In 1986, when the first downtown area plan was unveiled, Denver suffered the ills that plagued the urban core of many American cities:
The downtown plan presented last week is set against a very different context. Major public and private investments have given us a downtown replete with cultural amenities, sports venues and convention-serving entertainment (bars, restaurants and hotels).
Lower downtown and the Platte Valley have become enclaves for well- to-do empty nesters and mountain residents seeking urban pied-à-terres.
Visionary civic leaders and generous taxpayers have made the big moves. Now, it’s important to focus on the small details: improve connections, address 77 underdeveloped parcels (mainly surface parking lots) and pay very close attention to the street.
Brad Segal, principal with Progressive Urban Management Associates, a consultant to the initiative, points to the findings of a global-trends survey commissioned as part of the planning process.
The changing demographics of American cities offer opportunity. Seventy-seven million baby boomers present a market that’s looking to urban environments as a way to both downsize and connect to community.
Seventy million millennials born between 1977 and 2003 represent the most education-minded generation in history. They are tech-dependent, optimistic, multicultural and more ethnically diverse than their predecessors. Though many were raised in sterile suburban environments, this generation of iconoclastic creatives is attracted to lively, entrepreneurial urban environments.
To attract and retain these older, younger and increasingly diverse populations, downtown must encourage a diversity of housing types: mid-priced, affordable rentals and condominiums both within the downtown core and at the periphery.
Denver planning director Peter Park talks about “pedestrianizing” the public right-of-way by narrowing streets, widening sidewalks and reversing one-way streets, combined with peak-hour lane flexibility. (In other words, increase the number of lanes for inbound or outbound traffic lanes during rush hour, as in the Eisenhower Tunnel.)
Park also emphasizes the importance of the ribs to the spine, i.e., the named streets and how they radiate, from the 16th Street Mall and Lower Downtown to Broadway, with an emphasis on mid-town.
Too many of these streets – Stout, California, Welton and 15th Street – are riddled with surface parking lots. Arapahoe Square, the area from Stout to Market streets and 20th to Park avenues, is zoned for high-density use. However, the area has languished for decades, in spite of significant real estate and development booms.
How to motivate development on these parcels presents a significant challenge. “Down zoning” is a whispered expletive at City Hall. It will require complex, very creative thinking on the part of downtown boosters to actually build the kind of urban core most citizens say they want.
It is a vision that’s not reflected by current downtown zoning, which, if fully built-out, would produce one of this country’s densest cities.
City government can do a few things:
The 2007 Downtown Area Plan is a visionary document with the potential to maximize the substantial public investment in downtown. We will need to expand downtown’s public transportation network and improve neighborhood and district connections. We must redefine the street to accommodate people and vehicles equally.
Most important, we must have a lively dialogue about what downtown can be and should be. Then we will need the political will to transform vision into reality.
Susan Barnes-Gelt (bs13@qwest.net) served eight years on the Denver City Council and was an aide to former Denver Mayor Federico Peña.
