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.

RTD’s E and W lines will see service interruptions at Denver’s Union Station from the beginning of service Saturday until Tuesday. Riders should anticipate delays, the transportation district said in a news release.

The E line is being rerouted to a downtown loop and is detouring from the 10th-Osage Station to the Colfax at Auraria Station, then continuing to the 16th and 18th Street stations at Stout and California streets.

E line riders can take a temporary bus shuttle from the 10th-Osage Station to Union Station or take the 16th Street FreeRide, RTD officials said.

Bus shuttles are replacing W line service between the Auraria West Station and Union Station and will include the 10th-Osage Station to accommodate transfers.

E line shuttle locations:

• 10th-Osage Station: bus bridge gate on Osage Street;
• Empower Field at Mile High, Auraria West stations: bus bridge sign at Fifth and Larimer streets;
• Ball Arena-Elitch Gardens Station: bus bridge sign at station, near the Chopper Circle roundabout;
• Union Station: Gate B22 in the underground bus concourse.

Normal service is set to resume Tuesday, RTD officials said.

“The cool factor is off the charts,” Ryan Ross, director of and president of a local investigations firm, said. “The gondola system is like a ride-hailing car system in the air. You get to ride-hail your own cabin. It can seat up to six. You’d enter into your phone where you want to go.”

A public presentation by , , and manufacturers on Tuesday evening will unveil more about the envisioned “automated elevated transit network” — broader than the single-gondola concept city officials considered a few years ago. The presentation is scheduled for 6 p.m. in the auditorium at 101 W. Colfax.

New Downtown’s designs show gondola cabins moving above streets in three loops with 14 stops — one linking Denver Union Station with Civic Center, and another circling Civic Center. An eight-mile loop would link Union Station with the Burnham Yard (near the Denver Broncos’ preferred site for a future new football stadium), the Auraria higher education campus, Elitch Gardens and Coors Field.

Ross’s other proposals for reviving downtown include a 500-foot-tall Ferris wheel off Little Raven Street and an amphitheater along the 16th Street Mall.

Five years ago, gondola transit surfaced in a plan linking Denver Union Station with the Highland neighborhood west of downtown — crossing Interstate 25, train tracks, and the South Platte River. Cities elsewhere have installed gondolas for transit “where obstacles such as waterways, highways, or topography would make other alternatives less feasible,” DOTI planner Riley LaMie said. In ., city officials installed an aerial tram connecting the South Waterfront District with a university campus across diverse terrain.

For Denver, “this was proposed as a transit solution because of the highway, river, railroad, and topography changes that are all in close proximity to each other,” LaMie said. But DOTI hasn’t studied the feasibility of a downtown-wide system, potential benefits, and how gondolas would compare with other transit, he said.

The gondola cabins would move separately in the same direction along a fixed guideway, Ross said. At stations, the cabins would detach, and pulleys would lower them for passengers to get on or off. Speeds would range from 25 to 35 miles per hour, slowing at turns. They’d stop at every station or carry riders to stations they’d designate using a Den-Vair smartphone app, he said. “Commute to work. Rent a cabin for a private party. Ride alone and meditate. Ride with a group and get married in the air. Your ride. Your design.”

And while the excess supply has reduced the number of office towers, it hasn’t deterred five developers from adding nearly 600,000 square feet of new office space this year and early next, according to a , which is part of the Yardi Research.

“Office development across the U.S. remains quite limited at the moment. Outside of a handful of select gateway cities, most new projects tend to be concentrated in prime urban districts or higher-end suburban locations,” said Roxanne Cuceu, a spokeswoman with CommercialCafe.

That theme is playing out in metro Denver, where three of the five projects are going up in Cherry Creek, which has avoided the downturn hitting the rest of Denver since the pandemic. Those developments include 201 Fillmore, Milwaukee Place, and 2nd & Adams.

