PRESS RELEASE: F9 Productions’ Johnson’s Station Earns 2026 AIA Colorado Design Award

Longmont, Colorado | F9 Productions Inc. is proud to announce that Johnson’s Station has received a 2026 AIA Colorado Design Award Honorable Mention for Historic Preservation and Restoration.

The recognition marks the third major design award for the Longmont adaptive reuse project and follows international honors from the 2025 Architecture MasterPrize and the 2026 International Architecture & Design Awards.

Each year, the AIA Colorado Design Awards recognize outstanding work by AIA Colorado members and their firms while highlighting architecture that positively contributes to communities throughout Colorado. In 2026, just 17 projects received Design Awards across the state.

Johnson’s Station was recognized in the Historic Preservation and Restoration category for projects between 5,000 and 15,000 square feet.

“This one means a lot to us because it comes from our architectural peers here in Colorado,” said Alex Gore, AIA, Co-Founder and Principal Architect of F9 Productions and Architect of Record for Johnson’s Station. “We believed from the beginning that this building was worth saving. The challenge was figuring out how to respect what people remembered about it while creating something useful and relevant for the community today.”

Originally constructed as a roadside gas station, Johnson’s Station became a familiar Northern Colorado landmark before eventually being relocated to Prospect New Town in Longmont. F9 Productions approached its restoration not as an attempt to freeze the building in time, but as an opportunity to preserve its identity while giving it an entirely new purpose.

The restored neon sign maintains the building’s familiar presence. Vintage gas pumps were reimagined as electric vehicle chargers, creating a direct connection between the site’s automotive past and its future. A former swimming pool was transformed into a public plaza and outdoor dining area, while materials and architectural details throughout the project reference the station’s motorist-era history.

The result is a building that once served travelers along the highway and now serves the surrounding neighborhood as a place to eat, drink, gather, and connect.

AIA Colorado described the project as a thoughtful adaptive reuse that celebrates local memory while giving a beloved structure renewed community purpose.

“This project was about understanding what made the original building worth remembering,” said Alex Gresh, AIA, Design Architect for Johnson’s Station. “We wanted the new architecture to feel like an evolution of that story rather than something that erased it. Seeing that approach recognized by AIA Colorado is incredibly rewarding.”

AIA Colorado credits F9 Productions as the architecture firm, Alex Gore, AIA as Architect of Record, Alex Gresh, AIA as Design Architect, and Jason Buss of F9 Productions for project photography.

The AIA Colorado recognition marks the third major design award for Johnson’s Station. The project received an Honorable Mention from the 2025 Architecture MasterPrize for Architectural Design / Restoration & Renovation and was subsequently named a Silver Winner at the 2026 International Architecture & Design Awards for Renovation, Restoration & Adaptive Reuse. Together, the three honors reinforce the project’s larger lesson: existing buildings do not have to be erased to remain relevant. Thoughtful adaptive reuse can preserve the stories embedded within a place while allowing architecture to serve an entirely new generation.