“Skynets Over Downtown,” an aerial art installation from Poetic Kinetics and Colorado-based artist Patrick Shearn, features sculptures that respond to “natural wind patterns, creating a dynamic experience that is constantly changing,” according to city agency Denver Arts & Venues.

The project, announced in February, will take flight at a trio of sites this summer, starting with the Friday, June 19-Saturday, June 20, opening of an installation that floats above the fountain at Denver Union Station (1701 Wynkoop St.), dubbed “Sun Splash.”

The next one, “Quaking Gold,” opens at Glenarm Plaza at 16th Street (500 16th St.) on June 25, followed by “Skyline Drift,” which will be complete mid-July at Skyline Park at 17th Street (1127 17th St.).

The as the city calls it, is led by the Department of Transportation & Infrastructure and Denver Arts & Venues, along with the Downtown Denver Partnership, Denver Downtown Development Authority (DDDA) and other city agencies. Hearn was paid $625,000 for the project, according to the Denver Department of Finance.

The kinetic sculptures are expected to be a major draw for Denverites and visitors to downtown, said Michael Chavez, the city’s curator of public art — and not just folks who stumble upon them in tourism-heavy spots such as Denver Union Station.

“People are going to make this a destination experience,” he said. “If they have a friend coming into town, they’re going to say, ‘You’ve got to see this.’ It’s a one-and-done, once-in-a-lifetime installation, and it’s going to be a shot in the arm for downtown.”

A similar project last summer by artist Shearn in El Paso County’s Green Mountain Falls attracted more than 100,000 visitors and boosted sales tax revenue by 36% year-over-year during its four-month run, according to the Denver Downtown Development Authority, which is helping pay for the artwork in Denver. That 6,000 square-foot sculpture, “Off the Beaten Path,” was suspended over Green Mountain Falls’ Gazebo Lake and was created to look like “luminous brushstrokes dancing across the sky,” .

Chavez watched the installation of “Sun Splash” over the Union Station fountain on Thursday and was surprised by how immersive it felt, with all five senses being engaged simultaneously, he said. The next sculpture will rise over Glenarm Plaza on Monday, June 25, he said, when 16th Street is temporarily shut down for the day.

“I can’t overemphasize the amount of collaboration that’s gone into this from city agencies,” Chavez said. “It’s way more complicated than it looks and could have taken at least two years to put together. Instead, it’s taken six months.”

“This is the kind of art that stops you in your tracks and inspires delight and curiosity,” said Gretchen Hollrah, executive director of Denver Arts & Venues, in a statement. “The Skynets transform familiar public spaces into something unexpected, and they demonstrate what’s possible when partners across the city come together around a shared vision.”

The sculptures are expected to be on display through October, and a handful of events are planned throughout the summer to complement them, Chavez said.

“As a Colorado native artist, it is an honor and a thrill to create magic and whimsy in Denver,” Shearn said in a statement. “My creative practice is to reveal, in a beautiful way, what nature is doing that we all take for granted.”

Cesario Serrato, 56, left a parking lot at 2000 Larimer Street, drove across two lanes of traffic and turned right at 20th Street, striking the three pedestrians, according to his arrest affidavit. Investigators believe Serrato ran the red light when turning, Denver police Sgt. Katherine McCandless said in an email to The Denver Post.

Denver officers responded to the crash in the 1300 block of 20th Street — on the edge of the city’s Union Station and Five Points neighborhood — at 2:23 a.m. Sunday, according to the affidavit.

Two pedestrians were thrown from the crosswalk and one was pulled under Serrato’s car, police wrote in the affidavit. Officers and bystanders had to lift Serrato’s car to free the pedestrian, who was dragged half a block before Serrato stopped in traffic, according to the affidavit. The three victims have not been publicly identified, and updates on their conditions were not available on Tuesday.

Serrato, who was driving with a revoked license at the time of the crash, “appeared to be intoxicated,” the affidavit stated. He had bloodshot and watery eyes, slurred speech, trouble understanding instructions and the “strong odor of alcoholic beverages on his breath,” police said.

Paramedics took Serrato to the hospital because of his “extreme level of intoxication,” police wrote in the affidavit. Serrato was later arrested on suspicion of vehicular assault, a felony, court records show.