Clayworks in Golden represents the region’s largest mixed-use project at 181,503 square feet, including 171,160 square feet of office space. CoorsTek, which owns the 12.5-acre site that once housed its ceramic manufacturing at 800 Ford St., is converting it into a mixed-use which should improve Golden’s downtown area.

Clayworks will locate its global headquarters in the new building, called B3, and will also open up space for outside tenants in the multi-year redevelopment.

In Highlands Ranch, Remedy Medical Properties is building a 118,500-square-foot medical office building at 9051 SSG Chris Falkel Dr.

Driven in part by the need to care for an aging population, roughly last year. In metro Denver, that ratio this year is closer to one-fifth.

Nationally, developers have 28.9 million square feet of office space under construction, with half of that having broken ground in 2025, according to CommercialCafe.

The square footage of office space being added in Denver represents 0.4% of the total current office inventory, which ranks 16th overall as the percentage of office stock under construction among major metros.

Boston remains the country’s leader for office construction, with 4.1 million square feet being added, which represents 1.6% of the city’s total office stock. The city’s dominance in biotech and life sciences is driving that growth. But even in Boston, the volume of new office space is running only a quarter of the pace seen in 2024.

On a percentage basis, West Palm Beach, Fla., is adding the most space at 4%, which translates into 1.6 million square feet. That boom, centered on its downtown, is being driven by the area’s growing reputation as “Wall Street South.”

For Denver, Cherry Creek is likely to be the epicenter of new office development for the foreseeable future as taller buildings rise up and the neighborhood densifies.

Of the three projects underway in Cherry Creek, 201 Fillmore, which is also the address, is the largest at 130,000 square feet of office space. Schnitzer West, the developer, is taking a one-story retail building that once housed a boutique furniture store and replacing it with a seven-story tower.

201 Filmore will provide higher-end amenities like private terraces, a fitness center and upscale retail on the ground floor. The anchor tenant is Antero Resources, which is in the process of relocating from its current headquarters near Union Station.

Antero was a key company in spurring the revival of the Union Station neighborhood when it relocated from upper downtown to a new building in 2012.

Milwaukee Place, 242 Milwaukee St., is a 94,000-square-foot building, of which 84,000 square feet represents Class A office space. The remainder will be ground-floor retail anchored by TileBar, which specializes in tile and bath design, not cocktails.

Matt Joblon’s BMC Investments, the firm behind several other high-profile projects in Cherry Creek, broke ground in October and expects to finish the building by January on a former Sears store and Crate & Barrel site.

“We are focused on high-quality, well-designed office and retail space in select submarkets,” said Kelly Pretzer, managing director and head of development and affordable housing at BMC. “We have delivered several office buildings in Cherry Creek. We know that submarket well.”

The third project, with 81,858 square feet of office space and 94,466 square feet total, is 2nd & Adams, located at 3250 E. 2nd Ave., which has finished construction on the site of a long vacant lot.

Magnetic Capital, headed by partners Chris Carroll and Daniel Huml, has had no issues finding tenants to fill the five-story building. The retail on-site will include a rooftop bar, and tenants are completing finishes on their offices.

And more projects are on the drawing board. Cherry Creek West, the redevelopment of 13 acres on the west side of the Cherry Creek Shopping Center that housed a Bed Bath & Beyond and an Elway’s steakhouse, is expected to start demolition soon.

That development is expected to contribute 600,000 square feet of new office space in the coming years, about as much as is now under construction metrowide.

Alpine Investments’ Timber 225, 225 Clayton St., is expected to add roughly 100,000 square feet of high-end office space. It represents Cherry Creek’s first “mass timber” office building, and is expected to be completed later next year.

A four-story mixed-use building with office space is set to replace the Cucina Colore restaurant at 3035 E. 3rd Ave.

Downtown Denver and the Denver Tech Center, by contrast, are facing the destruction of office space and unimaginably high vacancy rates six years after the pandemic began and workers went remote.

Downtown did see 1900 Lawrence open its doors in 2024. The 30-story tower contains more than 700,000 square feet of class A office space, along with 10,000 square feet of ground-floor retail.

