Downtown Denver Partnership Inc. is kicking off a marketing campaign aimed at increasing the residential population downtown.
At the center of the campaign is a website, LiveDowntownDenver.com, that will serve as a branding vehicle and an information clearinghouse on downtown housing, said Kate Peterson, housing program manager for the partnership.
The website, which launches today, will showcase the features of each neighborhood and will promote an overall lifestyle image of downtown.
Other marketing strategies that the partnership will use in the campaign include a mobile kiosk that will be taken to trade shows, housing fairs and partnership events.
“We don’t have the luxury of promoting downtown the same way as a master developer promotes a planned community such as Stapleton or Belmar or Highlands Ranch by using a sales center,” Peterson said.
The partnership’s biggest challenge will be to keep the website updated with current pricing and availability, said branding expert Dave Miles of Milesbrand.
“It’s a great idea if they can pull it off,” he said. “But even with a minimal level of information, it’s a lot to manage.”
In the last decade, downtown has added nearly 10,000 housing units. The core has about 9,000 residents, and the entire downtown area – about a 1.5-mile radius – has 62,000 residents.
Over the past few years, the construction mix downtown has been almost evenly split between for-sale condos and rental apartments.
In rentals, the vacancy rate dropped to 5 percent for the fourth quarter of 2005, from a record high of 27.5 percent three years ago.
Others supporting the effort include Comcast, First Bank of Denver, the city and real-estate development firms East West Partners, Urban Ventures, Red Peak Properties, Corum Real Estate and Zocalo Development.
East West, developer of the Riverfront Park neighborhood in the Central Platte Valley, is invested in the project despite its success selling housing units through a traditional sales center, said Chris Frampton, the company’s vice president of sales and marketing.
“We’ve always felt like everybody in downtown rises or sinks together,” Frampton said. “We want everybody to be successful, ourselves included.”
Staff writer Margaret Jackson can be reached at 303-820-1473 or mjackson@denverpost.com.