As of Tuesday morning, Serrato’s next court date had not yet been scheduled. He was being held at that time on a $50,000 cash-only bail at Denver’s downtown detention center, .

This is a developing story and may be updated.

The new analysis by the Denver office of shows that rents in LoDo for buildings characterized as Class A or trophy were only about $1 per square foot more than the rest of downtown in 2019. The current rents are more than $12 per square foot higher than the rest of the central business district.

Rents for the most sought-after buildings in LoDo shot up 32% since 2019, compared with just 7% across the entire central business district.

“Everyone knows these buildings are performing better. What I found striking, putting the numbers to it, is just how wide that LoDo premium has become,” said T.J. Jaroszewski, senior director of research for the mountain region of JLL.

LoDo has consistently outperformed the rest of downtown since the COVID-19 pandemic, said Kourtny Garrett, president and CEO of the which promotes economic development. She said the area demonstrates the strength of a mixed-use neighborhood, dating back to the revitalization of Union Station, completed in 2014.

The business organization’s vision “is moving much more toward what you see in LoDo for the whole of downtown,” Garrett said.

Downtown Denver has been looking to get its groove back since the pandemic hit. Businesses closed their doors to the public and many people started working from home. Although activity has picked up and more employees are working at least a few days a week in the office, several downtown buildings remain underused and the loans on some business towers have lapsed into delinquency.

Building vacancies soared to the highest levels in decades, surpassing rates during the Great Recession and not seen since the region’s oil and gas bust in the mid-1980s.

One of the problems, real estate experts agree, is that the large stock of older buildings have suffered from what the industry calls a “flight to quality:” newer sites with up-to-date amenities in more diverse neighborhoods. Areas such as LoDo have fared better because of a mix of offices, restaurants, stores, entertainment spots and walkability, Jaroszewski said.

LoDo was attracting more interest than other parts of downtown even before COVID, he added. A real estate seminar focused on what people called the tale of two cities.

“We were positing even back then that all the pulse, all the lifeblood, all the attention was going toward the LoDo/Union station area,” Jaroszewski said.

But Jaroszewski was surprised when he separated the LoDo numbers from the rest of the central business district by how sharp the differences had become.

“It����ap the scale of the separation that����ap opened up inside downtown once you actually put hard numbers to it,” Jaroszewski said. “At this point, it increasingly feels like certain parts of downtown are still competing for demand, while other parts are competing much harder just to stay relevant in the conversation.”

The boundaries of the LoDo sub-market are generally Speer Boulevard to Coors Field and around Larimer Street to roughly a couple blocks west of Union Station. Jaroszewski’s analysis focused on the 68 Class A Buildings in the central business. Of those, 24 are in LoDo.

Vacancies in LoDo’s Class A buildings ticked up 2.5% since 2019, while those in the rest of the business district rose 22%.

LoDo’s vacancy rate for all types of building is about 20%, compared with 36.5% for the entire downtown.

Garrett believes the planned conversions of office buildings to residences and investments being made by Denver Downtown Development Authority in other parts of the central business district will be a catalyst for downtown. She sees the area shifting from a one-dimensional commercial office center into “something that is much more mixed-use and neighborhood driven.”

More than 70 new businesses opened last year along 16th Street, Garrett said. Formerly called the 16th Street Mall, the area, downtown’s primary corridor and home to restaurants, retail, hotels and office buildings, went through a $175.4 million makeover that was completed in 2025.

“The success that LoDo’s seeing is going to contribute to the success that the (central business district) will see. I think it’s a precursor to what they’re going to see,” said David Welsh, an executive vice president with the Downtown Denver Partnership.

Updated June 11, 2026, to add detail.

The changes include the temporary suspension of the D, H and L rail lines due to the downtown rail reconstruction project, the temporary reinstatement of the C line to allow continued transit from Union Station to Mineral Station, and an increased frequency for the 16th Street FreeRide bus, from four-and-a-half minutes to three minutes.

Other rail service improvements include the B Line, which runs from Union Station to Westminster Station, increasing to every 30 minutes and the G Line, which runs from Union Station to Wheat Ridge, moving to stops every 15 minutes.

A full list of changes is available on . The agency also recommends customers use the to make necessary changes to their travel plans.

