A long-forgotten swath of parking lots and low-rise buildings between Coors Field and Uptown, Arapahoe Square hasn’t seen the redevelopment other downtown areas have seen over the past two decades.
That could soon change.
With new residential developments going up and business-interest groups rekindling intrigue in the area — which spans from Lawrence Street to Welton Street and 20th Street to Park Avenue West — Arapahoe Square stands to get a face-lift in the coming years, say urban planners, developers and downtown advocates.
“Arapahoe Square isn’t broken,” said Tami Door, president and chief executive of the Downtown Denver Partnership. “It’s a clean slate.”
In the next few weeks, city planners will select consultants who will advise them on best uses for land in the Arapahoe Square area, said Steve Gordon, development program manager, for the Denver Department of Community Planning and Development.
“That’s when we’ll get it done more rapidly,” said Gordon.
Planners have long targeted Arapahoe Square as a place for urban renewal.
According to a 2007 plan developed by the Downtown Denver Partnership, “the remaining buildings are both economically and architecturally diverse, combining urban lofts and low-rise neighborhood commercial with warehouses, transportation facilities and light industry.”
Among the goals for the area are restoring landscaped tree lawns; converting selected streets to two-way; improving pedestrian walkways; finding redevelopment opportunities along the Welton Street light-rail line; and redeveloping some of the many surface parking lots in the area.
“It’s a blank canvas,” said Brian Higgins, a Denver-based architect and developer. Higgins has started pre-construction selling of his residential complex in Arapahoe Square called Carbon Flats.
The development targets younger, lower-income buyers who cannot afford pricier residences in nearby LoDo or downtown. According to the Carbon Flats website, only one has been sold, but Higgins says Carbon Flats continues to receive inquiries.
“We recently put them on the market for pre-construction sale, and there’s been really strong interest,” said Higgins.
Such developments will be important to city planners as they plot out their vision of the area over the next several years, said Door.
“Everything that’s in the works is money that’s already being invested there,” she said. “The question is, how do you leverage that, and incorporate that into your plans to ensure that those projects are successful and serve as a platform for future projects?”
Arapahoe Square has seen its share of blight over the years. For years, the 61-acre neighborhood has been a sea of run-down buildings, low-cost parking lots and homeless encampments. Fourteen years ago, the City Council rezoned 16 square blocks of Arapahoe Square near Coors Field to specifically exclude liquor and adult stores in order to clean up the area.
“Over time, we have seen that the downtown market is a very strong market,” said Gordon. “It’s not just a place to work. It has sports facilities, a performing arts center and all sorts of other things. So we think that trend will continue.”
Redevelopment of Arapahoe Square stands to look much different than that of LoDo, which underwent improvements nearly two decades ago.
“LoDo developed because there were actually buildings there,” said Door. With Arapahoe Square, “there’s very little that’s actually been built there,” he said.
