Downtown Denver faces repeat of 1980s decline fears

While there isn’t a long list of assets of being old, there is at least one thing on the plus side: perspective. I have a lot of perspective. Case in point is all the hubbub currently exploding about what to do with troubled Downtown Denver.

I’ve been reading all the newspaper stories, listening to the proclamations of business and civic leaders, and just basically talking with my friends and acquaintances from around the region, and I am simply amazed and overwhelmed with an undeniable rush of déjà vu.

Downtown Denver is unsafe. The downtown office buildings are outdated, the commercial vacancy rate is historically high, and there is an astronomical amount of commercial loan defaults. There are not enough workers in the Central Business District. There is not enough housing in and near the CBD. Businesses are abandoning the area and looking to other zones, such as Cherry Creek, RiNo, etc.  to find new offices. Retailers are leaving. There are no vibrant restaurants. No one really wants to go downtown and there is very little to see and do when there.

Is this the mid-to-late 1980s? I wrote an article, for this magazine, in 1989 titled “Is Downtown Necessary?” that addressed many of the very same problems, and tellingly, many of the very people involved in the 2025 news stories and Downtown Denver revival efforts are the exact same people that I contacted and drew from 36 years ago. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

A giant part of my perspective is this: Downtown Denver will, eventually, right the ship, the area will bounce back and be vibrant again, albeit with fits and starts along the way, and 35 years from now the young journalists covering the saga today will be old columnists offering their perspectives on the Great Downton Denver Dilemma of 2025. Former Denver Mayor Mike Johnston, 85+ years old, will say “Back in my day …”

At the center of all the modern Downtown Denver revival is the reconstruction and renaming of the 16^th Street Mall, an over-budget and behind-schedule project (duh) now set to be completed in the fall. Also, officials have decided to drop the outdated designation “Mall” with the simpler “16^th Street” and “The Denver Way,” whatever that means. It should be noted that the creation of the 16^th Street Mall, opened in 1982 and designed by famous architect I.M. Pei, was itself the centerpiece of a long-ago Downtown Denver revival effort due to concerns that the area in the 1970s wasn’t pedestrian friendly and clogged with too many smelly buses. This time around, the buses don’t smell, but perhaps the crowd that’s too prevalent on the Mall lately does.

Also, back in the mid to late 1980s, Denver civic leaders decided that what Downtown Denver lacked was a major retailer, with the plan that having a great department store would attract people downtown. They even threw an elaborate Macy’s-like parade to persuade Macy’s to be that department store. It didn’t work.

My perspective is that everyone in Denver should be very wary of any of the plans announced for revitalization, as I said, fits and starts. Question everything. When you start getting into bond financing and large-scale civic and public spending projects, always popular Denver panacea plans, caution is a great byword. Sometimes it works: the Convention Center or a Major League Baseball park (back when we had Major League Baseball). Sometimes it doesn’t: the Denver Grand Prix anyone?

But I do know this: successful revitalization won’t be some silver bullet, some grand gesture that in and of itself will be the catalyst for a great rebound. The solution will instead be a myriad of smaller things, coordinated. Some of it has already begun, like increased safety and police patrols, coupled with efforts to ease the plight and peril of the homeless. As in the 1980s, there needs to be more housing in and around Downtown Denver, and it needs to include a wide-ranging array of options for renting and buying, singles and families, so that people aging out of one phase of life can include downtown in the choices for the next phase. Commercial office space will be the toughest nut to crack and needs the most expertise and attention.

Also, don’t overbuild. Economic booms make people crazy.

That’s my perspective.

This article appeared in the Summer 2025 issue of ColoradoBiz under the headline, ‘Downtown perspective.’