RTD generally makes service adjustments three times a year to account for new traffic patterns, economic conditions and customer feedback. The next update typically happens in August or September.

Friday-Sunday. There’s no better place to nosh on a gyro, sip some ouzo or otherwise immerse yourself in Greek culture than this weekend’s 60th annual Denver Greek Festival. The joyous event, which last year hit record attendance of more than 30,000, according to organizers, runs Friday, June 5, through Sunday, June 7, with “an expanded festival footprint, indoor dining, faster food service, two new Plaka vendor areas, new menu offerings” and more.

Visitors can enjoy traditional dance and music (including choir concerts inside the cathedral), cathedral tours, cooking demos and tributes. The family-friendly event takes place at Assumption of the Theotokos Greek Orthodox Cathedral, 4610 E Alameda Ave. in Denver, 11 a.m.-11 p.m. Friday and Saturday, and 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Sunday. Admission is $3-$5 per day; kids 12 and under are free. Call 303-388-9314 or visit for more details.

St. John’s Cathedral goes 3D

Opens Thursday. Capitol Hill’s gorgeous, 121-year-old landmark St. John’s Cathedral will try something different as it premieres the immersive, projection-driven new show “Celestia” on Thursday, June 11.

Created by Canada’s Paquin Entertainment Group and Normal Studio, “the custom installation will reimagine the revered space and Gothic Revival architecture as a living canvas, inviting the community and audiences of all ages to embark on a visually stunning and emotionally profound journey through a fusion of light, projections and original music,” producers wrote. (Translation: They’ll have animated, 360-degree projections set to a soundtrack.)

It takes place at 1350 N. Washington St. in Denver. Tickets to the 8:30 and 9:45 p.m. performances, some featuring a live choir on Fridays and Saturdays, are $38 for kids 2-15, and $49-$64 for adults, with discounts available, via .

Meow Wolf’s “phenomenal” summer

Opens Friday. There’s never a shortage of things to do at Meow Wolf Denver, where the Convergence Station immersive-art installation supports the on-site Perplexeplex venue and its widely varying bookings, ranging from trash-fashion and drag shows to buzzy, touring indie rockers and stand-ups.

But inside the exhibition, Meow Wolf is bringing back its Phenomenomaly programming Wednesdays through Sundays from June 5 through Aug. 9, with “performance spectacle” and “new mysteries and an evolving cast of creatures,” according to the company. That means roving bands of artists, actors, dancers, puppeteers and more, performing 2-7 p.m. on those select dates through August. First up? The June 5-7 shows from Love Art City, an Afro-futurist movement house.

It’s located at 1338 First St. in Denver. Tickets, which include the Phenomenomaly performances, are $50 for adults and $33 for kids 3-11, with $15 parking. Call 866-636-9969 or visit for more details.

LGBTQ Pride and doggie-drag shows

Friday and Saturday. The LGBTQ celebration known as Pride Month starts on June 1 in Denver, with dozens of ongoing activities that culminate in the reimagined Denver Pride parade and festival, coming to 16th Street and the Uptown neighborhood the final weekend of June. For quirky starting events, look to the doggie drag show The Mutt Strut, which takes place 10 a.m.-7 p.m. on Friday, June 6, at Skiptown Denver (3833 Steele St., Suite 1332). Visit for more.

The free event beats Union Station’s own version of a doggie drag-show, the also-free Paws with Pride, to the punch by a mere day, as the latter event returns for its third annual run on Saturday, June 7. Hosted by drag queen Talia Tucker at 1701 Wynkoop St. in Denver, Paws with Pride has a costume contest and runway show, with food and drink specials at Terminal Bar and pet-friendly vendors and local artisans, producers said. Visit for more details.

Rail

The D, H, and L line trains will be suspended temporarily due to the construction, according to an agency announcement on Wednesday.

— Replacing the D Line service, RTD will temporarily reinstate the C Line connecting Denver Union Station with Mineral Station in Littleton.

— A temporary T Line between Lincoln Station in south metro Denver and the I-25/Broadway Station will run every 15 minutes on weekdays between 6 a.m. and 6 p.m. The trains will run every 30 minutes between 6 p.m. and midnight on Sundays through Thursdays and until 2 a.m. on Saturdays.

