The Downtown Denver Partnership on Wednesday asked the city to hold a public competition for designs to renovate Civic Center park.
It also stressed that the process for planning the park’s renovation should be open and transparent, with input from a wide variety of public and private stakeholders.
The partnership passed the resolution to make sure the downtown business community has a voice in the process.
In August, the nonprofit Civic Center Conservancy unveiled a conceptual design for the historic park by famed architect Daniel Libeskind, who designed the recently opened $90.5 million Denver Art Museum expansion.
“The challenge is that there has been only one design, and that the development of that design was done by one group,” said John Desmond, vice president of the partnership. “The idea behind a design competition is that you get several different groups to come up with alternate approaches.”
The conservancy has been holding a series of public meetings on Libeskind’s vision for the park, which has been criticized as too radical a departure from the city’s master plan.
One final meeting, scheduled for Dec. 6 at the Colorado History Museum, will feature new ideas from seven local architects and urban planning firms.
In January, a city parks advisory committee will begin sifting through the input. No timeline has been established for the project.
The city released a master plan for the park in October 2005. It called for the creation of the nonprofit conservancy to come up with renovation ideas – and to raise the private money necessary to fund them.
The conservancy commissioned Libeskind to come up with a design because “we wanted to enhance the master plan with some visionary ideas,” said group president Elaine Asarch.
“These are just ideas,” she said. “What it has done is brought a lot attention to the park and has inspired a lot of great thinking.
“It was never intended to be an implementable plan.”
No cost estimates can be made for the project until a final design is selected, according to the conservancy and the city.
“There is no price tag to put on the park because there is not a plan in place,” said Denver parks spokeswoman Tiffany Moehring.
The partnership is not represented on the conservancy’s 24-member board, but the two groups are close to solving that problem, they said.
“We’ve always welcomed the partnership’s involvement,” Asarch said.
Staff writer Julie Dunn can be reached at 303-954-1592 or jdunn@denverpost.com.
