Not so long ago, downtown Denver was dying. Between 1970 and 1990, the core city’s population fell from 514,678 to 467,710. Following the national pattern of urban blight and suburban flight, residents, retail and even industry flocked to the suburbs.
During the 1990s, however, Denver reversed the ongoing national pattern, growing by almost 100,000. In the past decade, the city and county of Denver grew again, climbing to an estimated 2010 population of 610,345.
How did Denver become a national pacesetter for core city revival? One often overlooked key to revitalization are the 50 designated Denver historic districts. These districts have stabilized dicey neighborhoods such as LoDo, transforming Denver’s Skid Row into a thriving entertainment and million-dollar loft district. Instead of the usual rotting, speculative property festering in many U.S. cities, Denver has large, stable historic districts friendly to residential and small-scale retail uses.
Along with the historic districts, Denver also reincarnated the once trashy and polluted South Platte River, Cherry Creek and other urban waterways as popular greenways of non-motorized trails and parks that have generated a waterfront boom downtown.
Another barometer of Denver’s success — and some ongoing problems — is the fate of the 16th Street Mall. Back in 1871, Denver’s first horse-drawn streetcar used 16th Street as its cross-town passage on the original line from Auraria to Five Points. Once streetcar passengers arrived, 16th Street flourished as the city’s retail hub. Major department stores, theaters, restaurants and other retailers settled there or nearby.
A century later, 16th Street became haunted by a 30 percent vacancy rate, demolitions for parking lots, and increasing blight. Downtown was largely dark, empty and dangerous at night. Daylight illuminated empty storefronts and pan-handlers.
Then, the 16th Street Transit Mall opened in 1982 with free shuttle bus service and pedestrian ambiance. Charles Mulford Robinson’s 1906 City Beautiful Plan for downtown Denver had first proposed a 16th Street pedestrian mall connecting Civic Center with the retail district. But not until the Regional Transportation District captured federal funding for 80 percent of the $76.1 million cost did the transit mall become reality.
Designed by I.M. Pei, one of the world’s leading architects, the mall sports elegant granite pavers, trees, fountains, large planters and seating and lighting. To promote and maintain the mall, a coalition of downtown stakeholders formed the Downtown Denver Partnership and one of the country’s largest business-improvement districts, spanning 120 blocks on either side of 16th Street from the State Capitol to Union Station between 12th and 20th streets. Besides a retail revival, DDP also successfully promoted conversion of old stores and office buildings into hotels, restaurants and lofts.
The partnership has generally managed our downtown well, but is on the verge on making a second very expensive blunder. The first mistake was leveling Lawrence Halperin’s Skyline Park at 16th and Arapahoe streets, by the Daniels and Fisher Tower.
Halperin, America’s foremost designer of such urban havens, deliberately sunk the park below street level and filled it with fountains whose splashing erased the urban racket. Down in the park, you didn’t see or hear traffic.
To accommodate restaurants wanting more outdoor cafe space and complaints that the park was attracting the wrong sort of people, DDP leveled Skyline Park for “Doggy Poo Park” and stark street-level expanses of gravel and shabby grass.
Now, in another short-sighted pandering to private businesses, DDP is threatening to waste $13 million to eliminate the 16th Street Mall’s pedestrian median in order to widen sidewalk retail space. Pei’s original design has been brilliantly successful. Denver’s core city revival depends on preserving popular public pedestrian places.
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