Public opinion is split down the middle when it comes to the new hotel and transit center at Denver International Airport. Some people are just happy the project is done after five years of planning and cost overruns, pleased there’s a place to stay on-site before eye-aching, 6 a.m. flights. Others will be mad at it, forever, for blocking views of the beloved Jeppesen Terminal, one of the most important pieces of architecture in the Western United States.

It didn’t have to be that way. For $600 million in public money, airport management, despite its multiple excuses, could have come up with something better, a building just as unique and unifying as the quirky, tented icon architects Jim Bradburn and Curt Fentress sketched out on a cocktail napkin a quarter-century ago. The lack of a complement turns the new structure into an insult.

I think it’s important to acknowledge the communal resentment that exists, to legitimize the anger or loss or whatever you are feeling. Close your eyes. Take a deep breath. Mourn.

Now enough of that. Time to move on.

On a more positive note, the new hotel and rail station is its own kind of accomplishment, a success for Gensler, the design firm that took the lead on the project in 2011, after the original master plan architect, Santiago Calatrava, split from the scene. Calatrava’s exit agreement demanded DIA avoid using the graceful, white structural elements the architect is famous for — and which organically connected the new construction to Jeppesen’s snowy-peaked roof. Without all that white, the building was always going to be the wrong kind of standout, no matter what.

In press materials, Gensler is taking full credit for the project, giving none to Calatrava, but common sense casts doubt on that claim. It’s hard to know who came up with what at this point, but the core concepts and many of the schematic elements were in Calatrava’s early design drawings, for which DIA paid $12.9 million. (If Calatrava’s work isn’t part of the final design, DIA certainly has a lot of explaining to do).

Either way, Gensler made it happen, engineering the building in a cost-effective way and choosing the materials, including the dark glass face that puts it in such sharp contrast with Jeppesen.

So, instead of the swooping swan shape Calatrava envisioned for the main hotel building, we get something reasonably affordable and less natural — less soft and supple and European, and more forceful and no-nonsense and boldly American. The structure remains wildly distinctive, thanks to a sharp dip in the center of its long horizontal plane, which was Gensler’s idea. But it’s no longer a bird; I’ve heard it alternately referred to as the moustache building, or the sunglasses building.

The hotel is the visible part of the project, although not the most public. There’s the ground-level transit station to the south where the RTD commuter rail line will begin arriving in April. On the north side sits a massive outdoor plaza connecting the new building to the airport’s existing main terminal at level five. The project’s most ambitious gesture is a curved, glass-and-steel awning that stretches horizontally from the back of the hotel toward the airport, giving cover to pedestrians crossing from train to plane. It’s an impossibly long, engineering marvel at 150 feet — as long as a 15-story building is high — with no supports along the way.

And just to keep things symmetrical, there’s an identical one hovering over the train tracks in front. Both are exuberant and fully modern — a nice bit of branding for the city’s premiere gateway.

The whole addition feels larger-than-life when you walk around it and the relevant numbers explain why. The project encompasses more than 730,000 square feet of developed space. The bottom floors host a 37,500-square-foot conference center, including a grand ballroom that can hold 750 people. The 519 guest rooms of the Westin Denver International Airport start on the sixth floor.

The Westin’s lobby is on floor six as well, and it’s been outfitted in the sort of clam-shell, space-age design that was pioneered by architect Eero Saarinen in his landmark 1962 TWA terminal at New York’s JFK airport. The predominant interior color is white (take that, Calatrava), expressed energetically through a gracefully arched ceiling that follows the shape of that monumental awning that connects outside. The reception desks, the lounge furniture and the bar are ultra-contemporary. There’s a clean feeling to it all, somewhere between Apple store and a trendy nightclub.

The guest rooms maintain that present-day styling. They have particularly generous, rectangular windows that span wall to wall without any mullions, framing the Front Range as if it were a work of art. The higher rooms in the rear also have a spectacular view of Jeppesen’s unique roof from above.

The other big interior move is an 11th-floor pool and fitness center. The recreational facility is directly below the building’s dipping roofline and its ceiling reflects the exterior shape, sagging in the middle and keeping a human scale to expansive spaces. It’s memorable.

That’s mainly for guests, of course, but the overall project holds great hope in terms of public space, because of the massive, elevated plaza that connects everything. The brick-covered expanse is a whopping 82,000 square feet, nearly one and a half times the size of a football field, and it shares the lovely mountain vistas that define the site. The airport has hinted at various community events on this vast platform — farmers markets, concerts, car shows, volleyball tournaments. It has built-in fasteners to anchor rows of exhibitor tents.

It’s hard, perhaps, for Denver ites to picture a time when they might linger at their airport, when it might be more than a connecting point for a weekend jaunt to Las Vegas or a Monday morning business trip to Chicago. It will be up to the airport to program it meaningfully, to put on events that are attractive, diverse and easy to access, where folks can afford to park.

Architecture can be a powerful tool here to remake the role of the airport in civic life, and the options are enhanced by the arrival of the RTD rail service, which will make it easier than ever to get there. No doubt, DIA has some work to do on the image front.

Development can bring amenities to all, but it also brings responsibility to the administrators charged with making the most of it. DIA keeps the planes running on time but so far has squandered chances to connect its evolving design elements with people who come and go — its customers, or more precisely, its citizen owners. The signage is routinely lacking, the security gates are unattractive, crammed awkwardly into Jeppesen’s great hall. Even the recently built waiting area, the “cellphone lot” is aggressively anti-passenger, confusingly located on the wrong side of the highway.

A people-friendly plaza, built with the people’s money, is a big opportunity, and it could set the tone for the inevitable development that will follow on the site. If DIA lives up to its promises and makes it a lively destination, even the biggest Jeppesen fan will forgive its design for bypassing the only bit of context within five miles, for ignoring Denver’s only internationally recognized building. A truly public plaza would make the moving on — that we all must do — a lot easier.

Ray Mark Rinaldi: 303-954-1540, rrinaldi@denverpost.com or @rayrinaldi