— R Line rail service will extend farther south from Lincoln Station to the Sky Ridge, Lone Tree, and RidgeGate Parkway stations, running every 15 minutes from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. on weekdays and 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. on weekends.

— RTD officials also will restore train frequencies on routes to northwest metro Denver — to 15 minutes on the G Line (running weekdays between 6 a.m. and 9 p.m. and on Saturdays, Sundays, and holidays between 8 a.m. and 6 p.m.), and to 30 minutes on the B Line (running weekdays 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. to 6 p.m.)

— E and W line schedules will be adjusted

Bus

— Routes where changes will be made include: 0, 0L, 7, 10, 11, 15, 15L, 16, 17, 19, 20, 21, 22, 24, 28, 36, 37, 38, 42, 43, 44, 45, 51, 53, 73, 80, 92, 104L, 112, 120, 204, 225, 228, 324, 520, ART, DASH, DTFX (Denver Tech Center FlexRide), FlexRide, FREE, GS, JUMP, LD3, NB, PLFX (Platte Valley FlexRide), and SKIP

— RTD will use a state grant to improve bus service on the following routes: 0L, 10, 16th Street FreeRide, 19, 21, 37, 43, 53, 80, 104L, ART, and 287

— The 16th Street FreeRide will run every 3 minutes, increased from its 4 1/2-minute frequency

–Buses on the 0L and 43 routes around midday will run every 7 1/2 minutes

–Buses on the 104L route will arrive five minutes earlier on weekends for better connections to the N Line

— Schedule updates will affect the following routes: 0, 0L, 7, 10, 11,15, 15L, 16, 17, 19, 20, 21, 22, 28, 36, 37, 43, 44, 51, 92, 104L, 204, 225, 228A, 324, ART, DASH, FREE, GS, JUMP, LD3, NB1, NB2, and SKIP

RTD staffers monitor the transit system and make changes three times a year based on factors including traffic patterns, economic conditions, and customer feedback.

Arvada police officers responded to the fatal crash on RTD’s G Line at Allison Street, near the street’s intersection with Ridge Road, at about 12:15 a.m. Sunday, .

The pedestrian, who has not been publicly identified, was hit on a section of track between the Arvada Ridge and Olde Town Arvada stations.

“All rail crossing warning signals appear to be working at the time of the crash,” police said in a statement on social media.

The runs along an 11-mile route between Ward Road Station in Wheat Ridge and Union Station in Denver. No service alerts were active for the route at 9:30 a.m. Sunday.

Additional information about the crash, including why the person was on the tracks, was not immediately available. Officers were reviewing surveillance video as part of the investigation, police said.

This is a developing story and may be updated.

The train involved in the crash was the , a luxury passenger train operated by Canada-based . But Amtrak and various freight companies also use the Union Pacific-owned rails and, with the route closed to repair damage from the crash, those trains were unable to pass through on Wednesday and Thursday.

“We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience,” on Amtrak’s train status page stated. The route spans dozens of stations between Chicago and Emeryville, California.

Amtrak suspended service between Denver and Grand Junction on Thursday because of the derailment the day before, according to the alert. The disruption affected trips from those two stations and from the Fraser-Winter Park, Granby and Glenwood Springs stations, .

“Bus transportation will be provided,” the alert stated. “Crews will be coordinating a bus-to-train transfer to get all passengers off and onto another train in a safe and organized manner to continue travel.”

Amtrak service is expected to resume between the two stations on Friday, with the California Zephyr scheduled to leave Union Station at 8:46 a.m., according to the company.

“Repairs to the railroad track near Rifle, Colorado, have been completed, and rail service has now been restored in the area,” Union Pacific spokesperson Mike Jaixen said in an email to The Denver Post. Union Pacific owns the tracks where the passenger train derailed.

Jaixen did not answer questions about the extent of damage to the track, which parts of the track were damaged or the cost of repairs.

Amtrak officials did not respond to requests for comment Thursday.

The Utah-bound Canyon Spirit hit a tanker truck at about 9:40 a.m. Wednesday, just outside the town of Rifle in Garfield County, according to the Colorado State Patrol. The truck was on the train tracks along U.S. 6 when it was hit.

