I was relieved to read in this morning’s Denver Post (New Elitch Pledges More Fun) that the “new” name for Downtown Denver’s Elitch Gardens amusement park will be just “Elitch Gardens.” The other day it was announced that the 117-year old park had finally been sold by the struggling Six Flags chain to Florida-based PARC Management, and that the new owners plan on not only maintaining it as an amusement park, but that they also will be investing millions of dollars to add new rides and attractions to keep the park vital and growing. As part of that announcement, the new owners stated that they would unveil a new name for the park. I feared the worst, thinking that they would come up with some awful corporatized sponsor name like the “Kellogg’s Cocoa Krispies® Fantastik FunPark at Elitch Gardens.” I’m glad to see some companies know when not to mess with a good thing. I even like the new Elitch Gardens logo. It’s got a nice old-timey feel to it (image courtesy of denverpost.com):
Now that we know Elitch’s will stay Elitch’s, let’s see if we can get PARC Management to work with the city and Kroenke Sports to develop a sub-area plan for the Elitch’s/Pepsi Center area to eventually replace all that surface parking with structured parking wrapped by mixed-use urban development. We need to get some good plans in place for that part of Downtown before it’s too late. The incredibly lame low-density, single-use, suburbanesque office project that was recently proposed for next to the Invesco Field light rail station serves as a great example of what we don’t want Downtown but what we’ll get if we don’t state otherwise.
