Exploration of a vast northern Colorado oil and gas field that includes six counties is expected to get underway next year for a Denver-based energy company that plans to spend around $480 million in the effort.
PDC Energy Incorporated says it will focus its efforts in the coming year on the vast Wattenberg Field that takes in the counties of Adams, Boulder, Broomfield, Denver, and Weld. The Wattenberg Field, discovered in 1970, altogether covers more than 2,000 square miles and is today the home to more than 20,000 wells - up from 6,800 wells in the mid-1990s. PDC Energy’s plans call for building over 130 news wells. In addition to its Colorado work, the independent natural oil and gas company also plans to spend up to $1 million on projects in the New Mexico and Texas-based Delaware Basin.
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Exploration of a vast northern Colorado oil and gas field that includes six counties is expected to get underway next year for a Denver-based energy company that plans to spend around $480 million in the effort.
PDC Energy Incorporated says it will focus its efforts in the coming year on the vast Wattenberg Field that takes in the counties of Adams, Boulder, Broomfield, Denver, and Weld. The Wattenberg Field, discovered in 1970, altogether covers more than 2,000 square miles and is today the home to more than 20,000 wells - up from 6,800 wells in the mid-1990s. PDC Energy’s plans call for building over 130 news wells. In addition to its Colorado work, the independent natural oil and gas company also plans to spend up to $1 million on projects in the New Mexico and Texas-based Delaware Basin. A more than decade-old plan to pump 54,000 acre-feet of water from beneath the Plains of Augustin in southwestern New Mexico will be subject to hearings and review throughout 2018.
The New Mexico company Augustin Plains Ranch LLC has proposed pumping what would be roughly 17 billion gallons a year from the Plains of Augustin aquifer to be sold to municipal and commercial customers primarily in Albuquerque. The project, which could cost $600 million to build, would see the construction of a 140-mile long pipeline traveling along the I-25 corridor to the west side of Albuquerque. The aquifer to be tapped is several hundred feet deep and could also supply the needs of customers in Belen, Los Lunas, and Rio Rancho, among other places. So far, New Mexico’s Office of the State Engineer, which administers the state’s water resources, has rejected the Augustin Plans Ranch proposal. The project has also aroused the opposition of residents and activists near the Plans of Augustin aquifer, some 150 miles southwest of Albuquerque. Continued review of the project is scheduled with the State Engineer’s office for all of next year, with perhaps a ruling being made by 2019. Arizona State University to Add to Its Growing Downtown Campus with Construction of New School12/20/2017 An institution recognized around the world for its business and management course offerings expects to see construction begin on its new home in Phoenix next year.
The Thunderbird School of Management, which was launched just after World War II as the Arizona Institute for Foreign Trade, has been a mainstay in nearby Glendale for more than seven decades. But officials with both Thunderbird and Arizona State University have now agreed to build a new five-story structure between First and Second Street in downtown Phoenix that will house the school’s classrooms, offices, and meeting rooms, and will additionally include a rooftop function space. The new school will be part of an ASU campus that includes the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, and the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law. In a statement, Thunderbird Chief Executive Officer Allen Morrison said that construction of the new school will provide “an opportunity to connect much more broadly with the resources, the professors, the intellectual property that’s available in this cluster of graduate professional schools in the downtown location of Arizona State University.” Thunderbird, listed by U.S. News & World Report as the fourth best school in the country for its international masters of business administration programs, was acquired by ASU in 2014. The new school is expected to be completed by the end of 2020, in time for classes in January of the following year. Nationally-Known Albuquerque Flamenco Group Set to Build New Home in Growing Sawmill District12/20/2017 Four years after a devastating fire wiped out the studio and headquarters of the National Institute of Flamenco in downtown Albuquerque, the organization has announced plans to build a new modern location in the city’s developing Sawmill District. One of the most respected programs of its kind in the world, the Flamenco Institute was founded in 1982 and has had a long association with the University of New Mexico through both undergraduate and graduate dance and flamenco programs. Through its founder, Eva Encinias Sandoval, it has also been instrumental in the establishment of the Festival Flamenco Internacional de Albuquerque, a week-long annual event that celebrates the centuries-old Spanish dance tradition. The new facility, which is being developed by the Portland, Oregon-based PacifiCap, is slated to go up on a currently vacant site at 18th Street and Bellamah Street, and will include a separate structure for the Tierra Adentro Charter School. The three-story building for the National Institute of Flamenco will measure 21,000 square feet and cost $4 million to build; the structure for the charter school, at 40,000 square feet, will cost $6 million. Work is expected to be completed on the Flamenco Institute building by next fall, with the charter school building open and ready for students two years after that. Work could begin sometime next spring on an effort to restore an Arizona adobe chapel that is the centerpiece of a unique community of structures.
