Have ideas for downtown Denver? The city is creating a new plan.
Denver is looking for a few good ideas. The city has pulled through the pandemic that emptied parts of downtown, only to be further hobbled by problems of homelessness as well as construction on the 16th Street Mall that won't wrap up until well into next year.
But some locals have better observed things and the city and the Downtown Denver Partnership are looking at creating plans.
"There's a real value in walking to work, walking to your doctor's office. We get in the car because we want to get in the car," said Anthony Gemma, who was at the very first gathering to kick off the creation of a new downtown area plan.
The downtown area plan has not been updated since 2007 when the first iPhone was introduced. Things have certainly changed since. Denver's Community Planning and Development and the Downtown Denver Partnership want community input. Anthony and Natalie Gemma brought their young baby along to take a look at what is brewing in a downtown once credited with hosting nifty new brew pubs and gathering places and adding a ballpark to the downtown. But some of the luster has come off those achievements as other cities have followed suit.
Some areas are thriving, like LoDo behind Union Station and the Golden Triangle. That's largely because there are people living in those areas and that brings activity day and night.
Planners like Joshua Brooks of the planning and architecture firm Sasaki are thinking about what benefits downtowns and more residents is part of what they believe is an answer.
"So how do we think about increasing the residential population? How do we think about creating public spaces that are more inviting to people?" said Brooks.
There are other areas, however, like the central business district in the northern part of downtown that are having more trouble. Changing the ideas of what goes on there is a potential.
"I think that speaks about the need to have truly integrated neighborhoods; complete communities where we're not thinking of this as a central business district anymore but really as a central neighborhood district. Places where people live, work and play," said Brooks.
There are about 11 million square feet of empty commercial space in the city right now and experts know it will be a long time before it comes back. Transitioning office space to residential is often prohibitively expensive and developers are unwilling. It's a partial solution, but not all of it, said Andrew Iltis, vice president of planning and community impact with the Downtown Denver Partnership.
"I think that will be a tool very strategically used in places. I think that we will have places in our city where we decide buildings are obsolete and we need to create something else in that place," said Iltis. "Maybe it's the surrounding environment that really needs to be improved upon and all of a sudden those assets have gained enough value again to be leasable space."
Downtown resident Sai Gopal reflected a similar view.
"Housing is a huge step but it's not the full answer. So creating amenities, creating childcare, creating parks," he shared as potential answers.
"We do everything downtown including our shopping, so it would be amazing if they could bring more businesses to the surface," said Natalie Gemma.
They were some of the people that the city and the Downtown Denver Partnership hope to hear from. Voters in the area are being asked in November to expand the size of the downtown area. In addition, the City Council will look at extending the use of sales and property taxes in the area that were devoted to downtown projects like Union Station, now paid off, to include improvements in a wider area of downtown.
