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Insight Inner city success: The Denver example

I never saw the movie Things to Do in Denver When You’re Dead. Partly because I’m not that keen on Andy Garcia and partly because the city in the title never really excited me. Although it’s the capital of Colorado, Denver’s not really famous for anything. And, no, you can’t include Dynasty (although the soapie did revolve around the Denver Carrington oil company, it was filmed in California). If you consider that Denver’s biggest international exposure probably comes from its occasional appearances in South Park then you know the city’s image is in trouble. The Denver of the iconic cartoon is one-dimensional, painfully normal and completely intolerant of anyone who doesn’t quite fit in.

(Left: The Riverfront development seen from the sprawling lawn that runs along the South Platte.)

Even ardent Denverites aren’t convinced of Denver’s style; ‘It’s just a Cow Town’ is a chorus you’ll hear often. But here’s one of America’s best-kept secrets: Denver is a really great city and the way that they’ve managed to revive their inner city is truly remarkable.

Nature favours Colorado. Sheltered from precipitation by the vast expanse of prairie to the east and the massive barrier of the Rocky Mountains to the west, Denver summers are long, hot and dry; the winters clear and bright. 
But it’s the human element that has taken this splendid setting and created such a dynamic place to live. Take just a cursory glance at Downtown and Lower Downtown (LoDo) Denver and you’ll see a thriving community of inner-city residents. The largest system of parks and bicycle tracks in the US. An open-air shopping mall lined with shops and cafés, serviced by hybrid buses and free Wi-Fi Internet connectivity.

And from there it’s a short walk to the nation’s largest theatre complex, a bustling convention centre, an awesome baseball stadium, a magnificently restored opera house, a funky library and a multi-purpose arena that hosts everything from basketball to rock concerts. And you can walk safely from one venue to another.

So: Cow Town? More like Now Town.

What’s even more impressive, however, is that it wasn’t always like this. As little as 30 years ago, people had all but given up on downtown Denver. Devastating boom-and-bust economic cycles, the decline of rail transport and flight to the sprawling suburbs all conspired to reduce the city centre to a classic inner-city slum.

Denver’s amazing regeneration also has to factor in the state’s contradictory attitude to development. Denver was awarded the 1976 Winter Olympics for instance, but the hosting was scuppered by Colorado’s anti-growth advocates. Given the considerable obstacles, Denver’s almost complete transformation into a prosperous place for living and working is remarkable.  And hopefully it sends a clarion call of optimism to our own South African cities as we strive to regenerate our CBDs.

(Left: The graceful Millennium pedestrian bridge that connects the Riverfront development to LoDo and the CBD.)

Denver’s odyssey began in the early seventies when the Urban Renewal Authority planned to demolish over twenty blocks in the Lower Downtown area. The community, led by Dana Crawford, mobilised and created a private non-profit group called Larimer Square Associates. They bought the stretch of historic Larimer Street between 14th and 17th Streets. Preserved through adaptive reuse, it became Denver’s first Historic District and today the block is one the city’s most popular destinations for locals and visitors alike. It’s called Larimer Square.

Larimer Square has succeeded because it has created a ‘sense of place.’  When developers talk about this, they mean ‘somewhere you want to spend time.’ If you enjoy being there, you’ll want to linger for longer. Of course, when building this particular sense of place, the Larimer Square management has a special luxury afforded to them by owning the whole block.
Nevertheless, what’s particularly noticeable from a South African perspective is how much emphasis they have placed on recruiting and securing the right tenant mix at street level. You won’t find any of the familiar national chain stores in Larimer Square, or even much in the way of banks, dentists or law offices, but rather an eclectic assortment of small businesses that offer a unique shopping experience to the visitor. Which, of course, keeps ‘em coming.

Management has been so keen to ensure that Larimer Square remains a destination in and of itself that they’ve been known to become co-investors in the restaurant ventures of hot new chefs. It’s an approach that’s both sensible and dynamic, and it’s been repeatedly used to generate additional foot traffic to the businesses in the area.

