For many years, the Denver Urban Renewal Authority’s website was a modest effort based on the generic denvergov.org template. Now that’s all changed. DURA recently launched a spiffy new website that is a major improvement over the old one. Check it out at: www.RenewDenver.org
The new website has a ton of information about how urban renewal and tax increment financing works and an overview of the Authority’s housing rehabilitation program–a big part of DURA’s mission that a lot of people don’t realize. Also, take a look at the “DURA’s 50th Anniversary Report” document available at the bottom of the home page. It’s well done and very interesting.
Of note is the section that presents an overview of all of DURA’s redevelopment projects since the 1990s. A lot of people may still think of the old Skyline wrecking-ball days when they think of DURA, but it’s amazing what DURA has accomplished in the past 20 years. In particular is how DURA is responsible for saving a bunch of historic buildings downtown that were in rough shape and facing probable demolition. DURA came to the rescue by providing funding assistance that made the restoration and conversion of these historic buildings pencil out for developers.
Imagine how different Downtown Denver would be if these buildings weren’t there and were vacant lots instead:
All six of these buildings are now in the Downtown Denver Historic District and will be around for generations to come. Thank you DURA!
Indeed, their old website was terrible, looking like a relic from the 90s, and the new one is great (although when I downloaded the history pdf on my Mac the photos didn't download, very frustrating). DURA has transformed itself in recent years, but their first 25 years or so need re-examining. Their actions devastated downtown Denver and destroyed an entire neighborhood (Auraria) because no one from early DURA had ever read Jane Jacobs and didn't have a clue that they were operating on the antiquated and false idea that a clean slate was the best way to renew an inner city. They destroyed many irreplaceable historic buildings in the name of progress, and disrupted the lives of hundreds of powerless families.
Their attitude (especially that of longtime commissioner Alex Holland) was inexcusably arrogant, of the "trust us, we're experts" variety. A bunch of unimaginative old white men doing what unimaginative old white men WITH POWER do (for the record, I'm a 47-year old white man, whether that's old or not I don't know). And they did a very poor job with architecture and design, not forcing developers to come up with the best plan possible and allowing them to build cheaply for maximum profits.
I don't argue that doing nothing would have been acceptable–social conditions in the Skyline Urban Renewal District were deplorable–but Denver would have been far better served by an incremental approach, tearing this down but saving that.
LoDo would not be an isolated historic district, but instead would blend in with the rest of downtown (imagine the Tabor Block still standing where the Cheesecake Factory is today), or the lovely Italian Renaissance-style Daniels & Fisher department store still attached to its now-isolated tower.
We would not have so much mediocre architecture between Curtis and Larimer (especially along 18th Street, with its parking garages–what a sad waste of urban land).
Auraria would be a far more interesting campus today if they'd found a way to keep most of the neighborhood intact instead of just one small block, a few churches and a brewery. A lot of Auraria's land is still surface parking even now, three-plus decades after opening the campus–and the new master plan, as wonderful as it is, will take 20 or 30 years to complete. Waste, waste, waste.
But, as you say, much of what they've done more recently has been wonderful for Denver, and I can't fault them for Mercantile Square particularly, as I worked there for several years. I'm glad the original DURA commissioners and executive directors were replaced by more thoughtful people, and I too am grateful for their preservation work.
Their new website doesn't so much as mention the crimes they were responsible for perpetrating on our architectural history. "50 Years of Revitalizing Denver?" Let's not forget – ever – that 30+ of those years were spent razing Denver, no revitalizing it.
I can't say I'm particularly impressed with many of the current projects they so breathlessly tout either.
Alameda Square leveled what was basically the heart of the Vietnamese community in Denver, and is replacing it with a Lowe's (just what we needed!). They say they are planning to "bring the old tenants back," but you can imagine how that's going to work once they see what the new "market rate" rents are.
Highland Garden Village unnecessarily breaks the grid and drops a little slice of crappy New Suburbanism right in the heart of one of the best neighborhoods in Denver.
And the Pepsi Center and new Elitch's are a colossal waste of hundreds of acres of prime city center land. And in the process, chokes off any future core expansion to the south. Oh yeah, and Elitch's has been on the verge of financial failure for a few years- maybe they should have stayed put?
I'll give them REI, that's a better use of that site than Forney was.
But if this is the stuff they're proud of, they haven't learned much since they erased all those gorgeous downtown buildings that would be worth tens of billions of dollars today, and replaced them with nothing but parking for the cube farmers.
I'll give them one tiny bit of credit, having had a chance to spend more time with the website since Friday: on the Adams Mark page they actually acknowledge that the tearing down of the May-D&F hyperbolic paraboloid was controversial. That's a big step for them. Of course to tell the truth about that amazingly stupid bit of destruction they'd have to admit that they and Wellington Webb lost their everlasting souls over that one.
But I also have to say, after spending more time on the new DURA site: does no one there have a spell-checker on their computer? Also, "it's" is not a good substitute for "its."
Sure, they might have had some limited success in the past "20 years" but you're overlooking a major point. That little organization leveled old Denver, replaced it with a sea of parking lots, and saw very few projects pan out. The amount of surface parking lots in downtown Denver, most of which they created, has been such an issue that someone even created an entire blog about, oh wait, that's the entire reason we're here now. We can't just overlook that atrocities that they committed in the past. That's like saying Hitler was a great person because he created the model for our interstate highway system, but overlooking the fact that he was a monster who killed millions of people. I don't remember who said it but "one act of kindness does not save one from a life of bad deeds". It's going to take a lot of hard work and effort on their part for most Denverites to hear the term "DURA" and not cringe in the future, and I just don't think they're up for it.
Wow, where to begin with DURA… It is hard to acknowledge their triumphs when the blood stains of their heinous crimes are still fresh
(20 or 30 years is not long in a city's life). They have a whole lot of negative urban karma that will take more than a web site touting recent triumphs to heal. The list of their failures would take pages.
Maybe they should have considered a name change to go along with that website??
I just went to their website and I see their sell line is "DURA, 50 years of revitalizing Denver". Shouldn't that read "DURA, 50 years of wrecking Denver"?