First, we will start with ‘One City Block‘. It does in fact take up an entire city block. Having this parking lot gone is a major start for the continued development of Uptown.

2300 Walnut is another project that is taking up an entire block and it looks like basic utility work has begun. Great sign of progress with this development!

I have always hated the fact there was an ugly dirt lot directly across Coors Field. Broadstone Blake Street is going to fix this eyesore of a problem.

Parking lots in front of a mass transit hub like Union Station are never okay. Luckily the South Wing (Left) and North Wing (Right) buildings are taking up those lots. Notice, a crane base has been set for the North Wing building!

Next up we have 16 Wewatta which is on a more pleasing eyesore level, and Cadence / 1601 Wewatta. GE Johnson has their trailers out on the site of Cadence, another hopeful sign of progress.

Continuing down the path of the upcoming Union Station neighborhood, you have 16 Chestnut (Left) and Alta City House (Right).

A quick skip away, there are the Delgany Apartments (Left). A fence has been put up around the lot, another good sign of progress. Then you have 20th and Chestnut (right) which is approaching groundbreaking.

Last but not least, the AMLI Riverfront project which is making a huge leap forward to helping complete the Riverfront Park master plan.

I cannot wait until I can start making updates of these projects individually when they all kick off. Just on this tour alone I covered 12 lots that are planned to be filled. This doesn’t include the developments that are in progress which have already relieved an ugly parking lot of its active duty. We are on the verge of a boom which is great news for our city.

Certainly, the past few years have been difficult for infill development, with the economy and financial markets struggling to recover from the recession. However, it appears that 2011 was the year that the local economy really started picking up. In fact, 2011 was a great year for progress in Downtown Denver, and 2012 promises to be downright boom-like.

In 2011, two trends were evident: 1.) Public-sector development and investment has been keeping Downtown Denver a very busy place; 2.) Central Denver is on the cusp of another major residential building boom.

1. In a way, you’d never know the local economy was still recovering from a recession by the amount of construction activity in Downtown Denver in 2011. Thanks to our knack for launching major public works projects just before or during real estate busts, Denver enjoyed a robust year of construction cranes and cone-zones due to public-sector investments in city, state, and federal facilities and infrastructure. In all four directions, Downtown Denver was busy with construction in 2011:

To the South: In Downtown Denver’s Civic Center area, construction on the state’s History Colorado Center and Ralph L. Carr Colorado Judicial Center were in full-swing in 2011. The feds launched the modernization of the Cesar Chavez Building, and the city was busy with tens of millions of dollars of Better Denver Bond investments in Civic Center Park restorations, City & County Building renovations, the new Denver Police Crime Lab building, and a bunch of street/bike/ped projects in and around Civic Center. Add in the Clyfford Still Museum, and the southern end of Downtown was one booming place!

To the East: The Denver Housing Authority continued to work on its Park Avenue redevelopment project in 2011, with the multi-block, multi-year effort nearing completion. Also, Arapahoe Square’s redevelopment is underway with the completion of Solera, the beginning of construction of 2020 Lawrence, and the completion of the Northeast Downtown Neighborhoods Plan. Broadway through Arapahoe Square was completely rebuilt, and East Colfax continued to see new infill projects and momentum towards a future streetcar line.

To the West: The Auraria Campus was undergoing a nice building boom of its own with the concurrent construction of two Metro State projects: the Hotel and Hospitality Learning Center and the Student Success Building. These two projects, along with the Auraria Science Building completed in 2010, are helping to create a more urban edge to Auraria’s boundary with Downtown. Other improvements on the west side of Downtown include the transformative 14th Street project, RTD’s West Corridor light rail construction, and the launch of Denver Housing Authority’s Lincoln Park redevelopment.