Riverside Investment & Development out of Chicago was the developer behind the largest office tower built in downtown Denver in more than four decades.

While 1900 Lawrence has successfully poached high-profile firms like Gibson Dunn and Reed Smith from older skyscrapers, the tower symbolizes the downtown market����ap ongoing struggle, with roughly 75% of its floor space still seeking a tenant, according to 19 leases available on

CommercialCafe estimates that 450,000 square feet of Denver office space has been demolished in recent years, based on the information it has available. Much more is expected to convert into apartments and possibly condos in the years ahead.

The owners of 7601 Technology Way, a six-floor office building with 140,000 square feet in the Denver Tech Center, have applied to demolish the building, even though it is a relatively young 30-year-old. The plan is to build 600 apartments on the site.

Arrow Electronics in Centennial demolished its 125,000 square foot building at 9201 E. Dry Creek Road late last year after determining it didn’t make sense to repurpose the structure, built in 2001, for residences, according to

A multi-family complex with 329 apartments is planned for the site of the former corporate headquarters.

Some buildings have been targeted for conversion. Notable projects include the conversion of the historic Petroleum Building from office space into residential use, creating 178 new housing units, as well as similar work at the University Building that will add 120 mixed-income units.��

Developer Asher Luzzatto is also planning to convert nearly 1 million square feet of downtown office space into approximately 700 apartments. On Wednesday, the DDA board approved a low-interest loan up to $63 million to support the High Fidelity Plaza redevelopment.

Metro Denver’s apartment market, however, is pulling back after years of strong growth. That is reflected in rising vacancy rates and rents that have dropped to 2022 levels.

On the upside

The industrial market remains the strongest part of commercial real estate in metro Denver. Industrial space developers are building 7.9 million square feet in metro Denver, which ranks ninth in the country by total volume, according to CommercialCafe.

Upon completion, the projects will boost the region’s total industrial inventory by 2.8%, which is above the 1.7% increase average nationally for all the industrial projects underway.

The northern Front Range is home to the second-largest industrial project in the country, a 3.5-million-square-foot facility for Amazon at 6425 Byrd Drive in Loveland, .

PepsiCo is also working on the largest bottling plant in its history, a 1.2 million square foot facility near Denver International Airport that will replace a much smaller plant in River North.

That said, CommercialCafe warns that with a 12.2% industrial vacancy rate in the region, which ranks second highest in the country among the 20 markets with the most new industrial construction, “the depth of occupier demand to absorb new supply is less certain.”

— Denver Post reporter Jessica Alvarado Gamez contributed to this report.

Campos paid $1.48 million on Monday for the two-story building at 1509 Blake St., according to public records.

The 1509 Blake building is 11,365 square feet, according to LoopNet, making the deal worth $130 a square foot. The structure sits on a 5,500-square-foot lot.

The building was sold by 15 Blake LLC, which paid $3.43 million for the building in 2004, records show.

Campos, which was founded in 2005 by Marco Campos, has more than 590 employees and provides engineering, procurement and construction services to utility, energy and midstream companies, according to its website.

The company is headquartered at 1401 Blake St. but also has employees in other office space around LoDo.

Marco Campos told BusinessDen the company intends to remodel the 1509 Blake St. site and move one of its offices closer to Union Station into the building.

Campos owns its headquarters real estate, having bought it in December 2013 for $4.7 million. In January 2020, the company paid another $3 million for office space at 1488 and 1510 Wazee St., records show.

Two doors down from 1509 Blake St., restaurateur Francois Safieddine is preparing to open a steakhouse called Noble. And just down the street, at 1550 Blake St., a Thai restaurant recently opened where a Korean fried chicken joint previously operated.

Read more from our partner, .

