Throughout most of the 2010s, we published semiannual development summaries that featured maps, tables, and other graphics that tallied the infill development projects in the greater Downtown Denver area. For example, our end-of-decade summaries that we published in early January 2020 can be found here and here. Now that we’re a couple of years into the new decade and the pandemic-induced lull in development is behind us, it’s time for our semiannual development summaries to return!
In the 2010s, we used a 1.50-mile radius circle around a central point in downtown as our survey area. For the 2020s, our survey area consists of 18 downtown districts and neighborhoods that can be considered as the greater Downtown Denver area. Our neighborhood boundary lines generally follow Denver’s Statistical Neighborhood boundaries but, for areas like Downtown and Five Points, we’ve further divided those into commonly recognized districts. Here’s our new map:
Our downtown survey area, outlined in green, is bounded by Federal Boulevard on the west, 6th Avenue on the south, Downing Street on the east, and 38th Avenue on the north plus the bump in the northeast corner to include the 38th & Blake station area in River North. You may also notice that we’ve labeled a new district called “River Mile – Ball Arena.” There’s no new development in this area—yet. But with the master plan and zoning for the River Mile fully approved, and with preliminary plans (PDF–23 MB) for the redevelopment of the parking lots surrounding Ball Arena recently announced, it’s only a matter of time before we see the first new projects rising in this area.
A bit about our methodology: We are tracking only new vertical construction projects (no adaptive reuse or building renovations) and the minimums for a project to be included are 5 stories above grade and either 30 homes for multifamily residential or 25,000 square feet for office. For projects less than 5 stories in height and/or below these residential and office minimums, we recommend you check out Build Up Denver on Twitter, which does a nice job of covering smaller developments and projects outside of our DenverInfill downtown survey area.
The vast majority of the project data in the tables below comes from the City of Denver’s planning and development permitting system. Project specifications like the number of homes, number of parking spaces, etc., can and do change as a project moves through the development review process. Therefore, while we try to keep our DenverInfill project-tracking spreadsheets up-to-date, the numbers reported here may not be the latest or may be incorrect, so use at your own risk.
Tracking projects that are Completed or Under Construction is fairly straight forward. Tracking projects that are Proposed is a bit more complicated. The first step in the city’s development review process is the filing of a Concept Plan with the planning office. City planning staff review the Concept Plan and have a conversation with the developer about feasibility, zoning and design issues, and other factors the developer will have to take into consideration before the project can move on to the next step. Project specifications at the Concept Plan stage are preliminary and may change before formal plans are submitted to the city for review. Many of the projects listed in the Proposed section of our Infill Summary are at the Concept Plan stage.
If the Concept Plan is approved and if the developer wants to move forward with the project, the next step is the filing and review of a formal Site Development Plan, which requires the developer team to provide substantially greater detail about the development’s proposed site plan and building design. The final step is Building Permit review, where detailed construction and engineering documents are reviewed and approved before construction can begin.
COMPLETED PROJECTS
Let’s get started with the Completed projects. These are the developments in our downtown survey area that have finished construction since January 1, 2020. These projects got their start in the late 2010s but were completed in the early 2020s.
For being only two and a half years into the decade and considering most of that time we were dealing with the pandemic, this is a pretty good list, with a total of 31 completed projects adding 35 discrete towers (using the term “tower” generously here) to the greater downtown Denver skyline. The tallest building completed was the 30-story Block 162 office tower that helped fill a gap in the center of the downtown skyline along 15th Street. But the projects that opened in the decade’s first couple of years that have had the most visible impact on restoring downtown’s urban fabric are McGregor Square, Market Station, the Thompson Hotel, and The Fitzgerald projects in Lower Downtown. Together, they eliminated over 180,000 square feet of surface parking in our most walkable downtown district and replaced ugly dead zones with new homes, offices, stores, and public spaces. The other busy area was River North, with 10 completed projects ranging from 5 to 13 stories in height. But as we will see in our Under Construction and Proposed sections below, that’s just the tip of the iceberg for RiNo.
