The world’s most memorable cities boast a common asset: the grand urban square.
This is where people gather, where they meet, have a leisurely coffee, watch passersby, enjoy concerts and other entertainment.
Denver has an unprecedented opportunity to craft its own memorable grand urban square, if we don’t sacrifice existing open space to commercial development. Denver’s Union Station, built in 1881 at the head of 17th Street to serve the railroads, once again will become the premier place of arrival and departure. FasTracks and bus passengers will join Amtrak passengers in this multimodal transportation center now being planned. It’s predicted that 205,800 people each weekday will pass through Union Station by 2030. Commuters and tourists will use it as their touchstone to downtown Denver.
What better place for a grand urban square?
The stretch of land along Wynkoop in front of Union Station, now a parking lot, could become an inspired people-place. Put the parking underground. Temporary art exhibits and permanent pieces, concerts, restaurants, festivals, farmers’ markets, celebrations . . . it could be an unmatched public space.
Give the city a center for the 21st century in the historic district where the city was founded. Union Station (on the National Register of Historic Places since 1974) is surrounded by the Victorian commercial buildings of lower downtown, also a historic district.
Our grand urban square is the premise of an impressive group of senior professionals in planning and design, volunteers who formed the Open Space Initiative Group (OSIG) to suggest civic uses for this irreplaceable public property. They are leaders in their fields, architects, planners, landscape architects, with superb abilities and experience, and an abiding love of this city. They are supported by equally impressive environmental, historic preservation and railroad groups, and a number of citizens, who want the station and its surrounding open space protected.
In 2000, the Regional Transportation District, Denver Regional Council of Governments, Colorado Department of Transportation and the city of Denver joined funds to buy Union station, with its big 1914 railway waiting room and two long 1881 sidewings, and 19 1/2 acres where the trains once ran.
Planning efforts have focused on how the site can become commercially viable. Six buildings will go behind the station, and developers want a five-story building at each end of the station. These “bookends” would block views of the station, and diminish its impressive 500-foot frontage. They would have a significant adverse impact on the station’s integrity.
In contrast, OSIG’s conceptual site plan honors what citizens said they wanted for Union Station at public meetings. The parking lot, basically two squares on front of the wings, and the link joining them become a broad sweep of paving for walkways, cafes, seating, a fountain, children’s play area, an amphitheater, grassy lawn, and more. It would be a fine place to enter or leave downtown.
The station’s site is roughly 4.74 acres. OSIG’s proposal shows just 3.2 acres for civic use, but the effect could be fantastic.
Denver deserves a grand urban square.
Denver Post columnist Joanne Ditmer has been writing on environmental and urban issues for The Post since 1962.