To the North: In case you haven’t heard, there’s a lot going on around Denver’s Union Station—about a half-billion-dollar’s worth of goings-on—and that’s not counting the private-sector development that is underway, like the DaVita HQ. A bit further north (or is it west?), Lower Highland continues to sizzle as Downtown’s hottest residential neighborhood. Rick is planning a special Union Station Update to recap that project’s accomplishments in 2011. Stay tuned…

2. We’re on the cusp of a MAJOR housing boom in central Denver, only this time it’s rental and not for-sale residential units that are leading the charge. We’ve reported during 2011 that a number of new residential projects were underway or proposed for the Downtown area, such as Highland Park, Manhattan Phase 2, Prospect on Central, 2020 Lawrence, 19th & Little Raven, 1560 Boulder, 20th & Chestnut, 17th & Chestnut, and 19th & Logan. These are all great projects and evidence of economic recovery and the continued confidence in our urban core.

Here’s the thing: this is just the beginning. In the past few months, for every project I’ve reported on DenverInfill, there are about three to four projects that I haven’t reported. I haven’t mentioned them because they represent projects that are only rumored or otherwise unsubstantiated, or projects that have been revealed to me in confidence. Nevertheless, I have on my project-tracking list about 20 multi-family rental projects within a mile-or-so radius of Downtown that haven’t been reported on this blog. As is always the case with real estate development, a few will happen, many will not. But even if only half of these unannounced projects make it out of the ground in 2012, Downtown Denver will have several thousand housing units under construction in 2012. Is that too much? Well, the rental vacancy rate is as low as it’s been in a decade, and urban core areas continue to have strong appeal throughout the nation, so we’ll see. Nevertheless, I suggest you get ready for a very busy 2012 for central Denver infill development. I’ll wait until our 2012 Retrospective to say that the “Boom is Back,” but this is a heads-up that it may be.

We live in a fantastic city, with an urban core that features an amazing mix of 19th Century homes and storefronts, 20th Century buildings of every imaginable shape, size, and style, and a significant infusion of new 21st Century developments that are filling the gaps in our urban fabric that resulted from tragic decisions that nearly destroyed our downtown area in an effort to make life as easy as possible for people driving cars. As we shed that automobile-centric perspective and shift toward emphasizing pedestrians, bicycles, and transit, Downtown will only get better. We saw that transformation advance in 2011 and it will continue to gain steam in 2012.

2011 was a very good year for central Denver. I’m confident 2012 will be even better.

The ULI-Colorado TOD Marketplace is a full-day conference of national and local speakers, workshops and a Great Sites Trading Floor that will be held at the Embassy Suites in downtown Denver (14th & Stout) on November 17, 2011, from 7:30 am – 6 pm.

The TOD Marketplace breaks into four program sections:

• National speakers including Emerick Corsi of Forest City Enterprises and Steven Goldin of Washington Metro, the two most successful and prolific TOD developers in the U.S.
• Panels featuring national and local experts on innovative finance, parking, redevelopment, housing, and public-private partnerships,
• Workshops on key sites including Lakewood Federal Center and Five Points
• A Great Sites Trading Floor where 30 developers present data and opportunities on the region’s best development sites within a half-mile of transit.

Title sponsors are RTD, Forest City Enterprises, and Snell & Wilmer. Other major sponsors include AECOM, Denver Regional Council of Governments (DRCOG), Metro Denver Economic Development Corporation, (EDC), Xcel, G.K. Baum, Denver Urban Renewal Authority (DURA), Arvada Urban Renewal Authority (AURA), Beck, Urban Land Conservancy, Medici, IBI Group, Saunders Construction, First Bank, PCL, and the Colorado Housing and Finance Authority (CHFA).

Registration is open to members and non-members. For a lot more detail on the conference and registration information, please visit the event’s page at the ULI website here.

First, Ms. Ditmer criticizes Chris Romer’s call for more big box retailers in Denver because they “devour landscapes” and “could destroy a neighborhood.” But this is hardly inevitable. Most big box retailers have now developed urban format stores. And while the anti-urban big box template is alive and well in Denver (see Stapleton’s Quebec Square), we do not have to look far to see better examples. Lakewood’s Belmar is a good start. Other cities outside of Colorado have done even better. Central Denver is ripe for the introduction of urban-scaled large-format retailers; anyone who has lived in or near downtown has, at one time or another, complained about driving to Glendale for life’s essentials. As Ms. Ditmer surely knows, Denver’s planners already possess all the land use tools they need to address her concerns.