You’ll notice that, compared to our 2010s decade summaries, we’ve added a couple of additional data points we’re tracking and reporting this time: the ground-floor retail/restaurant space in a building (when included), and the residential parking ratio. Long-time readers of DenverInfill know our editorial position on automobile parking—both the surface lot variety and parking in general. Great cities are designed and built for the pedestrian, not the private automobile. As Denver continues to evolve into a denser and more urbanized city, we must decrease the space we dedicate to car storage and increase the space we dedicate to pedestrians and housing people. We cannot continue to welcome new residents and businesses and also have the private automobile serve as everyone’s primary means of personal mobility. It’s spatially impossible given Denver’s limited and fixed amount of public right-of-way; it’s not sustainable economically, socially, or environmentally in the long-run; and on-site parking significantly adds to the cost of housing. Clearly, part of the solution is better public transit and improved bicycle/scooter/pedestrian infrastructure, services, and amenities. But the solution must also include removing the city’s minimum parking requirements for new development and imposing parking maximums citywide. The city government has been inching in that direction, but far too slowly and timidly. However, there’s evidence that we are making some progress on this front—as we will see as we evaluate the parking ratios in the group of developments found in the Completed, Under Construction, and Proposed categories.
We’ve limited our parking ratio calculation to just residential-only projects because a.) residential projects are by far the most dominant type of development going on in Denver these days and b.) it’s easy to calculate and understand. One on-site parking space per home should be considered a maximum for multifamily residential developments in an urban area, with ratios well under 1.00 spaces per home preferred and, ideally, approaching zero on-site parking spaces for projects in highly walkable areas with great transit options.
For the 20 residential-only projects in our Completed list above, their combined average parking ratio is 1.01 (4,371 parking spaces for 4,328 homes), which isn’t great but could be worse. The biggest offender is The Pullman, with an absurd parking ratio of nearly 2 spaces per home for a building a block from the region’s largest transit hub. The project with the lowest parking ratio is the new CU Denver student housing on the Auraria Campus with virtually no on-site parking. But since that’s a public educational facility, if we look at private development, the winners are both in La Alma-Lincoln Park: Art District Flats and Inca Commons each have an average of 0.39 parking spaces per home.
Together, these recently completed early-2020s developments have added 4,757 new homes to Denver’s urban core along with almost 1.5 million square feet of office space, 826 hotel rooms, over 320,000 square feet of ground-floor commercial space, and 6,744 automobile parking spaces.
The distribution of these 35 completed buildings by floor count is: 22 buildings in the 5–9 story range, 12 buildings in the 10–19 story range, and 1 building of 20 stories or more.
UNDER CONSTRUCTION PROJECTS
Next, let’s take a look at the projects in the Under Construction category. Many of the tower cranes you see across the downtown landscape, which Ryan recently tallied in our Summer 2022 Tower Crane Census, are helping build these projects.
There are 40 infill developments (41 discrete towers) currently under construction in our downtown survey area. Of these, the tallest and only multi-tower project is the 38- and 32-story “Block 176” condominium development at 18th and Glenarm. Not far behind in floor count is the 30-story office tower at 1900 Lawrence and the 22-story X Denver 2 project in Arapahoe Square.
River North leads in the number of projects with 14 developments currently underway, with seven of them below 10 stories and the other seven ranging from 12 to 17 stories in height, and featuring a good mix of multifamily residential (nearly 3,000 homes) and office (over 600,000 SF) uses. The two most architecturally interesting buildings under construction are the 16-story One River North with its fractured facade, and the 13-story Populus hotel in Upper Downtown with an aspen-tree-inspired facade.
As mentioned above, the combined parking space-to-home ratio for the 20 residential-only projects in the Completed category was 1.01. Those are projects that were designed and permitted in the late 2010s but finished this decade. Looking at the 31 residential-only projects that are currently under construction, their combined average parking ratio is 0.93 (7,951 spaces for 8,532 homes)—an improvement! As projects designed and permitted more recently, this lower average parking ratio would seem to reflect the combination of parking-reduction incentives offered by the city and growing recognition by developers of the cost of providing too much parking.