The Mission in the Sun at 6300 N. Swan Road in north Tucson was built in 1952 by well-known impressionist painter and sculptor Ettore DeGrazia. Dedicated to Our Lady of Guadalupe, the hand-crafted adobe-constructed building, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, served as a chapel that also displayed on its walls DeGrazia’s frescoes. It is part of a larger site made up of a dozen structures that includes the home where DeGrazia and his wife Marion, a sculptor, lived, as well as an art gallery housing the roughly 15,000 works of art created by DeGrazia. Although DeGrazia died in 1982, the 10-acre N. Swan Road property has remained opened as a chapel and museum, attracting thousands of visitors every year. Last May a fire in the chapel, said to be caused by one or several lit candles, extensively damaged the structure, as well as some of the frescoes, an altar, and the roof. Officials with the mission, who have been trying to salvage as much of the chapel’s artifacts as possible, now believe that the renovation of the building could begin next spring, done in accordance with National Register of Historic Places guidelines. An exact schedule for that renovation remains to be announced. Work may or may not begin next year on an estimated more than $50 million sports and events center in downtown Colorado Springs. The center was initially proposed in 2013 as part of a package of four facility projects designed to attract visitors to Colorado’s second largest city. That package was officially called the City of Champions project. In late 2013, the Colorado Economic Development Commission approved an award of $120.5 million in sales tax rebates to help build the four projects, which included a U.S. Olympic Museum; a visitors center at the nearby Air Force Academy; and a combined performance and sports medicine center on the city’s University of Colorado campus. While planning and/or actual construction on the other three projects is underway, the sports and events facility is still in the talking stage. Because the Economic Development Commission stipulated that actual work on the City of Champions’ facilities had to be underway no later than December of 2018, city officials are now worried that the $27 million in sales taxes allotted for the sports and events center is at risk of being forfeited. Making the project even more challenging, a consultant earlier this year said the facility would need another $28 million in order to become reality, funding which has yet to be identified. A city analysis done in 2013 said that if built, the sports and events center could host a variety of sporting events, attracting visitors from around the world, and bring in at least $1.8 million in revenue annually. But Colorado Springs Mayor John Suthers has openly questioned committing public funds to the project. He did earlier this year remark, however, that if someone walked into his office promising the additional $28 million needed for center, “We’d be back on track.” Construction could begin in either April or May on an extensive rebuilding of the air flow systems at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) 20 miles north of Carlsbad. The plant is the only long term geological repository for nuclear waste in the country. The project will specifically see the installation of a new safety significant confinement ventilation system, as well as a new exhaust shaft. The ventilation system construction could cost in the neighborhood of $273 million, while the exhaust shaft may come in at $100 million or more. The ventilation system will be designed to move air from the plant’s underground mine into two spaces: a 25,000 square-foot salt reduction building, and a filtration building measuring 55,000 square feet. Work on both the ventilation system and exhaust shaft is expected to take at least 4 years to complete. In February of 2014 a salt truck at the plant caught fire. That fire was 2,000 feet underground. Subsequently, air monitoring equipment was out of use, prompting WIPP to suspend operations. Not until January of this year was WIPP, with a temporary ventilation system up and running, re-opened. It began accepting new shipments of nuclear waste in April. Los Alamos National Laboratory resumed sending its shipments late this year. For Denver City Councilman Paul Lopez, voting to approve a $4 million incentives package to secure a new downtown Target store was an easy choice. “I like the concept of the small format,” says Lopez of the 28,000 square-foot store that will open next summer at the corner of 16th and California streets. “That means you don’t have to have a piece of property that needs one hundred or 200 parking spaces,” he says. “And in urban areas like Denver, that’s important.” But Lopez says he is even more enthused that the new Target store, to open in a three-story building that has been half-used for the last decade, will provide a source of food for residents and workers in downtown Denver. “People need access to fresh goods and groceries, and they shouldn’t have to drive miles just to get that,” he says. “This