More concerning is this part of Ms. Ditmer’s column:

“[Romer] said, ‘If we can make it easier for developers to do business, we could accomplish the mission of building 5,000 new rooftops in downtown Denver.’ Where? Razing existing buildings? Covering open space or parking lots? And why?”

Since when is covering parking lots downtown a bad thing? Ms. Ditmer seems to view surface parking lots as a legitimate downtown land use in their own right. They are not. Surface parking lots are vacant land with an interim use waiting to be developed, and wholly incompatible with a vibrant urban environment. New surface parking lots are not even an allowable land use downtown under the existing zoning code. And perhaps most importantly, they are a terrible eyesore and they greatly diminish the pedestrian experience.

We feel compelled to point out that surface parking is not necessary for downtown to prosper. As planners often remark, “any place worth its salt has a parking problem.” But even that is only half the story. There are far less disruptive means available to the city to provide adequate parking, without leaving whole swaths of prime downtown land dedicated to surface lots.

On to Ms. Ditmer’s next point regarding Chris Romer’s call for 5,000 new rooftops downtown.  5,000 is actually too few; Mr. Romer should be calling for many more! The 2007 Downtown Area Plan specifically calls for adding 18,000 new housing units to Downtown Denver by 2027. New downtown housing has been a goal of every Denver plan (and the plan of nearly every major U.S. city) for decades. Who would deny that downtown’s residential growth over the past decade has added a palpable energy to the city’s streets? DenverInfill and DenverUrbanism are dedicated to increasing Denver’s urban vitality and livability. The growth of downtown housing is the linchpin of that effort.

Finally, to Ms. Ditmer’s question—where to put all of this downtown housing? Suffice it to say, it will be a long time before we are forced to entertain the notion of “razing existing buildings” or “covering open space” to accommodate new downtown growth. Does Ms. Ditmer live in the same city we do—the one littered with undeveloped lots?

Take a look at the map below we’ve prepared, showing undeveloped land in the Central Business District. The yellow line represents the boundary of the CBD’s B-5 zoning, now labeled under the new zoning code as D-C (Downtown Core) and D-TD (Downtown Theater District):

Surface parking lots/vacant lots are outlined in red, with over 50 just in the CBD alone. If LoDo, Arapahoe Square, Uptown, the Golden Triangle and other CBD-adjacent districts are included, the surface parking lot count exceeds 200.

In 2005, shortly before the last Downtown Area Plan update, twelve teams of graduate planning students in Ken’s Planning Methods I course at the University of Colorado Denver prepared build-out scenarios for Downtown Denver. It was a Special Feature at the original DenverInfill.com, and is still available here. The averages were telling: the students found that Downtown Denver’s undeveloped lots can accommodate over 9,000 residential units, 800,000 square feet of new retail, almost 4.8 million square feet of new office space, and over 5,000 new hotel rooms, all while still providing over 28,000 structured parking spaces.  If a higher percentage of land is assigned to housing, the number of new residential units that could be accommodated could top 15,000. And the students were only considering the CBD. LoDo, the Union Station/Riverfront Park area, Uptown, Prospect, the Golden Triangle, and Arapahoe Square were not even included. Needless to say, we have more than sufficient land available in the downtown area to accommodate tens of thousands of new residential units without razing a single structure or building on open space.