In all, the 40 projects currently under construction in the greater downtown area will add 8,624 new homes to a housing-deprived city, 478 new hotel rooms, over 1.3 million square feet of office space, over 200,000 square feet of ground-floor commercial, and 9,731 automobile parking spaces.
The distribution of these 41 under-construction buildings by floor count is: 20 buildings in the 5–9 story range, 17 buildings in the 10–19 story range, and 4 buildings 20 stories or more.
PROPOSED PROJECTS
Here’s the list of Proposed projects in our downtown survey area:
There are currently 111 proposed infill developments (for a combined 123 discrete towers) in our downtown survey area. That’s a lot! Still, we have limited our Proposed category to include only projects with a Concept Plan filing date sometime in 2022 or projects from prior years that have had some development review activity with the city in 2022 (such as progressing to the Site Development Plan or Building Permit review stages). This means that, despite its length, the list above includes only projects that are fairly “fresh” since we have weeded out development proposals from pre-2022 that have grown stale due to inactivity. Of these 111 projects, 75 of them are projects filed with the city for the first time in 2022 and 36 are projects from 2021 or earlier that have remained active to some degree in 2022 in the city’s development review process.
The main reason for the length of the Proposed project list is simply the continued strong demand for housing development in Denver and the attractiveness of Denver for real estate investment in general. But certainly another reason for the large number of Concept Plans that were filed in the first half of 2022 was developers rushing to get their projects submitted by the June 30 deadline to be exempted from the city’s new Expanded Housing Affordability program that took effect on July 1.
The other thing to keep in mind is that not all of these proposed projects, particularly the ones that are in the Concept Plan review stage, will become a reality. In fact, after tracking infill developments here at DenverInfill for 18 years now, we’d say that if half of these projects get out of the ground, that would be an achievement. This is the nature of real estate development, particularly in a downtown setting where development is more costly and complex, and definitely given the issues with skilled labor shortages, the cost of construction materials, uncertainties in the economy, and so on. Nevertheless, a longer list of proposed projects is better than a shorter list, and hopefully many of these projects will come to fruition to help address Denver’s severe housing shortage.
Looking at this list of Proposed projects, it’s clear that River North remains the juggernaut in the downtown area, with over 8,200 homes and 1.8 million square feet of office space proposed across 36 projects. In second place is the Golden Triangle, which is surging (finally!) with high-rise residential proposals ranging from 12 to 30 stories that would add over 3,800 homes to the district—on top of the 1,590 currently under construction. Other areas with strong development proposal activity include Arapahoe Square (over 3,100 homes proposed), Capitol Hill (almost 2,600 homes), and Uptown (over 1,400 homes). The tallest proposals can be found, naturally, in the core downtown districts where towers of 53, 47, 38, 36, 31, and 28 stories have been proposed.
For the 92 proposed residential-only projects where we are able to calculate a parking ratio, their combined average parking ratio is 0.94 (20,880 spaces for 22,137 homes)—almost identical to the 0.93 combined ratio for the projects currently under construction. An encouraging sign is that of these 92 proposed projects, only 37 have a ratio greater than 1.00 space per home, and 26 have a ratio less than 0.75, including three with no on-site parking. The remaining 29 projects have a ratio between 0.75 and 1.00. Still, adding tens of thousands of additional private automobile parking spaces to the urban core is counterproductive to Denver’s goals of “increasing mobility and safety while reducing congestion and fighting climate change” and achieving Vision Zero in the process. We must do better.
If all 111 proposed projects were to be realized, they would add 24,951 new homes, over 1,000 hotel rooms, almost 3.0 million square feet of office space, over 500,000 square feet of ground-floor retail, and 26,790 automobile parking spaces to the greater downtown area.
The distribution of these 123 proposed buildings by floor count is: 48 buildings in the 5–9 story range, 52 buildings in the 10–19 story range, and 23 buildings 20 stories or more.
CONCLUSION
Let’s wrap up this post with a graphic that shows the amount and extent of infill development throughout greater Downtown Denver. Yellow icons represent Proposed buildings and green icons represent buildings Under Construction, with the figure at the top the number of above-grade floors. To be clear, the building icons are not placed in their actual geographic locations but are simply clustered by district and neighborhood. For a higher-resolution version of this graphic in PDF format, click here. Later this month we will publish our first “3D Future Skyline” feature of the 2020s, where the specific location and approximate height of each building covered in our Summer 2022 Infill Summary will be visualized. Stay tuned for that!
