This year’s award goes to Coors Field. Opened April 1995 and designed by HOK Sport (now Populous), it set the precedent for the “Modern Retro” baseball park movement along with Oriole Park at Camden Yards in Baltimore in 1992. Like Camden Yards, Coors Field set itself in the heart of the urban environment instead of in a sea of parking lots, and thoroughly integrated brick and traditional building materials instead of the sterile “concrete donut” multipurpose stadiums which were the precedent.
The design hearkens back to beloved historic ballparks like Fenway Park in Boston, Wrigley Field in Chicago, and Ebbets Field in Brooklyn while creating new fan experiences like the introduction of a field level “open concourse” that allowed viewing of the field while at concession stands or just circulating in the stadium. A design feature now ubiquitous in sports stadium and arena design.
A late decision was made to keep LoDo’s Student Movers building standing and link it into the ballpark to house Major League Baseball’s first in-stadium brewpub (where brewers later created the first Blue Moon wheat beer, now a Coors flagship brand).
Perhaps more important than the design attributes and first of its kind innovations is the positive neighborhood impact we take for granted today. Before Coors Field, there was no Lower Downtown as we now know it. The area was a largely neglected and notoriously run-down swath of viaducts bypassing crumbling brick warehouses.
Joining Larimer Square, the Buell Theatre and the Wynkoop Brewery as development pioneers, the decision to construct Coors Field brought more infrastructure investment which eventually encompassed Union Station.
A growth cycle with loft-living warehouse redevelopments breaking ground simultaneous with the ballpark’s construction suggested the hint of a potentially viable new 24-hour urban neighborhood.
But the critical piece of the puzzle was 10s of thousands of fans that began flooding into LoDo once the Rockies started playing at Coors Field in 1995, crowding the now thriving hub of bars, restaurants and retail establishments on Blake Street and beyond.
Without Coors Field, Denver would not have the spark which brought new life to LoDo.
Without LoDo, we wouldn’t enjoy the vibrancy of adjacent neighborhoods—with their alphabet soup names–like LoHi, RiNo, SoBo, SloHi.
Coors Field is a shining example of the everyday extraordinary—a building for playing baseball that became a catalyst for city building.
Home of the Colorado Rockies, Coors Field is a 50,000 seat baseball stadium, situated in the now-revitalized LoDo neighborhood of Denver.