The issue arose after RTD announced that B-Line and G-Line trains linking downtown with west metro Denver soon could run twice as frequently as they have for the past five years — at no extra cost. That led RTD directors to seek an explanation and wonder whether RTD could impose penalties or seek reimbursement for train service the agency paid contractor Denver Transit Partners for but that residents didn’t receive.

This week RTD chief executive and general manager Debra Johnson sent a memo to directors confirming the agency reduced the B-Line and G-Line rail service in April 2020 during the pandemic. Johnson said agency managers ordered DTP in December 2023 to move B and G line cars and operators to the A-Line, which was done in January 2024.

RTD deputy chief operations officer for rail Dave Jensen on Thursday characterized the change as “a swap of equipment, which was a better way to go, without revising the contract.”�� The contract obligated DTP to provide the B and G line service.

Johnson said “RTD has no grounds to seek reimbursement” because agency officials instructed DTP to make the shift.

“Why didn’t we switch it back sooner? What’s the impact going to be now on the A-Line service?” RTD director Chris Nicholson asked before an agency audit committee meeting Thursday.

At the audit committee meeting, directors voted unanimously to authorize the agency’s chief audit executive to look into the arrangement and recommend in April whether a full independent audit is warranted.

RTD director Cindy Arcuri said the investigation should include a review of monthly payments made to DTP during the six-year period when service was reduced and whether agency officials previously considered restoring B and G line service.

The RTD’s proposed restoration of commuter train service to northwest metro Denver would start in June, if the directors approve.

Since April 2020, G-Line trains to Arvada and the have run every 30 minutes, and B-Line trains to Westminster have run once per hour.

The trains to Arvada would run at a peak frequency of 15 minutes, as they did before the pandemic, instead of 30 minutes. trains to Westminster would be restored to run every 30 minutes, instead of once per hour.

RTD’s have embraced this doubled frequency as a potential game-changer to boost lagging ridership at a difficult time when agency officials are struggling to address a $250 million-a-year budget hole. They’d been considering service cuts, and agency leaders are planning job cuts.

But the agency’s board hasn’t taken action to hold the contractor, , accountable.

When RTD officials discovered that Denver Transit Partners wasn’t providing the service required under an agreement with the agency, they “immediately” ordered the company to boost train frequency, starting in June, subject to board approval, agency spokeswoman Marta Sipeki said in an emailed response to questions.

The transit agency reduced bus and train service during the pandemic and, in July 2022, committed to a plan for restoration of service, factoring in ridership. No timetable was set, but bus and rail service elsewhere has been restored.

RTD data reviewed by The Denver Post shows the agency has paid Denver Transit Partners more than $414 million since 2019 to run and maintain RTD’s B, G and A rail lines. RTD did not specify how much it overpaid, under a complex contract, for services not delivered.

Agency officials did not respond to The Post’s requests to elaborate on those costs, or explain when they first realized Denver Transit Partners wasn’t delivering the full B and G line service required by its contract.

Officials at Denver Transit Partners declined to comment for this story, referring questions to RTD.

RTD did not make executives available to discuss this matter with The Post, and agency communications officials did not respond to repeated follow-up questions.

RTD spent millions

The agency’s executives haven’t said whether they’ll seek reimbursement or impose a penalty on Denver Transit Partners, which received $87 million to run the A, B, and G rail lines in 2024 alone, according to the agency data provided to the advocacy group and reviewed by The Post.

Metro Denver residents across eight counties pay sales taxes that fund RTD operations and cover roughly 70% of the district’s record $1.5 billion budget.

RTD began running the 11.2-mile electric commuter rail G Line in 2019, and the agency opened the 6.2-mile B Line in 2016. Both were part of RTD’s FasTracks project, approved by voters in 2004 on the understanding that revenues from a sales tax increase would fund eventual extension of the G Line to Golden and the B Line to Boulder and Longmont.

FasTracks hasn’t been completed due to insufficient funds.

RTD Director Patrick O’Keefe, chairman of the agency’s 15-member board, said he is interested in understanding agency contracts better to determine what happened.