We hope you enjoyed our first semiannual Infill Summary of the 2022s! In addition to following the blog for our regular roundups by neighborhood and other special posts about downtown development, we encourage you to follow us on social media if you are not already. Check out all of our high-quality photos on Instagram, and follow us on Twitter for breaking information about new projects and construction activities. We link to each new blog post on our Facebook page as well.
Wow, what a fantastic summary, thank you!
I couldn’t help but look up the south corner of 17th and Champa, where the 53-story tower is proposed. This is the Boston Lofts! The remaining three corners of 17th and Champa are also historic buildings, so there must be some mistake?
Not a mistake! It involves partial demolition of the historic buildings. Here’s our tweet on it:
https://twitter.com/denverinfill/status/1541931387460038656?s=21&t=jp_Gr00-yx-LlWdV51A2Eg
This is an incredible analysis! Thank you!
On the parking, does Denver Infill have a recommended ratio of spaces per unit? And are there minimum parking requirements in any of these neighborhoods? If not, are all of these parking ratios driven by developers or city feedback?
This RTD TOD Parking Study shows an average parking utilization of 0.70 spaces per unit and about half that for income-restricted units. Far below the 0.93 spaces/unit average and I’m sure we’ll need even less as we continue to build mixed-use walkable communities where people don’t need cars. Why not set the max at 0.75 parking spaces per unit for dense neighborhoods?
https://wp-cpr.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2020/12/RTD-Residential-TOD-Parking-Study.pdf
The Denver Zoning Code is what regulates parking. The only place with no parking minimums is the Central Business District. Everywhere else, there’s some parking requirement of some kind but it varies widely across the city, based on the use, the location, proximity to transit, density, etc. So one issue, as you’ve identified, is to decrease the parking minimums or remove them entirely. Max of 0.50 – 0.75 would be good but it should be lower in certain parts of the city.
The other issue is we need parking MAXIMUMS. Even though the CBD has no parking MINIMUMS, there’s nothing that prevents a developer from building parking as part of their project anyway, which is why we see projects like Block 162 office tower with 14 levels of parking with nearly 1000 spaces–on a block with a transit station adjacent to the 16th Street Mall! No city rules prevented the developer from doing that.
Question for you, Ken — Regarding parking minimums or maximums. I always figure we’re still seeing these additional parking units built in due to demand as a driving force, though I am curious if we have statistics available showing how many parking spaces are actually utilized with each new development over the course of a given time frame. By any chance do we have this data available to us?
I suppose the current number would be lower than pre-pandemic levels, but I would like to give developers the benefit of the doubt and assume there is a logical reason for providing so much parking with each new build, even if we may find it excessive here on this blog.
Dan, there have been some studies counting the utilization of parking in multifamily developments in Denver. RTD did one and found, IIRC, that there was about 70% utilization and even lower in affordable housing developments. I’ve heard reports of some buildings’ parking areas being full, and other reports where half the spaces are not utilized. Some developers see opportunity in providing less parking as a way of lowering the cost of development, which could result in either more profit for them or making the housing more affordable or a combo of the two. Others developers may do it because it’s the right thing to do and because they are urbanists and want to help reduce automobile dependency. Other developers are concerned with the bottom line and managing risk and so they’ll put in lots of parking because that’s what they think is popular. Then there’s the lenders, who are even more conservative and may not approve a construction loan if they think there’s not enough parking. It’s complicated…
Certainly appears so. Thanks for the rundown!
Parking minimums have always bothered me and I can’t believe they still exist. It seems like an antiquated policy, leftover from when Denver was a cow town with a concrete moat surrounding its downtown and Denverites couldn’t imagine a place being accessible if it didn’t have enough parking.
