Taxi Building

While our pebbly, city setting may seem off the well beaten path, what was once the core of Denver's manufacturing community has turned a former factory site into the core of Denver's pulsating RiNo Art District and is growing with it. Located between Denver's main streets and the Platte River, our strategic position connects us to the city centre and nearby areas.

The TAXI was the idea of Mickey Zeppelin and his Kyle sons, who saw the need to build a fellowship that would encourage the use of imaginative space for new employees. It has become a catalytic for cooperation and communications between companies, dormitories and the communities, making it more than a place to stay or work, but something truly singular.

CO Denver

The TAXI Fellowship is situated on the reused 25 hectare former Yellow Cab site and is a work-live evolution. There are nine houses in the mixed-use municipality, including more than 100 jobs and 90 apartments. Typical TAXI style features throughout the TAXI campsite are local landscape architecture with rainwater harvesting schemes, rolling glazed gates and redesigned industry designs.

Facilities on the site includes a dining room, lounge, cafe, gym, kindergarten, communal kindergarten and indoor and outdoor pools.

Taxi, Mickey Zeppelin's gloomy picture in Denver's RiNo

Taxi, the mixed-use idea of city pioneer Mickey Zeppelin, triggered not only the renaissance of RiNo, one of Denver's most trendy neighbourhoods, but also the time before it. Whereas the River North Art District can trace its origins back to 2005, the former Yellow Cab Camp at 3507 Ringsby Court attracted the interest of Zeppelin, a trailblazer in today's LoDo and the Golden Triangle, for the first time 25 years ago.

Zeppelin, a Denver-born, sometimes accompanied his sire Sam during his childhood, while the older Zeppelin did local work. "As Zeppelin said, my grandfather was in the market for the sale of vegetables bins, sacs and handbags to denargo market residents. Zeppelin was struck when he first saw the taxi sites, but it was clear why others who couldn't see would think it was little more than a blot.

It would indeed be a crude exaggeration to say that he is less than bewitched by much of the evolution that has arisen in RiNo after the taxi. "As Zeppelin said, it was something like the end of this whole yellow taxi" when the page first struck his eyes.

Zeppelin, however, saw the full promise right from the start. "Zeppelin said, "I bought it in 2000, so it's probably been seven years since I first saw it. There was also a 25,000 square metre former Yellow Cab building on one floor. Corridors of the building were actually inner roads, as taxi drivers drove their cars in the building to keep them waiting and buy seats when they were on their way to collect people.

Zeppelin said that the corridors would provide access to functional offices. Not many at that point saw the building and the construction site as a place where humans wanted to stay and work. "Zeppelin said, "Before we purchased it, it was exclusively sold for commercial use. Zeppelin saw the building and the location as a kind of anti-traditional administrative area like an anti-hero in a film.

During the early years of Taxi, the housing property markets were "really hot" and locals spent a great deal of cash to make their houses luxury. Indeed, at the big opening of Taxi in August 2001, they fired down a firework display and burnt and smashed an artificial cabin room, including a dummy window that sat in its aseptic room.

Today there are many taxi-like rooms. "Taxis are what Google does with its offices and WeWork with its offices," Zeppelin said. Ever since taxi disappeared from the floor, it has increased to about 24 hectares and hundred thousand square kilometers. In addition to offices, Taxi also contains the Openair Academy daycare centre, the Comaltaurant, Black Black Black Coffee as well as sales and rented apartments.

He and Kyle have since started Taxi, expanding their presence in RiNo beyond Taxi's borders to includes Quelle, the Quelle Hotel opening in June, and Zeppelin Station at a suburban train stop. Taxi has received such a seal of approval in recent years that new offices are usually discussed for month before building is completed.

"They always ask me if I ever dreamt that this would happen," Zeppelin said. Since it was a place next to the Platte River and the location led so directly into the city centre, "I always had the feeling that taxi was a catalyst thing", which would result in a stronger regionalization.

Zeppelin is not sure what followed in his entourage, but while Zeppelin's taxi bequest will probably stand the test of heyday.