By Sean Vincent O’Keefe
Photos courtesy of the Architectural Workshop
Like many major metropolitan areas across the United States, Denver, Colorado is in the grips of a growing homelessness crisis. Despite Denver’s dedicated effort to address issues and move people into housing, the number of people experiencing homelessness has been steadily increasing. Colorado was recently named the eighth-least-affordable state in the nation. A 2025 point-in-time survey showed a 12 percent increase in Denver’s overall homeless population. Though recent efforts to decrease the number of people living on the streets in unsheltered conditions have worked, the number of people who are homeless continues to rise. In 2024, 75,000 people received homelessness services in Colorado.
The causes are many. During the 2008 recession, average home sale prices in Denver dropped a record 13 percent to approximately $255,000. Since then, what started as a rebound became a rocket ship. Housing prices have more than doubled. In 2025, the average home value in Denver is roughly $544,000. Meanwhile, fair market rent data for 2008 indicates that a 1-bedroom Denver apartment leased for $692 a month now commands $1,789 in 2025 dollars. Though the cost of living has risen steeply in Mile High City, an apartment in Denver is only 6 percent more expensive than the national average, indicating that rent rates are a likely concern for many, especially those who struggle.
“Unfortunately, many of the people experiencing homelessness are veterans, folks with mental or physical disabilities, health challenges, and lives filled with trauma,” says Mark Bowers, Principal and Founder of Architectural Workshop (AW), a Denver-based design practice that believes in silver linings. As an architect with a special affinity for adaptive reuse, Bowers has had his hands on many design challenges involving shaping complex client programs into oddball spaces. One of AW’s most recent adaptations involved reusing a hotel built in the 1970s as a 21st-century solution to chronic homelessness. “We were delighted to partner with the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless to reimagine the Globeville Clarion Inn as a place where people experiencing homelessness can live and receive supportive services that help them reestablish a sense of value and pride.”
“In addition to housing, many of these folks need counseling, job skills training, interview coaching, and other sorts of support for various emotional and physical challenges. Forming a community of care around the individual by having those services on site is essential to integrating them back into society.”
The Colorado Coalition for the Homeless came to AW by referral. Bowers and his team had done similar work on the nearby Regency Hotel. There, AW helped a developer reconsider a former 1960’s hotel as a vibrant housing facility for college students. Like many hotel towers built in preceding design eras, the Clarion and the Regency boasted stout concrete cores and structures, making them far easier to reuse than demolish and replace.
“The existing building is a nine-story, tri-wing tower made with pre-cast slabs. So, it’s a very stout, unusual structure with three curved facades and incredible views in every direction,” continues Bowers. “The design objective was to repurpose this good but dated building while maximizing the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless’ limited budget to meet a broad program of support.”
Homelessness is closely associated with a life of trauma – childhood abuse or neglect, domestic violence, traumatic brain injury and military service. Consequently, clients often feel a sense of betrayal and isolation. They need safe spaces where they feel heard.
For more than 40 years, the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless has provided non-judgmental, trauma-informed care to people experiencing homelessness by removing barriers to adequate housing and healthcare. Their mission is to work collaboratively toward the prevention of homelessness and the creation of lasting solutions for families, children and individuals who are experiencing or are at risk of homelessness throughout Colorado. The first step is affording them dignity. Users are clients, not residents.
Given the Clarion Inn’s previous program of conferencing, events and overnights for business travelers, the existing first floor offered Bowers plenty of opportunity to massage CCH’s program into place. AW’s design strategy capitalized on the column-supported hotel’s bar, restaurant and ballroom spaces to create a hive of cross-functional services and common areas.
“The design transformed the main ground level into a community services hub,” he shares. “We redesigned the bar and restaurant space as a warm welcoming place of pride, where the user community can dine, discuss and develop healthy social skills.”
The ballroom is now a bullpen – a place for clients to connect with case managers and supportive specialists in mental and medical care, substance abuse treatment, skills development and job placement.
“In addition to housing, many of these folks need counseling, job skills training, interview coaching, and other sorts of support for various emotional and physical challenges,” continues Bowers. “Forming a community of care around the individual by having those services on site is essential to integrating them back into society.”
The Clarion Inn’s former fitness facility now serves as a community clubhouse. New spaces include a high-capacity laundry featuring free washers and dryers and a computer lab. Outside, the pool was filled in to create a community courtyard for co-mingling and conglomerating. With supportive services centralized on level one, the above eight floors of studio-apartments enjoy expansive Rocky Mountain Front Range or City views from the building’s elegantly curved profiles.
“Whereas the hotel room configuration was for a short, impersonal stay, our objective was to make the 215 studio apartments dignified and suitable for an extended stay,” says Bowers. Each unit includes a queen-size bed, dresser, desk, television and private bath. Full-size refrigerators, microwaves and kitchenette countertops make units more amenable to long-term living. “We used different colors to paint doors and surrounds, so each unit has a sense of identity.”
While AW found subtle ways to lightly enliven living spaces, reusing mattresses, bed frames, dressers, tables and other durable furnishings from the former hotel stretched CCH’s budget.
“We used wood-simulated vinyl flooring and earth tone adornments in the rooms and common areas to warm the living experience,” continues Bowers. “Soothing color choices are welcoming and calming rather than overwhelming, which is important when designing for people who have been traumatized.”
While most of the design effort involved thinking through the program and room treatments, most of the budget was invested in modernizing building systems.
“Unrenovated, 50-year-old buildings are generally very tired when it comes to building systems and current building code requirements,” says Bowers. The City and County of Denver’s Energize Denver Building Performance Policy (BPP) mandates energy performance standards that require designs for renovated buildings of 25,000 sq. ft. and more to reduce energy use intensity. Commercial and multifamily buildings must install electric heat pumps when replacing gas-fired equipment. At least 50 percent of water heating must use electric water heating. “We requested a code coordination meeting with CCH and the City and County of Denver to scrutinize the improvements required to meet code for life safety systems – sprinklers, fire ratings and emergency egress paths – as well as mechanical, electrical and plumbing systems. With a limited budget and many needs, it’s important to be extremely strategic.”
Converting the building to all LED lighting increased efficiency by reducing the electrical load. In modernizing the mechanical system, AW took advantage of existing ductwork while integrating a MERV 13 air filter capable of trapping at least 85 percent of particles sized 1.0 microns and larger. Likewise, new coils in each unit’s heating and cooling system, along with simple, room-operable control allow clients to adjust the thermal comfort of their room to taste.
“This building happens to be in a rather ideal location as well,” says Bowers. “The new Gold Line light rail station, the River North Arts District, the South Platte River Trail, and the re-energized National Western Complex are all less than two miles away.”
As the project wraps up, Bowers and the AW team look forward to more opportunities to reuse, rethink and readapt the buildings of yesterday for the needs of tomorrow.
“There are a lot of good old buildings out there, undervalued, perhaps,” he concludes. “By reusing existing architecture, we reduce the additional carbon footprint of the new program down to the essentials. In a way, you could say these old buildings are very much like people. Everyone deserves a second chance.”
Sean Vincent O’Keefe is an architecture and construction writer who crafts stories for Technology Designer and others based on 20 years of experience and a keen interest in the people who make projects happen.