State patrol officials said the crash derailed six passenger cars and two locomotives, ripped open the truck’s tank of fuel and damaged the train tracks.

No train passengers reported any injuries, and the truck driver was taken to the hospital with minor injuries, according to the state patrol. Passengers were loaded onto buses to complete their trip to Moab, Utah.

The crash and derailment remain under investigation.

This is a developing story and may be updated.

But in building years, it is a washed-up retail concept in failing health that needs radical action to survive.

Left on its current course, the Pavilions could suffer a slow death, hindering the recovery of the rest of Upper Downtown, according to a panel of experts with the Urban Land Institute who were brought in to offer a diagnosis.

“It has had its place. It has had its moment in the sun, and we believe that it is now time to move on, to close this chapter and start the next one,” Kristen Morris, president of Morris & Fellows, a mixed-use development firm based in Atlanta, told downtown leaders at a presentation earlier this month.

After gathering opinions and touring the Pavilions and the surrounding neighborhood, the ULI panel offered a plan of care more akin to amputating both legs and less like a prescription for statins and exercise.

Tinkering with the tenant mix or giving the three-story development more time to find itself won’t resolve the fundamental issue — stacked outdoor retail hidden away from the street is a concept that stopped working a long time ago, Morris said.

The move away from mall culture to online purchases, generational shifts in shopping preferences, the unexpected loss of downtown office workers — those accelerated the downward spiral, but didn’t cause it.

The development’s decline was underway before the pandemic, and it has failed to recover long after it ended.

The city, which finalized its purchase of the outdoor mall late last year, should demolish the western half of the Pavilions and a good portion of the eastern side to make room for a “culturally significant open urban space,” according to the ULI panel’s recommendations.

In their initial concept, the panel favors an active urban park, finding inspiration from places like in Manhattan and in Cincinnati.

The United Artists theaters should be preserved to provide an indoor gathering space, useful during the colder months. What’s left of the retail space should focus on community-oriented programming with small-scale, local tenants who rotate through, creating a “kaleidoscope” of experiences.

The 800-parking spaces underneath the Pavilions are a valuable, income-generating asset that will be hard to replicate and should be preserved.

Two residential towers with 1,200 units between them should go up on the two empty lots, but in different phases. Those residents are key to turning a one-time tourist retail destination into a neighborhood amenity. Their energy is required to breathe new life into the area.

If Union Station became Denver’s “living room” after its redevelopment, the ULI argues the Pavilions could become Denver’s “front porch.”

“There’s like, really, no end in sight,” Morris warned of the current trajectory. “You can leave it there, and you can continue to let it deteriorate, both economically and performance-wise, as well as the building.”

A convention hotel won’t work

The Denver Downtown Development Authority (DDA), which voters granted $570 million in future tax dollars for revitalization efforts, has made the Pavilions a focal point of its attention.

The DDA spent $37 million of its limited funds to purchase the struggling open-air mall, as well as $23 million for 1505 and 1518 Glenarm Place, two adjacent parking lots along 15th Street that had different owners.

Another $8 million was set aside for renovation costs and lease incentives, not enough to foot the bill for a major demolition and new park.

That the authority has dedicated more than a tenth of its spending capacity to buy up the two blocks and then sought a ULI advisory panel for advice highlights how important it considers the area to Upper Downtown’s revival.

But the panelists wasted no time in quashing two of the ideas floated early on. One involves freshening up the retail and restaurant mix and bringing in more local concepts. As more office workers return and more residents move in, a recovery could eventually take hold.

Another proposal suggests the two lots be used for a large-scale convention hotel that could host gatherings too small to fill up the Colorado Convention Center but too big to fit in area hotels.

Denver eventually will need another convention hotel, which could help it win over meeting planners who don’t like putting attendees in a variety of smaller properties, said Suzanne Mellen, a senior managing director with HVS, a global hospitality consulting and valuation firm headquartered in New York City.

But at best, a hotel on the two undeveloped Pavilion lots could provide about 65,000 square feet of meeting space, which is less than the 100,000 square feet meeting planners would be looking for, she said.

And convention hotels aren’t cheap to build. Construction costs run at $800,000 to $1 million per room, meaning a 1,000-room property could top $1 billion, Mellen said.