is an important determinant of the overall health of a community. It’s a huge problem when the only access to food is a corner convenience store that just sells potato chips and soda.” The announcement earlier this year that Target was opening a small-format store in downtown Denver that will offer a variety of fresh produce, health supplies, beauty products, and home office supplies, among other staples, is just a part of a larger strategy reaffirming the Minneapolis-based corporation’s faith in actual buildings. “Our small-format store design has enabled us to open our doors in neighborhoods and communities that couldn’t accommodate a big box footprint and serve new guests close to home,” says Liz Hancock, a senior public relations associate at Target. As currently planned, Target will open and operate some 130 new small-format stores nationally by the end of 2019. Those stores will typically measure anywhere from 12,000 to 80,000 square feet, far smaller than the average Target store size of 135,000 square feet. A majority of all the 32 new Target stores the company opened this year are small-format. “And in 2018 we’ve announced we’ll open approximately 35 stores,” says Hancock. Probably the most visible Target small-format store opened in New York in October. The two-story, 43,000 square-foot store, one of three small format Target operations opening this fall in the New York City area, symbolizes a Target strategy, noted the New York Times, that “stands out at a time when just about everyone else seems to be questioning the relevance of brick-and-mortar retail.” At the opening of that store, Target Chief Executive Officer Brian Cornell remarked, “This is really a symbol of the future of the company.” He added that in developing and building additional small format stores in other cities, “We’re simply following the consumer.” Because of the more modest dimensions of the smaller format stores, they can more naturally be built on smaller lot sizes, or infill sites, that are typical in dense urban areas. Or they can be carved out in an existing structure, as is the case with the new Denver store, which is going up in a building that already houses several restaurants. “This is particularly a good thing, because they are using a space that was vacant,” says Lopez. In turn, the Denver City Council approved $2 million in Target tenant improvements for what is called the California Mall building, on top of letting Target get back, over time, half the sales and use tax revenue generated at the site. With roots reaching back more than a century, Target did not become the chain it is recognized as today until the year 2000, operating more than 1,000 stores in the next decade and growing to the point where it has since almost doubled that number. With a particularly positive reputation among younger consumers, the company has this year also opened small format stores in college towns, emphasizing tech accessories and school supplies, along with apparel, dorm décor, and healthy snack items. Future Target plans, says Hancock, include “increasing our investment to reimagine more than 1,000 stores by the end of 2020, enhancing the guest experience with the next generation of store design.” Those stores, adds Hancock, “will feature Target’s most ambitious store redesign to date,” with “modernized design elements and bringing more technology and digital experience to our stores to give an experience that’s easy and inspiring.” The Sacred Heart Church of Phoenix will remain in operation even as the land around it is developed for a mixed-use project. Members of the Phoenix City Council have given their approval to a proposal that will allow the nonprofit Chicanos Por La Causa to develop some 35 currently vacant acres at the northeast corner of Buckeye Road and 16th Street. As part of the deal, the city will allow the Roman Catholic Diocese of Phoenix, which had earlier sold the property to Phoenix, to keep the church open. The plan passed by the council additionally calls for the 80,000 square-foot construction of a new headquarters for Chicanos Por La Causa, a statewide community development group based in Phoenix. The larger site will also see the construction of both restaurant and retail space. The stately brick church was once regarded as the center of the Golden Gate barrio, a thriving Mexican-American neighborhood that was subsequently acquired by Phoenix through eminent domain to make way for the expansion of the Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport. That action in the 1980s saw more than 6,000 residents of the neighborhood moved to other parts of the city, with an excess of 700 small homes eventually demolished. In 1990 the city agreed to keep the church, which is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places, intact. City officials are hoping that the archdiocese will take steps to restore the church, which was built in the mid-1950s. Should that not happen, it will be transferred to Chicanos Por La Causa, which has vowed to keep the church open. |
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