Thoughts on Denver

[staubio]

I just got back from a long weekend in Denver / Boulder / Fort Collins.

On Denver:

It is Kansas City, with a few differences. There is a confluence of two rivers northwest of downtown. The street grid lines up with the river at the heart of the city, an area full of a remarkable quantity of preserved old brick buildings skewed on a Northwest turned grid.. Those give way to the traditional Central Business District, though there is no freeway between them. In fact, there are no freeways to be found walking around downtown all day long. There is a street going east out of downtown that is a little rougher, lined with panhandlers and cheap motels. There is a zoo in a city park in a challenged neighborhood, though not as far as Swope. There is an airport inconveniently far away from the city. There is a great art museum with a brand new modern expansion. There is an area called Highlands with a few block stretch of fun local restaurants all on one block, in the 30s.

Though the trendiest neighborhood in the city wasn't built from the ground up, the experience is virtually the same as our own Power and Light District. Locals call LoDo fake and pretentious and avoid it at night. The concepts have charming, preserved homes instead of Cordish-concept buildings, but they are no more authentic.

To me, Denver was dealt the same deck and did it the opposite way. They had some activist planning in the Millennium Bridge, 16th Street Mall, etc. They built a baseball stadium downtown and guess what: it worked. The areas east of the stadium, once challenged, are infilling nicely, and the buzz feeds LoDo as well. Freeways dance through town as gracefully as a freeway can. Trails connect the neighborhoods.

They have a couple of other things going for them, like begin the capital city, having the art museum downtown and having a huge outdoor recreation scene. Denver is a younger city that was built fast, but it isn't that much different from Kansas City. In fact, I was surprised to find that it didn't offer much more than Kansas City would.

Why can't we?

[AllThingsKC]

I agree 100%.

One of the things I like about Denver is that most of the city's attractions are in or near downtown.  It is also a capital city, which I think gives people the feeling that they're in "an important city." - At least I always feel like that when I'm there.  Denver is also in one state.  So, whatever is good for Denver, is good for Colorado.

Downtown Denver is extremely pedresdrian friendly.  On top of light rail and free bus rides along the 16 Street Mall, they also have diagonal cross walks!!!

Oh, and they have mountians!

Denver is cool in my book!

[loftguy]

Why can't we?

Ahhhh, you pose a question that bespeaks wisdom.  The answer is either that WE CAN, or BECAUSE WE WON'T.

Truly, we can.   Denver has done what it has, because the general community believed it could be a great city.  They continue to believe that and it is self fulfilling.  In Denver, fools are not suffered lightly.  

This may offend some, but I'm starting to wonder if the true advantage there is that they have attracted the brightest and the best.  Here we spend too much time considering trifles with depressed fervor while real opportunity is not realized.

"The feast spoils, while the possible shortcomings of the banquet were ravenously consumed."

[KCPowercat]

I think Denver offers about the same as KC (if not less as far as visitor "attractions") and to me the weather is 10x worse....the benefit greatly from being the only major city in their state, having mountains to pull people initially, and really being the only major city in 600 miles of them in all directions.

[staubio]

I think Denver offers about the same as KC (if not less as far as visitor "attractions") and to me the weather is 10x worse....the benefit greatly from being the only major city in their state, having mountains to pull people initially, and really being the only major city in 600 miles of them in all directions.

The weather? While unpredictable, it is a lot more temperate than here. They don't get the crazy hot and cold extremes we do. 69% of Denver days are sunny.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denver#Climate

[mean]

the benefit greatly from being the only major city in their state, having mountains to pull people initially, and really being the only major city in 600 miles of them in all directions.

Exactly. Since we don't have any of those advantages, what can we do to draw people? It is a question I have asked myself a lot.

[GRID]

Take most of the suburbs of Denver, Boulder and even some parts of Denver itself like the DTC and put them in some other jurisdiction that has nothing to do with Colorado or the city of Denver.  Make sure this includes the vast majority of the personal and corporate wealth of the region.

Take the capital out of Denver and hide it.