The high costs mean substantial public subsidies would be required, requiring a long and drawn-out approval and planning process. The Pavilions needs a more immediate intervention, Mellen said.

“The panel concludes that hotel use is not recommended for the vacant parcels,” she said.

Who makes the call?

Behind the facade of fun destinations like Coyote Ugly and Lucky Strike, behind the memories of family meals at Maggiano’s Little Italy or lunch gatherings at 5280 Burger Bar, hides an uncertain future, one that the panelists warn won’t be resolved by waiting around.

The ULI has guided Denver leaders at critical moments in the past, including where to locate Denver International Airport and the Colorado Convention Center, and how to integrate Coors Field into the LoDo neighborhood.

In July 2022, the for the Speer Boulevard/Cherry Creek corridor. That greenway was actually a redevelopment in the early 1900s of a bunch of shanties and businesses that were using Cherry Creek for waste dumping.

The recent recommendations are tamer and include taking steps to more closely integrate the Auraria campus and Downtown, and bringing more residential and retail onto the campus.

And while the ULI recommendations carry weight and will receive careful consideration, the advisory panel is urging a more extreme and faster course of action, which could generate pushback.

A more detailed report is expected in the next three to six months, and the final call will likely come down to Mayor Mike Johnston and his point person on redevelopment, Bill Mosher, as well as the DDA board, which must approve any spending.

If the amount crosses $500,000, then the Denver City Council gets a say. At the crossroads of those two groups is DDA board member and City Council President Amanda Sandoval.

One of the nation’s leading downtown redevelopment consultants, Brad Segal, president and a founding partner of Progressive Urban Management Associates, is also based in Denver.

He helped get the original Pavilions off the ground in the 1990s, when he headed up the Downtown Denver Partnership.

And if any group were likely to speak up if it saw value in preserving the retail development as it is, that would be Historic Denver. Spoiler alert, it isn’t opposed to tearing down a large part of the Pavilions.

The Denver Post talked to Mosher, Sandoval, Segal and Historic Denver to get their take on what the ULI recommended.

The start of a conversation

“It was well done, really thoughtful and big picture,” said Bill Mosher, Denver’s Chief Projects Officer, of the ULI plan, stopping short of endorsing it as the final word.

“I view it as the start of a conversation,” he added politely.

]Mosher has proven himself a master of turning the city’s losses into wins. He has become Denver’s patron saint of impossible development causes.

His signature victory in a long list involved turning Union Station, a neglected Amtrak stop, into “Denver’s living room” complete with an active transit hub, high-end hotel and restaurants.

His messiest save was the Asarco Smelter, a once-vital industrial site that helped make Denver prosperous in the mining days. But the land paid a heavy price. After decades of remediation, Mosher helped it find a new life as the Crossroads Commerce Park.

Mosher said he was joking with the ULI panel that reactions they could expect would range from nostalgia to good riddance, from “we celebrated our prom there, please keep it,” to “it has had its day and needs to be demolished.”

“There is something between in my view,” he said. “We need to be thoughtful.”

Although it is struggling, the Pavilions is still 60% occupied with some loyal tenants, which is more than can be said of many of the surrounding office towers. It contains 350,000 square feet of space, which would be hard and costly to replicate.

Mosher said he was surprised that the two lots along 15th Street were never developed, and that the DDA was able to put all the parcels under one umbrella. If residential towers are the way to go, he sees 800 units as a more manageable number than the 1,200 the ULI has proposed.

The calls for 2,000 new housing units in Upper Downtown, but that represents more of a starting point than a final destination.

L.A. developer Asher Luzzatto has purchased four distressed office , pennies on the dollar, and plans to convert them, with the help of DDA support, into 1,200 housing units.

Mosher may need more convincing that a hotel won’t work. He is the CEO of the Denver Convention Center Hotel Authority and the lead developer on the 1,100-room Hyatt Regency Denver at the Colorado Convention Center, which was also considered a long-shot project at the time.

“We will look at what they say. I don’t know if it will be our roadmap,” Mosher said. “It provides some food for thought and a vision that makes us think in a larger context.”

Denver City Council President Amanda Sandoval said she appreciates the work that the ULI panel put into its recommendations, and agrees with most, but not all of them.