And who is the typical visitor? Joe Vostrejs, the energetic CEO of the area, says: ‘Visitors can be empty nesters, single professionals, young families or retired folks; what draws them to Larimer Square has nothing to do with their race or cultural origin or even level of wealth, but everything to do with having a similar mindset.’ Common interests transcending race and class? How great would it be if we could achieve that throughout the new South Africa?

(Left: The extension to the Denver Art Museum was designed by Daniel Libeskind, who also worked on the new World Trade Centre site in New York.)

The cost of developing mixed-use neighbourhoods with a strong sense of place is high and the return on investment can take years. By their very nature, flowerbeds, cobbled pavements and benches don’t generate income, so they are too easily left out of the equation. But the benefits of getting it right are clear.

An example of the long-term vision required to make such mixed-use development a success is Riverfront Park. This residential, retail and business development is just across the striking Millennium Footbridge, and within walking distance of Larimer Square, LoDo and Downtown Denver.

Riverfront Park is city living at its most enviable. Not just the trailways, cycle tracks and neatly tended beds of wildflowers. Or the evening concerts and movie screenings under the stars. Riverfront Park even offers electrical connections out on the lawns, so you can plug in your laptop while you’re lying in the sun.

One of the current developments in this area is the Glass House, a 23-storey glass-fronted residential development with panoramic views of both downtown Denver and the Rocky Mountains. A few things about this development are unique. Firstly, this building is identical to one built by the same group in Atlanta, Georgia. Secondly, unlike anything I’ve experienced in South Africa, there was no buying of units off plan. In fact, for a long time as the building shot up next to us, there was no way to get information on the availability of units. The whole project is being handled more like a car or a movie launch rather than a building development. It seems that the developers are investing long-term in a community and they don’t need our money to complete the job. Thirdly, the developers ask a significantly lower deposit from those who are buying as a primary residence compared to those who are buying it as an investment, so incentivising the residents who will help boost density and create that all-important sense of place.

(Left: IDA conference delegates attended talks in this hyper-modern building.)

Another development within walking distance of the Glass House is the 50 000-seater Coors Field Baseball Stadium. Opened in 1995, it is a breathtakingly handsome building. The stadium’s story is similar to much of LoDo – community participation sought and buy-in earned, redevelopment of wasteland and warehousing. But here’s something else interesting (particularly given South Africa’s rush to develop stadiums for the 2010 Fifa World Cup): the stadium was built with 15 000 parking bays – logically far too few for a stadium with so many seats. The result of this bold decision is that fans park elsewhere in the convenient downtown area and walk through the city’s streets – past enticing restaurants, bars and shops – to watch a game. As a result of this new flow of foot traffic, a study estimates that the stadium generates about $200-million a year for the local economy.

There are so many exciting and innovative developments in Denver that it’s easy to forget that none of the city’s remarkable reinvention has happened by accident. Instead, there’s a breadth and depth to the vision behind Denver that’s quite startling. The list of plans and delivery vehicles produced by the city is impressive, and includes The Downtown Area Plan (1986),  Blueprint Denver (2002), the regional mass transit plan FasTracks (2004), the Downtown Multimodal Access Plan (2005), which relaunches Union Station as the city’s transport hub, and the Civic Center District Plan (2006).  You can find all of these documents online at www.denver.gov or at www.downtowndenver.org.

Central to the delivery of this vision is the Denver Downtown Partnership. The DDP is a non-profit business organisation that represents downtown businesses, commercial property owners, and 60 000 employees.

As an organisation, the DDP creatively plans, manages and develops downtown Denver as the city’s vibrant and economically healthy urban core, and has consistently encouraged the central city’s business community to ensure that Downtown Denver creates and retains that elusive ‘sense of place’.

(Left: The 16th Avenue Mall offers free WiFi and electric shuttle buses, and is within walking distance of the world-class conference centre.)

