Leese & Associates

Leese & Associates LLC is a Denver-based planning and architecture firm that is the culmination of Mark Leese’s 40 years of practicing architecture, urban design and community planning in Colorado and across the US. While community planning, and planning and design for transit and transportation is the core of the practice, the firm also has deep experience in design for the hospitality industry, small commercial and multifamily residential projects, and custom home design.

Mark provided the urban design components for several major transit projects, including the Northwest, Gold, and North Metro FasTracks corridors in Denver, the SW2NE corridor in the Ft. Worth/Dallas area, the I-10 West Corridor in Phoenix, the DCTA Commuter rail corridor in Denton County, TX, the US36 BRT corridor (Boulder to Denver), and the Five Points Streetcar and Central Rail Extension feasibility studies in downtown Denver, the California High Speed Rail Project, and the West Colfax Mobility Enhancement and Wayfinding Project.

His TOD planning experience includes TOD plans for the Carnegie and the Sheraden neighborhoods on the west side of Pittsburgh, PA; a TOD plan for an existing station in Richland Hills, TX; a dozen TOD plans in the Fort Worth area along the SW2NE corridor; station area plans for stations along the Metro Blue Line corridor in Los Angeles; station area plans for the California High Speed Rail project, Burbank to Fresno; and the station area plans for 88th Avenue, 104th Avenue, 112th Avenue, and 124th Avenue in the Denver metropolitan area. He is currently working on the TOD plans for the DU and Colorado Center station areas, the Speer Leetsdale Mobility Study, the North Boulder Transit Hub Feasibility Study, and the 47th Ave Pedestrian Bridge over the BNSF Railroad ROW in Denver.

In recent years he has developed a hospitality design practice and currently has a dozen hotel projects in various stages of entitlement and design in several states, in addition to a handful of architectural design projects in the Denver area. His diverse background in both the public and private sectors provides a wealth of experiences that enable him to view each client and project from a comprehensive perspective. 

Mark is a past chairman of Downtown Colorado, Inc. and The Transit Alliance. Projects that he has been involved with have won numerous awards for excellence in design and planning, most recently, the Denver Mayor’s Design Awards for the Jurassic Leaves at I-25 and Louisiana Avenue, and West Colfax Mobility Enhancement and Wayfinding Project.