“I will look at the agreements. … I am very happy the service on those lines is increasing,” O’Keefe said Thursday.

RTD’s reliance on privatized funding “means we owe minimum payments even if the service is not being delivered,” and “higher frequency still costs more than we pay for minimal or no service,” he said, adding that he’s frustrated and “we have to live with those contracts, for now.”

RTD Director Brett Paglieri, who represents a west metro district encompassing the G Line’s , said the increased frequency means public transit will be viable for more people because “if people have to think about when to leave, they are less likely to use it, and if trains run frequently and you likely won’t have to wait more than 10 minutes they are much more useful.”

“Being able to do this without increased cost is a huge win. It shows there are a lot of opportunities in the agency to make transit more efficient and benefit the riders. … I understand it sounds a little suspect,” Paglieri said, planning to seek a full explanation for how service can be increased for no extra cost.

“All I was told previously when asking about this was that ‘it is very complicated,’ ” he said.

The ridership on RTD trains and buses has fallen by nearly 40% since since 2019. Colorado lawmakers, along with transit advocacy groups, blame low frequency as the core obstacle to making transit competitive with driving. Service improvements can cost millions to implement.

Mayors elated

West metro mayors welcomed the prospect of better rail service, aware that residents face worsening traffic congestion and rising costs as they move around metro Denver.

“I am absolutely over the moon about this. It is going to help a lot of our commuters,” said Arvada Mayor Lauren Simpson, who used to ride G Line trains to drop her daughter at school and reach work downtown, before 2020, when trains ran every 15 minutes.

When RTD supervisors reduced the frequency during the pandemic and then did not restore it, Simpson no longer could rely on public transit, she said. “I spent a small fortune on parking in downtown Denver.”

Along the B Line in Westminster, Mayor Claire Carmelia anticipated the return to 30-minute frequency as “a milestone for improving transit options for our community.”

“Not everybody can afford a car in this inflated economy,” she said, noting better public transit and closer collaboration with RTD has become a primary conversation for members of the regional planning organization, where she serves on the board.

She and Simpson questioned how RTD wasn’t able to run trains more frequently over the past five years and could now propose to do so at no extra cost.

“If there was an error, and service was being paid for and not delivered, that is highly concerning,” Simpson said. “It����ap highly inappropriate for money to be spent for a service that wasn’t delivered. … I certainly want to know more about it.”

‘Getting a sub-par experience’

RTD officials issued a statement confirming their push for Denver Transit Partners to boost train frequency. If approved by the board in March, the changes will take effect June 7.

RTD selected Denver Transit Partners in 2010 to design, build, finance, run, and maintain the A Line to Denver International Airport, along with the B and G lines.

The train hours and mileage costs for running service at current frequencies on the B and G lines total about $11.3 million ($7.9 million for the G Line, and $3.4 million for the B Line), agency spokeswoman Sipeki said in an email.

On Dec. 2, Greater Denver Transit advocates met with RTD’s new chief operations officer, Patrick Preusser, who joined the agency in September, and raised questions about train frequency on the B and G lines, among other issues.

Preusser committed to look into the matter, two Greater Denver Transit leaders said, lauding him for “openness to review operational issues” and solve problems.

On Feb. 11, Preusser told directors in a committee meeting that agency staffers proposed to double B and G line train frequency and that this restoration of service would be “cost neutral.” RTD staffers proposed the changes to strengthen reliability and restore service “where it matters most,” he told directors.

RTD directors in March are expected to approve the increased train frequencies, along with other , including the extension of RTD’s 15 bus route to reach an Amazon fulfillment center and the resumption of C Line trains running between southwest suburbs and downtown.

RTD Director Chris Nicholson said he’s “excited that the current RTD board and leaders could deliver increased service on the B and G lines. Understanding what happened before is worthwhile and is something the board should look into.”

It’s a matter of trust, said Saigopal Rangaraj, a co-director of Greater Denver Transit, and “when contract terms are not upheld, it is fair for the wronged party to take corrective measures.”

