As Denver’s 16th Street Mall celebrates its silver anniversary, it stands as a model of cooperation between public agencies and private enterprises.
That same spirit needs to be harnessed to keep both the mall and the downtown area it serves strong and vibrant during the next quarter century.
Fortunately, that cooperative model already is in place as the city of Denver, the Downtown Denver Partnership Inc., the Downtown Denver Business Improvement District and the Regional Transportation District have joined to craft a new vision for the mall that will be unveiled early in 2009.
RTD, which relies on the mall’s shuttle buses to transfer passengers between its Union Station and Market Street stations and its Civic Center station, has been paying about $1 million a year to keep the visually striking granite pavement in good repair. When the transit agency proposed replacing the tiles from Broadway to Tremont Place with cheaper- to-maintain concrete, the other mall partners decided it was time to consider a broader facelift. RTD agreed.
We like one notion that has surfaced already, eliminating the wide median strip from Tremont Place to Arapahoe Street so that sidewalks can be broadened to allow more retail and entertainment usages.
We’re less certain about another notion floating about, to replace the 36 RTD shuttle buses with streetcars. Streetcars might add a bit of old-world charm to the mall, but the specially built buses — which are ultra low emission vehicles running on compressed natural gas — are so low to the ground that they provide easy access to the 64,000 passengers who hop on and off every business day.
They’re also easy for passengers in wheelchairs to enter via ramps that unfold from the buses. Streetcars, in contrast, would probably require specially built-up curbs for passengers to enter. That, in turn, would impede pedestrian traffic and be less convenient for handicapped citizens.
At this point, it doesn’t make sense to spend more money on streetcars strictly for ambience.
Still, the whole point of starting a study now is to kick around ideas designed to make a good thing better.
The two business groups are each kicking in $100,000 to fund the study of the mall’s future and we expect private funding to pay for a fair share of the ultimate mall improvements. Denver officials and some business leaders have balked at the idea of replacing the granite busways with concrete. But if merchants want the more attractive yet more expensive granite pavers, they should be willing to help pay for them.
Mall improvements, after all, will not only help generate retail sales but also keep alive the ambience of what has become the metropolitan area’s liveliest people magnet.