Ms. Ditmer’s column fires a shot directly through the heart of urbanism in Denver. We genuinely hope it was merely an oversight on her part and not representative of her true feelings.

~~~

This post has been co-authored by Ken Schroeppel and Brent Butzin. Brent is an attorney practicing in Denver. He graduated from the University of Denver Sturm College of Law, where in 2007 he was awarded the Rocky Mountain Land Use Institute’s annual award for excellence in land use planning law. Before law school, he worked as a consultant providing planning and civil engineering services to municipalities, special districts, and developers across Colorado. He holds a Master of Science in Civil Engineering and a Bachelor of Environmental Design from the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Speaking of podcasts, I had the opportunity to be the guest on the Denver Diatribe podcast back in January. The Denver Diatribe, according to producers Joel Warner, Jared Jacang Maher and John Dicker, is a weekly podcast about “culture, politics and stuff as it pertains to Denver, Colorado and its environs.  The show was created in the summer of 2010 to fill a void in the local media landscape between hyper-partisan political talk on commercial radio and the agonizing stodginess of public radio.”

For my first (and, hopefully, not last) appearance on the Denver Diatribe, we talked about fun stuff like the Denver mayoral race, FasTracks, and that proposed Walmart in Lakeside. To listen to that particular podcast, click here.

But that turned out to be just Phase 1 of the DenverInfill makeover. About two months ago, we launched DenverUrbanism to carry the urbanism torch forward and let the DenverInfill blog focus on its original mission. So far, DenverUrbanism has been going great! Its site traffic is up to almost half of DenverInfill’s regular traffic levels, which is pretty darn good for just two months on the job. DenverUrbanism’s foundation rests on an ever-expanding collaboration of local urbanists. With 2011 ahead of us, DenverUrbanism is only going to grow and get better. Then just a few days ago, we updated the DenverInfill.com website homepage to serve as a portal to all of the DenverInfill and DenverUrbanism resources, while still preserving the original website intact.

So, from both an infill and urbanism perspective, how was 2010 for urban Denver? To answer that question, I’m reminded of the first few lines from Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens:

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us…”

The Best of Times:

The half-billion dollar Union Station project is chugging along with steady efficiency. The long-term impact and significance of this project cannot be overemphasized. Some cities long for the return of their historic train stations, for they lost them to the wrecking ball decades ago. Some cities retain their historic train stations in a repurposed form, but they long for the return of their station’s original function: a regional transit hub. In Denver, we are fortunate, for we will have both: our historic train station, restored and revitalized, serving as the bustling transit hub for the region. Billions of dollars of private sector investment waits to unfold near the Union Station, while new grand public spaces around the station are being designed to welcome residents and visitors for generations. And for the play-by-play commentary on this four-year project there is really only one source you can count on: Rick, here at the DenverInfill blog. Now up to Update #48 and counting, Rick has been providing regular progress reports that satisfy the construction junkie in all of us. In 2010 we also had a chance to experience the awesome Union Station movie produced by Havey Productions, while Union Station Advocates continued to push for excellence in the project’s urban design and public space components.

The FasTracks program (expertly covered here at DenverInfill by Ryan) also made significant progress during 2010. A $300 million federal government loan for Union Station and a $1 billion-plus federal funding agreement for the Eagle P3 corridors top the list, along with major construction progress on the West Corridor light rail line. Preliminary construction is underway on the East Corridor line to DIA and the grand Calatrava-designed plans for DIA’s South Terminal Redevelopment were also revealed this past year. (By the way, our DIA post shattered the all-time DenverInfill blog record with 85 comments.)

At the other end of Downtown, there are construction cranes a-plenty as three projects, the state’s Ralph Carr Judicial Complex and History Colorado Center developments and the Clyfford Still Museum, add another half-billion dollars of investment to Downtown Denver. Along with the major renovations of the McNichols Building in Civic Center Park for Denver’s hosting the Biennial of the Americas, Better Denver Bond-funded restorations of Civic Center Park’s major historic architectural and landscape elements, and the completion and grand opening of the Denver Justice Center, the Civic Center end of Downtown wasn’t going to let Union Station get away with all the action.