“If frequencies have been lagging by half what RTD has been paying for, we as a community have been getting a sub-par experience. This contributes to a significant decrease in usability and ridership on these lines,” Rangaraj said.��“Faith in public institutions is already quite low. Any instance of RTD not providing what was promised hurts the agency’s credibility.

“There are a lot of critics in our community who believe that investing in transit is not a wise investment of public funds. Worse ridership plays into that narrative that public transit is not a worthwhile investment.”

It means travelers in the future might be able to rely on better train and bus service to get to DIA. The shift occurred last month as a required federal review began for the project to fix Peña Boulevard, the mostly two-lane freeway linking Denver with the airport and booming northeastern suburbs. Funding remains uncertain for the project, expected to cost hundreds of millions of dollars.

GreenLatinos, Greater Denver Transit, the Southwest Energy Efficiency Project, and other groups have been challenging highway projects around metro Denver that could worsen air pollution — including DIA’s planned widening of Peña Boulevard. They argue that road expansions provide only a temporary fix and, in the longrun, draw more traffic.

“Are we really going to just keep on widening roads for vehicles?” GreenLatinos director Ean Tafoya said. “Don’t people care about the air emissions?”

Boosting the frequency of Regional Transportation District�� trains by adding track — initially excluded from DIA’s Peña — combined with construction of bus-only lanes for faster bus access, will now be evaluated as a core alternative, airport planners told the Denver Post.

“Rail expansion and other transit alternatives are under consideration,” DIA project manager Danielle Yearsley said in an emailed response to questions. “A full range of alternatives is being considered through the National Environmental Policy Act review process, including alternatives that the previous Peña Master Plan screened out.”

The NEPA planning process requires careful study of the environmental pros and cons of multiple alternatives to be eligible for federal funding. The would have to approve DIA’s final decision.

Dealing with traffic congestion on Peña has become a headache for air travelers and nearby residents. Vehicle traffic increasingly backs up along the road, which runs 11 miles from Interstate 70 to DIA’s main terminal. The average drive time, once eight minutes, has tripled to 24 minutes. Unpredictable jams and rear-end accidents sometimes hang up drivers for more than half an hour.

During peak travel periods, RTD runs trains along its 23-mile A Line linking Denver Union Station with DIA at “the highest frequency possible” — every 15 minutes, an agency spokeswoman said. The ride costs $10 one-way and takes about 37 minutes with trains reaching speeds of 79 miles per hour. But the frequency decreases to around half an hour in the evenings and early mornings. Buses to and from DIA often run only once an hour.

The A Line commuter trains, powered by overhead electrical lines, typically include two 91-seat cars, and can carry more than 300 passengers, according to RTD’s . That means the A Line theoretically could move 60,000 people a day to and from DIA. But the average daily ridership has decreased from 24,000 in 2019 to about 20,600, agency records show. In August 2025, 650,000 riders boarded the trains, down from 744,000 in August 2019. Meanwhile, Peña Boulevard carries an average of 187,000 vehicles a day, according to airport data.

Denver councilman Kevin Flynn questioned rail expansion as a viable alternative, pointing to excess capacity on the A Line and raising concerns that trains aren’t accessible for some metro residents.

“Transit improvements that serve the whole of the metro area would be a valuable addition to the Peña Boulevard study, and express bus service from points around the vast airport travelshed not served by the A Line would make excellent use of a managed-lanes expansion,” Flynn said. “The unfortunate reality is that expansion of the A Line could never be financed while the trains are still running far below their existing capacity.”

When Denver built the airport and Peña Boulevard around 1993, the FAA provided airport improvement grant funding in 1989 and 1996 to help acquire land. In accepting those funds, Denver agreed to conditions that included following FAA rules for acceptable and prohibited uses of airport revenue.

Then, over three decades, Denver and Aurora promoted residential, commercial, and industrial warehouse development in the area, increasing truck and other traffic on Peña Boulevard, complicating access to the airport.