But I would slow down on the parking maximums idea for two reasons:
1) In this era housing shortages, I wouldn’t put up any restrictions that might prevent a developer from designing a project the way they think it needs to be developed in order to ensure success (and/or financing) based on what is in demand. Part of it is research, but another part of it is making a bet based on what they think the future holds. Speaking of which…
2) Our fantasy of Denver becoming a transit city may never come true. I’m having a hard time envisioning (based on lack of any good ideas from our public leaders and skyrocketing housing costs) any end to the current situation of this city – and especially its transit system – being overrun with homeless people.
Also, apparently, there’s never going to be an end to Covid, (or monkey pox, or whatever comes next). Let’s face it; trains and buses are kinda gross. Even hard core urbanists hesitate to use them these days. Transit may never recover and be what it used to be, or become what it should become. I can see this, and I’m guessing developers can too.
FOR NOW, please, no parking maximums. That’s old-school urbanist dogma that we may now have to rethink.
I’ve been a downtown-to-DTC (E-line) commuter to work now for close to five years. Worked from home much of 2020 and 2021 and drove quite a bit to the office once they required us back. This summer I started taking the train again, same as I always have, and utilization just doesn’t feel any different than from before. There are subsets of our population who don’t have other means of transportation, and there are those like me who think purposely being stuck in traffic every morning and evening is deranged. The trains are also maybe more full than ever for downtown events.
Right now RTD a couple of issues that don’t pertain to this conversation. But one problem they don’t have is being “dirty.” Unless you think being in proximity of other human beings is dirty, and in that case, I just don’t know how to help you.
What? I wasn’t talking about me! I love trains!
I was talking about how society has changed and how that might affect transit and future development. I was talking about whether ridership will ever recover in a post-covid world. Because… you know… germs and Union Station being taken over by homeless people and whatnot. Jeez.
A few more questions:
1) How many new TOD units (10-minute walk or 1/2 mile of high-frequency transit)? And do you have a sense of the impact on transit ridership?
2) Have you calculated the change in density, like DUs and jobs per acre, for each neighborhood?
3) A suggestion to add affordable housing units to your metrics.
Thanks!
Hi Matt, good questions and suggestions. We have not calculated any of those metrics. The amount of time that it takes Ryan and me to regularly collect, organize, and update the project-tracking data that we do collect is significant, in addition to doing the special analysis and graphics production for a special summary like this. This is a mutual hobby by Ryan and me that we do in our spare time, so this is what it is.
Wow, Wow, Wow so much info in this post. Thank you for all the work you & your team put into this.
Thanks!
Long time reader, first time commenter. Really appreciate all that you guys do in sharing and promoting development in Denver. Also appreciate your sentiment on the need to reduce car dependency. A great city is a walkable city. Looking forward to the “3D Future Skyline” post!
Thanks!
Thanks for the extensive update Ken and Ryan. I’ve been following this site for years and I think that’s what makes it sooo interesting is that you’ve now been doing this for so long that looking back on older posts and graphics I really get an in depth history of growth around Denver. Especially when I go back to the original site
https://denverinfill.com/archive/index.htm
It’s crazy how much Denver has grown in the last 20 years. Good job guys
Thanks!
Is there a way we can contribute? I know this is a hobby project for the contributors and it would be great to show our support for this outstanding work through some sort of Patreon or other donation system.
Amazing work here! Your work is always very enjoyed and appreciated thank you.
This post was a damn fun (and informative) read. Thanks so much for putting your time and effort into this.
Thank you for doing this work. Greatly appreciate it.
Very impressive summary!!!!!
Are the old Smileys and Ramada inn sites under construction? I thought they were considered Cap Hill, but I could be wrong.
They’re on Downing, which is where Cap Hill meets Cheesman Park. I suppose Ramada would technically be in Cheesman, and Smileys would technically be in Cap Hill. The last time I went by there, it looked like excavation was happening at both sites.