We also saw in 2010 the completion and opening of several major developments, including the Four Seasons Hotel & Residences and 1800 Larimer that redefined the Denver skyline, the 18th Street Pedestrian Bridge and the Railyard Dogs park in the CPV, the new Auraria Science Building, Solera, the Embassy Suites next to the convention center, several new buildings in the Denver Housing Authority’s Park Avenue project, new medical facilities in Uptown, and many smaller projects scattered throughout the Downtown area.

Downtown wasn’t without its groundbreakings in 2010 either. In addition to the Union Station and Civic Center projects mentioned above, getting underway this past year was 1099 Osage, the final phase of Highland Crossing, and the Metro State Student Success Building. There’s also the new DaVita Headquarters next to the Millennium Bridge which got under construction right at the end of 2010 with not really a ground-breaking per se, considering the tower will be built on top of an existing underground parking garage, but more of a crane-raising. There’s also the big 14th Street Reconstruction project, and the Larimer streetscape project, that moved forward in 2010.

New projects announced in 2010 that should break ground in 2011 include 2020 Lawrence, the IMA Financial HQ next to Union Station, 17th Avenue Pavilion, the Denver Crime Lab at 14th Avenue & Cherokee (a Better Denver Bond project), and the Metro State Hospitality Learning Center.

Finally, one of the biggest pro-urbanism policy accomplishments, in not only 2010 but in many years, was the approval of the new form- and context-based Denver Zoning Code. Whether you love it or not, the reality is that the new Denver Zoning Code, passed by City Council in June 2010, fundamentally alters the way we guide land development in Denver. Since the 1950s, Denver has regulated development through a zoning code that was based on an “old urbanism sucks!” and “automobiles rule!” philosophy. Now, our new zoning code is based on a philosophy rooted in a respect for the city’s existing urban forms and patterns while encouraging new development and higher densities near transit and in redeveloping areas. I give major kudos to Denver Community Planning & Development for the huge 5-year effort to redo the zoning code and zoning map for the entire city. While certainly not perfect in every detail, the zoning code overhaul finally aligns our land use and transportation plans with our implementation and regulatory framework. This will serve Denver very well for the next several decades.

Finally, no overview of the best of 2010 would be complete without a mention of Denver B-Cycle. With about 50 stations and more coming next year, Denver B-Cycle, the first major bicycle-sharing program in the country, added a new urban vibe to the city in 2010 and may represent the tipping point in a cultural shift towards alternative transportation. Already more bicycle lanes were added to Downtown Denver’s streets in 2010 than probably in all previous years combined. In 2030, when hundreds of miles of bike lanes and cycle tracks criss-cross the city, we may look back and say “It all began in 2010.”

The Worst of Times:

Well, what can I say that everyone doesn’t already know: the economy tanked, the boom is over, and we’re in a period of “transition” (that’s a nice way of saying there’s not going to be a lot of private-sector real estate development in the next few years).  But from a city-building perspective, things could be worse. Private sector development is only one aspect of city-building. It is during these low points in the real estate cycle that we plan for the future, make public infrastructure investments, improve our development policies, and generally get ready for the next boom. That is exactly what we are doing in Denver.

Looking Ahead:

Despite the gloomy economy, it is easy to remain bullish on Denver. Almost all cultural and demographic trends point to a bright future for our country’s urban centers, and particularly for a place like Denver which already has a strong physical and economic foundation and an optimistic and progressive citizenry that believes in investing in its city. It may be many years before the pace of infill development approaches that of this past decade, but our journey towards excellence in urbanism for the Mile High City continues in 2011.

DenverInfill will go back to focusing primarily on infill projects and sustainable development in Denver’s urban core (including Rick’s exceptional Union Station updates). Meanwhile, DenverUrbanism will push a decidedly pro-urban agenda for Denver and feature content from a broad coalition of urbanists.

DenverInfill = urban infill projects. DenverUrbanism = progressive urban agenda.

Say hello to DenverUrbanism!

However, having said that, I am concerned that the attractiveness of these areas and the intensity with which they are drawing new development is resulting in what I call CBD Sprawl. A Central Business District is generally defined as the place where primarily office and commercial uses concentrate, supplemented by residential, hotel, and other uses, at a scale unmatched in the city. The definition of sprawl is generally considered to include, among other things, new development occurring in outer areas while good sites are still available in inner areas.