Denver Mayor Michael Johnston’s administration will “continue to support development around Denver International Airport,” mayoral spokesman Jon Ewing said, adding that “public transit will always be something we explore.”

Given DIA’s role as “the largest economic engine in the region,” Ewing said, “it is paramount that any changes to Peña Boulevard reflect our needs today as well as our needs 50 years from now, and we expect the study currently underway to inform any decisions.”

FAA officials this week reiterated their position that their agency “will not fund any portion of the Peña Boulevard project” because “the road is not a dedicated airport access,” agency spokeswoman Crystal Essiaw said.

However, “the FAA agreed the airport can use airport revenue to fund part of the Peña Boulevard expansion project,” Essiaw said.

That portion hasn’t been determined.

A petition from Greater Denver Transit advocates, Green Latinos, the Sierra Club, Denver Bicycle Lobby, and SWEEP proposes the creation of a large parking lot near RTD’s 40th & Airport station, close to the I-70 interchange where Peña Boulevard begins. Airport travelers could take the A Line from the lot for the final stretch to DIA.

Public transit advocates also have called on RTD to establish new bus routes along the E-470 beltway linking Highlands Ranch and Parker with DIA, similar to the that links DIA with Boulder.

“Across the country, it����ap been demonstrated that widening roads does not resolve traffic congestion over the long term,” Greater Denver Transit co-founder James Flattum said. “If we make the A Line more frequent, we can eliminate that inefficient step for travelers of waiting around in a parking lot for a diesel shuttle, and drivers to the airport can skip Peña traffic congestion,” he said. “We want to make transit competitive with driving for getting to and from the airport.”

The Colorado Department of Transportation’s distance-based fares from Denver Union Station range from $10 for the ride to downtown Fort Collins, to $12 to Colorado Springs, $28 to Glenwood Springs, and $43 to Grand Junction.

But CDOT officials are scrambling to keep Bustangs running after 2027. A one-time $30 million investment from state lawmakers for an experimental service expansion runs out this summer. The fares bring $4.5 million a year. The service costs $50 million.

Ridership demonstrates the appeal of affordable, reliable bus alternatives to driving, Paul DesRocher, CDOT’s director of transit and rail, said. “If you make transit more convenient by adding more service, more opportunities to use it, then people will follow. If you build it, they will come.”

Beyond the economic and environmental benefits of bus transit, riders gain mental peace from “not having to deal with daily traffic,” DesRocher said. “You’re able to sit back and not deal with any of that, able to surf your smartphone, or work, or read a book,” he said. “We’re hoping we can maintain this level of service and potentially grow it.”

Bustangs along the primary I-25 and I-70 routes run as frequently as every 45 minutes. Longer routes, such as the one linking Denver with Crested Butte, and rural “Outrider” Bustangs run once or twice a day. On Tuesday, CDOT restored a stop in Cañon City, the second largest city on the Pueblo-Alamosa route. The riders get Wi-Fi, bathrooms, bike racks,110-volt outlets, USB charging stations, and reclining high-back seats. The buses, with wheelchair lifts, can carry up to 50 passengers.

Statewide Bustang ridership increased to 385,248 in 2025, up 24% from 2024, state data show. That����ap 8.7 times as many riders as the 44,175 when CDOT launched Bustang in 2015 and more than triple the 118,015 riders before the pandemic in 2019, the data show.

This week, CDOT leaders, state transportation commissioners, and the director of the Colorado Transportation Investment Office, the agency’s for-profit enterprise branch, began brainstorming possible solutions.

They’re considering revenues from tolled express lanes and Colorado’s fee on rental cars. They’re also planning to ask for more support from state lawmakers.

“Can we afford to maintain this service? Or do we just have to cut it back?” Commissioner Hannah Parsons said in a workshop discussion.

CDOT officials are planning to reallocate agency funds to maintain existing routes through 2027 while searching for a longterm financial solution.