Thanks, Ken and team for yet another great update on our city. In my 35+ years of living and working downtown, the last 10 years has been the most transformative I’ve seen, you can argue for better or worse, but it’s great to all these empty lots turn back into a city. One glaring .8 mile issue that remains for a “more transit friendly city”, there is still no funding to connect 30th and Downing to the A line (est. cost, $140 million), which would relieve some traffic issues, make Denver a bit more transit friendly and connect people to the core of downtown from the airport and all the building along the A line. RTD may never get their house in order, maybe Denver will step in at some point? With all the building in River North, Uptown and Denver Core there might be some renewed pressure to complete it, but who knows… Anyway, for what it’s worth, there is a change.org petition for the completion of the line if you want to sign it, here’s the link.
https://www.change.org/p/city-and-county-of-denver-extension-of-the-l-line-public-tranisit-route-to-38th-blake-station?redirect=false
Great post!
Thanks for a great update, Ken. I got back to Denver from Tokyo a few days ago and I have to say that every year I come back I am impressed by how new developments feel increasingly like what you would see in a real city, not just the faux urban stuff we used to get. The use of alleyways for pedestrians, small-scale retail spaces and 10+ story vertical developments becoming the standard in the proposed projects list are all good changes. I strongly agree on the point of parking—cars are far and away the thing that feels most bizarre and anti-urban about American cities when coming from outside. The size of the cars, the parking everywhere, and how massive the right-of-ways are everywhere. No wonder there’s a housing crisis when the city is built to house cars! Nothing can be done to downsize right-of-ways, but if we really made a clean break away from car-oriented development, many right of ways could be fully reimagined into greener and cooler spaces. Stuffing huge amounts of parking into the built environment only makes this harder. At the very least in the near-term, I would like to see a movement toward decoupling parking from residential units. In Tokyo, parking is treated as an entirely separate expense from housing. Most residential buildings have little of it, and if you have a car you either pay additional to rent one of the limited spaces in your building or find parking in nearby structures, probably for around $300 a month. This allows for lower rents, a much more dynamic use of urban land in response to supply and demand (parking structures built from steel beams can be dismantled and replaced with more useful development when the timing is right) and much less monotonous building forms (no more podiums! Plus slimmer structures built on much smaller footprints. A typical single-family plot in central Denver would be plenty of land for a 10-story apartment building). If this became the norm in Denver too, perhaps future developments could be built with no parking and residents with cars could easily rent excess spaces at nearby existing buildings (perhaps building owners would need to be incentivized to open their garages to non-resident renters). Frankly I find it shocking that car-less people have to tolerate parking expenses being built into their rent. This would be tantamount to highway robbery in urban Japan! And not surprisingly, the rents in Denver are now way higher than what I need to pay for the same number of rooms in my cozy apartment at the center of Tokyo.
Hey Sam, welcome back to Denver and thanks for the great comment!
Hi Ken, interested to hear where you pulled this list. There is a particular project within the “Proposed” list that I can’t seem to find on Denver Site development excel feed nor anywhere else (Washington and Court S. Corner). FWIW I also can’t find the 2510 Welton project listed in their excel file either. I’m assuming this is user error and/or you have access to the more recent filings somewhere?
Jon, we get our information from the city’s ePermits system: https://www.denvergov.org/AccelaCitizenAccess/Default.aspx
Great post/update. Just moved to Delgany St (between 35 and 36). Deep in the “Crane Forest” as you would say…
I was curious to know any details on the Arkins/Festival 12 story Residential unit that’s listed on the planned projects list in RiNo. Is this a second phase to Drivetrain? Or a new project/developer?
Keep up the great work.
the post of all posts !
The Greyhound station redevelopment shows as Proposed, but isn’t it already under construction?
I think you’re thinking about the block next door where the 30-story 1900 Lawrence project is under construction.
Thanks so much for this update!
I’m excited about the 18th and Market development – finally getting rid of that awful parking lot (which was made worse by my having to precariously navigate through it get to work for six years – ugh. :-\ ).
Also, Ken — so great to meet you at the DAF tour on Tuesday; I was the one with purple hair asking about Larimer Square architecture. I’m an acoustical consultant in the A/E/C industry, so if you ever need insight on all things noise/vibration in the built enviroment, please don’t hesitate to reach out! My goals in life are to help people have a better general understanding of their aural environment, and, eradicate incorrect uses of the word “soundproof” (*shudder).
Great tour, so grateful to have all the new knowledge. Thanks again!