Do all of this 150 years ago.  Think about how Denver would be today.  Do you see all those Downtown stadiums and other attractions?  Light Rail?  Even a new DIA (it's far from the city, but it's also one of the busiest airports in the world).

I don's see any of that stuff happening. I see Kansas City.

Oh, and replace the Rocky Mountains with a bunch of farms that way people can sit around and talk about college sports rather than go skiing or mountain biking! 

[staubio]

I take the time to post photos for the first time in a long time and the database crashes. An omen, perhaps.

[LenexatoKCMO]

I take the time to post photos for the first time in a long time and the database crashes. An omen, perhaps.

What kind of viruses have you been embedding in your pics? 

[staubio]

Take two, with changes:

Odell Brewery, Fort Collins, CO:


Pearl Street, Boulder:


Union Station:


Denver Art Museum:


DAM:


DAM:


DAM, Library and Cultural Center


Civic Center Park:


Local Resident:


Capitol:


Cheeseman Park:


Park Hill Street Scene:


Five Points, heart of the African American community:








"The Ride":


LoDo near Coors Field:


Coors Field:


LoDo:


LoDo:


Union Station:




LoDo:


LoDo:


LoDo from Cherry Creek:


Chess Players on the 16th St Mall:


Confluence Park, on the edge of downtown:


Larimer Square:


Larimer Square:


Highlands, Denver's 39th Street (on 32nd):


Skyline from Red Rocks:

[Midtownkid]

Great pics!  Actually, I believe the building on the right is actually a condo building that was built with the DAM and was also designed by Libeskind (not a cultural center).  It's called the 'Museum Residences' or something like that.

[Roanoker]

Really nice pics! This is one TALL building!


Loved the squirrel.

[warwickland]

nice. i've "lost" a number of kansas city and st. louis friends to this western metropolis. i'll be there for a weekend in june on my way west for the first time in 4 (5?) years, i assume that the changes downtown will be noticeable. i'm looking forward to comparing/contrasting denver with my fresh memories of portland. my guess is that there will be more of the "beautiful people" types who look like they belong on TMZ or in lincoln park chicago, but i don't know.

[GRID]

Denver and Portland are pretty similar.  Both have the yuppy areas and the more gritty areas of Downtown.  Most of the 16th Street Mall corridor reminds me of Portland.  Overall, I think Portland it a bit more gritty and urban while Denver is a bit more modern and sterile (not really in a bad way).

I don't know what I'm saying.  I like both towns, but I like Denver better.  Mostly because it's larger, has more pro sports and is close to the Mountains.  I think Portland is a bit overrated, but it's close to Seattle and Vancouver .

[staubio]

Denver and Portland are pretty similar.  Both have the yuppy areas and the more gritty areas of Downtown.  Most of the 16th Street Mall corridor reminds me of Portland.  Overall, I think Portland it a bit more gritty and urban while Denver is a bit more modern and sterile (not really in a bad way).

I don't know what I'm saying.  I like both towns, but I like Denver better.  Mostly because it's larger, has more pro sports and is close to the Mountains.  I think Portland is a bit overrated, but it's close to Seattle and Vancouver .

I'd put that the other way around. Portland is pretty lilly-white, though I guess Denver is too. Neither of them have much grit nor do they really convey a real sense of place. They feel like they were just plopped down and settled last week.

It is an interesting comparison. I think the link really is the focus on the outdoor lifestyle and access to natural areas. Denver's mountains, Oregon's everything. They both also make a lot of beer.

Denver doesn't have anything like Portland's Hawthorne St in the SE nor does Denver have the natural beauty that Portland does in the city. Portland does certainly feel smaller, though, but Denver's added size doesn't seem to add a lot more variety or interest, unless you want a football team.

[mlind]

My family moved to Denver from KC (I went to California).  Because it's so dry, the winter snow melts quickly.  Summers can be hot, but there's no humidity.  There is terrible suburban sprawl with cookie cutter homes and malls with the same stores you see everywhere. Homes in some of the charming older neighborhoods are being turned into McMansions that ruin the scale.  Most of my various family members live in the south Denvers and I rarely see any minorities.