Although its principal responsibilities include upkeep, cleaning and maintenance, in real terms DDP drives several interlinked goals, including extending and sharing the usage of the city’s infrastructure around the clock, celebrating the outdoors by creating an open-air oriented city and generating vitality at street level, in particular by animating the public right of way.

And there’s another factor that is of great interest to me as an inner-city dweller; in Denver, they don’t put limits on who can be downtown. Whether you’re a tourist, an office worker or a runaway, you are welcome in Downtown Denver. But that doesn’t mean it’s a free-for-all. Rather, Denver’s approach is summed up by another remarkably insightful catchphrase. John Desmond of DDP calls it ‘creating a virtuous circle’. 

Finding ways of responding to positive demands of visitors is easy enough. DDP runs efficient information booths. But it’s the way that the potentially negative aspects are handled in Denver that’s so impressive. Denver’s response is to tackle the inherent problem and not merely address how it manifests itself. They don’t make the assumption that the homeless haunt the mall in order to beg but, rather, they realise that the homeless are begging because they are lacking the basics – perhaps food, a job or shelter. A person begging on the 16th Street Mall is guided to what they need most: job centres, shelters, employment agencies and soup kitchens.  DDP staff are equally adept at informing the bored teenagers doing skateboard stunts off the street furniture about the massive floodlit skateboard rink at the baseball park. As Desmond says:  ‘A rising tide raises all boats.’

So can we create a ‘sense of place’ in South Africa’s city centres? Can we build neighbourhoods that are safe, clean and accessible on foot, and that are welcoming to all?  A tall order, certainly. But if we pull it off, our cities centres are going to be even more phenomenal than the promise they offer now.

Jane Jacobs inspired Dana Crawford to save the Larimer Square area from destruction. Jane was an editor at Architectural Review when she wrote the seminal The Death and Life of Great American Cities in 1961. Penned in response to developers who bulldozed historic buildings for ‘urban renewal’ consisting of anonymous high-rise blocks and monotonous highways, the book has become a classic of visionary urban thinking, reaching beyond planning issues to envision mixed-use zoning of city centres (taken for granted today), with commercial and residential units and old and new building happily co-existing side by side. Jane died in April this year but her ideas continue to play out, even in South Africa.

Upmarket downtowns The 51st annual conference of the International Downtown Association was held in Colorado in September 2005. The South Africans who went along to tap into the latest thinking about revitalising inner cities were Derek Bock, now chief operations officer of the Cape Town Central City Improvement District (CCID), and Neil Fraser of Urban Inc in Johannesburg. There they shared best practices with other Business Improvement Districts (BID) - mostly from the US and Canada - especially with regard to security and social development. Both believe that much of what Denver experienced can be harnessed to suit South African inner cities’ raw energy and natural vibe.

A key point is that nothing much can be achieved without the ‘buy-in’ of as many stakeholders as possible. Thus the City Council, private enterprise and citizens must come together to achieve solutions. The design of the Pearl Street Mall in Boulder, Colorado was highly influenced by residents’ suggestions, down to their debate about what artworks should fill the space. This indicates a certain civic mindedness, as well as citizens’ interest and pride in their cities, an attitude which most of us will have to work on. Although private developers in Denver are often outsourced projects by the city, they are not allowed free rein to do as they please. Citizens can fight development they believe to be unbalanced or insensitive. This is an essential example to follow in South Africa, with its minefields of forced removals and relocations.

Another biggie – as we battle traffic and petrol-price increases – is public transport. Many Denverites have given up cars in favour of bicycles or low-emission gas and electric buses. The key to reinvigorating our inner cities is not simply building fancy restaurants or lofts. It is about long-term planning, partnerships and sensitivity. And nor is it a case of ‘town or township’: if the inner city is revitalised, that in turn will benefit outlying areas of the greater metropole as well. Plus revenue from property tax can be used to uplift poorer areas. A win-win situation.