Denver has, to our good fortune, a strong and sizable CBD, commonly defined as being bounded by Speer, Colfax, Sherman, 20th Street, and Larimer. I argue that the development taking place in Lower Downtown and Union Station represents the expansion of the CBD into these areas. The fact that Gates, IMA Financial, DaVita, Van Gilder, and other firms have chosen LoDo/Union Station for their corporate headquarters and that LoDo/Union Station is the new hotspot for traditional 17th Street-type firms in general, is evidence of this trend, and given the public investments being made in these areas, that trend is likely to continue and accelerate. In fact, the appeal of the Union Station district is so strong that it may capture an overwhelming percentage of whatever commercial development Downtown Denver is likely to see for the next decade or more. Then there is Arapahoe Square, the 30-square-block annex to Downtown that is so ripe for redevelopment, it hurts. Planning is underway for Arapahoe Square that will position it to be the next Central Platte Valley.

Meanwhile, our existing Central Business District has no shortage of development opportunities. Because of the parkinglotification of Downtown that occurred during the last half of the 20th Century, by my count, there are at least 40 sites within Denver’s CBD (as defined above) that are vacant and suitable for high-rise development. Depending on the footprint of a project, that number could be closer to 60. The checkerboard distribution of parking lots in Downtown Denver results in a Central Business District that is remarkably vibrant and successful notwithstanding, but lacking a single cluster of blocks where there is an uninterrupted and cohesive fabric of development. With the exception of the half-block-long Cheyenne Place, there is not a single named or numbered street in Downtown Denver that doesn’t have at least one vacant lot fronting it.

It’s not that our CBD didn’t see a decent share of development activity during the recent boom. Spire, Four Seasons, 1800 Larimer, Solera, Embassy Suites… they all greatly added to the cohesiveness of Downtown. There were many others, like 1401 Lawrence, 999 17th Street, 1501 Tremont, Makovsky’s Block 162, Two Tabor Center, and the DAC Hotel & Residences, that fell victim to the economy or, for whatever reason, failed to materialize. But my concern is for the dozens of other parcels in our Central Business District that have not been proposed for development in decades. Just to name a few:

• The corner of 17th and Welton (Block 174), where the old Kenmark Hotel once stood, that has been sitting vacant since the mid-1990s. Owned by Gary Cook, infamous for his refusal to do anything with his properties, ever, the weedy gravel lot sits smack-dab in the middle of the “Wall Street of the Rockies”.
• Block 176 (the “Shelby’s block”) located one block from a light rail station. Nothing.
• 16th and Lincoln (Block 029-B) located one block north of the state capitol, owned by the Dikeou family (the other infamous family known for their unwillingness to do anything with their properties). Zilch.
• The depressing Block 207, owned by a half dozen different property owners, across the street from the Webb Building. Nada.
• Block 159, also a block from the 20th & Welton light rail station. TOD anyone?

I could go on as there are dozens more to choose from, but I won’t. My point is… we need to have a strategic plan for where private sector development occurs in Downtown. I’m not saying we need to delay the development of areas like Union Station and Arapahoe Square until the CBD is complete, or to usurp the entire free market system but, on our current trajectory, 30 years from now we will end up with a Central Business District twice the area of the one we have today, but it will still be a fragmented checkerboard of buildings and parking lots. We need to target key parcels in our historic CBD and do whatever we need to do to get them developed so that the positive impact of development is spread strategically across the entire CBD to maximize the overall vitality and success of Downtown. It just doesn’t make sense for parcels at prime locations in our historic CBD to sit fallow for decades and hinder the fulfillment of Downtown’s promise while billions of dollars are spent to create what are essentially new extensions to the CBD. With some calculated thinking and political fortitude, we can simultaneously complete the infill of our historic CBD to allow it to finally achieve the greatness to which it is so close, while still giving new life to places like Arapahoe Square.

To accomplish this effort, to purposefully direct where some of the private sector development goes in Downtown Denver, strong leadership will be necessary. While that leadership will certainly come from a variety of sources, at the top of that leadership chain must be the mayor of Denver. That is one of the characteristics I’m looking for in our next mayor: to express the political will to do what it takes to capitalize on the huge investments made in Downtown Denver and to realize the great opportunity that our Downtown holds by ensuring that infill development occurs where we need it. This is not the only initiative our next mayor will need to take to move Downtown Denver up a notch on the urbanity scale, but it is an important one.