“I loved the idea of preserving the theater and connecting that to the Sundance Film Festival,” she said. She also “loved” the idea of adding two residential towers instead of a convention center hotel.

“I am not so sure about their recommendation of a park,” Sandoval said.

Rather than another green space, she envisions something more akin to a community gathering space surrounded by street-level retail, like a mercato or plaza that could hosts farmers markets in the summer and the Christkindlmarkt in December.

The DDA is investing heavily to revive two downtown parks, including one that is only a few blocks away from the Pavilions.

“I want to see those investments come forward,” Sandoval said.

The DDA is pouring $30 million into the redevelopment of Civic Center park, with another $7 million to overhaul the McNichols Building, which will add a garden dining area and an arts marketplace. The first phase is expected to cost $50 million.

The “, which rebuilds the stretch west of Arapahoe Street between 16th and 17th streets.

The DDA has approved $5 million in support, with $2.5 million coming from the Elevate Denver Bond Program, $1 million from Great Outdoors Colorado, and $19.5 million from Denver Parks & Recreation.

What will take the stage?

The land that now hosts the Denver Pavilions was part of a larger theater district that served as a draw for city residents looking for entertainment. Only the Paramount Theatre remains of that era.

In the push for urban renewal, the city tore down several beautiful buildings on the land, said Brad Segal, the urban consultant.

For more than two decades, the land sat fallow, hosting parks until the land was developed by Bill Denton and the Entertainment Development Group. Ken Gart and Gart Properties purchased the Pavilions in 2008.

Mosher was also active in trying to fill in the gaps along 16th Street. Segal, as director of the Downtown Denver Partnership at the time, was involved in the early stages.

Segal said a key takeaway out of the session for him was that the Denver Pavilions is an outdated retail format and most likely won’t be retail again. He agrees that a convention center hotel is a nonstarter, and he wishes the panel had gone beyond a single recommendation of an urban park.

The word carries different connotations for different people, and he envisions more of a town square, a point of comparison being the space in front of Union Station.

“When you characterize something as a park, that might have been a fumble,” he said.

Although compelling, the ULI recommendations are more important in terms of what they said not to do than what to do.

Reactions are mixed on tearing down the lion’s share of 350,000 square feet of retail space.

Sandoval, who has warm memories of time spent there with her children, questioned if a way could be found to create active gathering spaces without demolishing so much of the complex.

After three difficult years of construction along the full length of the former 16th Street Mall, she questions whether the area could survive another disruptive project.

Not communicated by anyone was a sense that the Denver Pavilions represents an architectural gem worthy of historic preservation, or that it should be preserved as a time capsule to late 1990s retailtainment.

Denver’s ordinance on historic designation requires a minimum of 30 years, more generous than most jurisdictions, which require 50 years.

That may reflect a realization that buildings are most vulnerable to demolition at that age, said Jay Homstad, senior director of preservation advocacy with Historic Denver, in an email.

Historic Denver, in an official statement, said the group was among the many stakeholders that the ULI team consulted during its weeklong study process in Denver.

“We’re supportive of the proposals, particularly the approach that retains a significant portion of the building, including the movie theater, while opening up space along 16th Street for the kind of street-facing retail that reflects how people actually use urban spaces today,” the group said in its statement.

Historic Denver also said it welcomed the addition of housing, which should “bring much-needed life to a part of downtown that has been struggling for activation.”

The development timeline for the Pavilions has been corrected. Bill Denton and the Entertainment Development Group built the Denver Pavilions, which in 2008 was acquired by Gart Properties. 

The car, which is blocking A, B, G and N line trains from reaching Union Station, was first reported on the tracks at about 2 p.m. Sunday, RTD spokesperson Pauline Haberman said.

As of 4:15 p.m. Sunday, a tow truck was on scene to remove the vehicle, Haberman said.

Bus shuttles replaced the partially blocked light rail lines throughout the afternoon, including between:

• Union Station and 38th-Blake Station on the
• Union Station and 41st & Fox Station on the
• Union Station and 48th & Brighton National Western Center Station on the

cited a trespasser on the tracks as the cause of the closure. The tracks remained closed at 4:30 p.m. Sunday.

Information on why the car was left on the tracks was not immediately available on Sunday.

This is a developing story and may be updated.