As the city struggles with ideas of how to make Civic Center more inviting and usable, the touchpoint has shifted away from a redesign by Daniel Libeskind that was quickly rejected to whether the Colorado History Museum should be relocated to the grassy section across from the City and County Building.
The Colorado Historical Society, which operates the existing museum at 1300 Broadway, is being forced to move because the state’s appeals courts next door need to expand.
The society looked at seven possible sites and initially chose the city’s vacant permit-center building at West 14th Avenue and Bannock Street. The plan included renovation of the Carnegie Library inside Civic Center for archival material.
However, the more the society looked at Civic Center, the better it liked it, with the idea of linking the renovated Carnegie Library with an underground catacomb of exhibition and archival space.
Now the historical society is convinced that the Civic Center plan is the best, and has sent project manager Bill Mosher of Trammel Crow and architect David Owen Tryba around the metro area to convince civic and business groups.
Society chief executive Ed Nichols calls it “an unprecedented working relationship between the city and state to reactivate the park,” because the city owns Civic Center and the state owns the history museum.
However, opposition to the plan has strengthened. The ad hoc Coalition to Save Civic Center wants the new museum to use the permit center and to renovate the Carnegie Library as part of the plan. The coalition, comprised mostly of members of the Capital Hill United Neighborhoods civic group, argues that Civic Center should remain open as it was originally envisioned by former Mayor Robert Speer 100 years ago.
City Council member Jeanne Robb, whose district includes Civic Center, attended one of the early planning meetings and came away feeling that the Civic Center plan “was a done deal.”
“The administration assured me it wasn’t,” she said. “But I felt the public input wasn’t a real conversation. It was just the historical society answering questions about its plan.”
She organized five public meetings each Monday morning through October. At the first one on Monday, Mark Gerlernter, dean of the CU-Denver College of Architecture and Planning, presented a $50,000 study of Civic Center by Space Syntax, a British firm that recommends ways of increasing public use of public spaces.
The firm concluded that Civic Center needs diagonal pathways, as well as better ways for pedestrians to cross the busy streets. It did not give an opinion about putting the museum in the park, other than to say the wrong location in Civic Center could be disastrous.
The historical society hosts its third public meeting at 10 a.m. today at the museum.
Staff writer Mike McPhee can be reached at 303-954-1409 or mmcphee@denverpost.com.