However, the light rail is great and the parks are lovely - planted with flowers.  They've done a lot better with downtown/LoDo/Larimer Square than a lot of cities have done.  Lots of history and cultural activity and in an hour you can be in the mountains.  ("Screw it, let's go to the mountains") Extensive bike/running trails along the Highland Canal that are heavily used.  It's surprisingly green.  One joke is that the city symbol should be crossed lawn mowers over a coiled hose. 

My family loves it but I'll take the San Francisco Bay Area.

 

[staubio]

I usually write a more thorough recap of my impressions after a trip once I've given it some time to digest. I didn't get back to my journal on this trip until recently. Here is what I wrote, in somewhat hasty, catch-up-the-notes fashion:

Denver is a beautiful city, without question, but that beauty ended up feeling somewhat superficial.  It is hard to imagine a rough-and-tumble corner deli run by the third generation of an Italian family or the gritty relics of a turn-of-the-century industrial powerhouse. These things aren?t amenities, to be sure, and very rarely will they be a compelling reason why someone would seek out a place. They are, however, powerful links to the past, providing a key means to connect with the city you call home and feel as if you are part of something bigger -- part of an evolution.

In the search for grit, I was left wanting. With so many post-war neighborhoods, the relics of the post-industrial city are mostly absent. By modern urban standards, Denver isn?t particularly diverse (5% of the metro population is black) and it lacks the challenged neighborhoods that characterize a city that underwent more dramatic demographic shifts. This is a good thing, though it does serve to bolster the feeling that the city was freshly plopped down and populated entirely with immigrants, robbing the city of a real sense of place.

Because of its youth, Denver lacks the secondary neighborhood centers of other cities. While downtown is far-and-away an amazing success, with a bustling LoDo, downtown stadium and gentrifying eastern edge, the neighborhoods lack focal points as they are too new to have been built when streetcars were a necessity and clusters happened organically. This leaves what are effectively inner-ring suburbs for neighborhoods with a noticeably lack of mixed use zoning outside of the downtown area.  While LoDo and Larimer Square are all predominantly preserved older buildings, they still have the very sterile and manufactured feel of ?hip concepts? over neighborhood icons. The locals tell me that ?nobody but college kids? go to LoDo.

A notable exceptions to are the Highlands area northwest of downtown and Tennyson Street in the northwest, which seems to serve as the Main Street for this area of town. This neighborhood was formed when floods forced people to seek higher ground and was solidified as a dense corridor when streetcars later served the area. These areas combine to create something very similar to West 39th in KC. To a lesser extent, the Five Points neighborhood has a transit-oriented center northeast of downtown and serves, purportedly, as the center of the African-American community. The Santa Fe Arts District is a small blip and South Broadway is a few buildings in a mostly suburban strip. The best non-downtown neighborhood is the adjacent Capitol Hill, with an incredible accumulation of civic structures in one area with an iconic park, the state capitol building, the architecturally interesting library and the funky Denver Art Museum.

As single family neighborhoods go, Denver does have some amazing options in the city. Washington Park West is a neighborhood of smaller homes flanking its namesake park, Denver?s largest. Imagine Loose Park with more accessible, smaller homes on its perimeter. The smaller working class homes closer to downtown seem to have great potential for infill development.

Outside of the central city, the suburbs of Denver are uglier than almost anywhere, with the stark development style rolling over scrubby barren foothills.

In Denver, it seems most of the young people live there because it is generally accepted as ?cool,? which has the impact of doubling housing prices as compared to Kansas City while keeping salaries on par. The lifestyle doesn?t seem any more urban. Transit is significantly better than in KC, with light rail that mostly serves far flung commuters. Locals I talked to say they have ridden light rail only a couple of times. The core bus system seems very robust, however, but driving is still easy and the norm. The frequent and free downtown mall shuttle is handy but seems to be predominantly a tourist amenity and, from my experience, something for disaffected youth to spend their idle time riding around on.

There are good reasons that Denver is regarded as ?cool? and is full of transplants. A looming mountain backdrop with hour-away access to skiing and other mountain sports, a kayaking run in downtown adjacent to the flagship REI, an incredible network of trails and a culture of fitness and activity permeate the place. These are the types of modern amenities people are looking for and strong leadership in Mayor Hickenlooper has delivered. The weather lacks the harsh extremes of other areas and the city is essentially the only city with cachet in the entire inner west, making it a significant destination for in migration.

Still, to me, the city feels more like a resort where everyone will leave after the weekend than a real city with all of the associate scars and relics of the past. There is much to learn from Denver?s incredible successes in downtown and in creating a major destination and I look forward to being part of the slow, grinding transformation of Kansas City ? one that I can feel a connection to.

I?ll gladly ?settle? for Kansas City and its unglamorous authenticity, as unsexy as it may be. I?ll see you in Denver for vacation.

[warwickland]

Thanks for the recap. I was in Denver one month ago, and I suppose I went with the impression that Denver was completely plastic, and came away with a different impression. I spent some time on Colfax both east and west of downtown as well as areas north/northwest of City Park and found areas with some grit and personality. Driving west into Lakewood, I also saw some sweet looking dives on an autocentric, inner suburban, but somewhat gritty West Colfax.

I suppose for me, the lack of the truly cancerous grit one finds on the east side of KCMO, Northside of StL, or Southside of Chicago was refreshing. I didn't, however, feel like Denver's urbanity held any particular charm in of itself like Kansas City, St. Louis, or Chicago - which is like a huge, cruel joke to me. I can only imagine what KC or St. Louis would be like if the St. Francois Mountains were 10,000' tall. Denver's sense of place, frankly, sucked, considering how well it should be preserved if it had a potent sense of place to begin with. Even so, while I didn't like the feel of the city nearly as much as Portlands, the ambiance of its setting on the (somewhat spoiled now  :( ) front range with the higher elevation, drier - "healthier" climate (probably more obvious to me in StL than you all in KC), and beautiful high plains skies was very, very attractive. Sitting on the capitol steps near downtown, gazing at the distant snow on the Rockies in June was sublime.

I would somewhat challenge your idea that Denver isn't diverse. There of course a large Latino population - and theres at least one source out there that shows that metro Denver has a smaller white population % than many midwestern metros (don't know if it was less than KC but it was less than STL).

I kind of see Denver to KC, like Chicago is to St. Louis. Always out there, occasionally casting a shadow, sucking a friend or two away. Never quite seductive enough, however, to pull some of us away (and sometimes that's a disappointment, even). To me, Denver is kind of like that guy that throws awesome house parties, in an awesome house, with awesome beers, that's kind of a doosh (no, not Bahua  :lol:). Then again, I could be talking about North Chicago...

[staubio]

To me, Denver is kind of like that guy that throws awesome house parties, in an awesome house, with awesome beers, that's kind of a doosh (no, not Bahua  :lol:). Then again, I could be talking about North Chicago...

Ha, I love it... a great perspectives in general. Thanks for sharing!

[mlind]

I visit Denver every year or so to see my family.  I've been doing this since they moved from KC in 1965.  Like most cities, it has really changed. Where we used to ride horses is now filled with McMansions. The suburban growth is astounding and boring - cookie cutter houses, condos, & apartment. 

However, there is a lot of history there if you look for it (I'm a history buff) and charming older neighborhoods with one block long shopping areas.  There is urban grit on Colfax, the original Highway 40. And if you drive Colorado Blvd south you will see one of the worst examples of a lack of planning/zoning. 

One of the most interesting things is what they've done with the old Stapleton Airport.  They've created what appears to be a successful sustainable community - an example of new urbanism. 

People live in Denver for the jobs, but the weekends are spent in the mountains with the year-round recreational opportunities.  Unbelievable traffic returning to the city on Sunday evening.

It sure beats living in Montana.