Arrived Friday afternoon after a long drive, stayed downtown at the Marriott, and immidately hit the 16th street mall. This is about a mile long street, closed to cars, that has retail/restaurants/offices on both sides. A free shuttle bus runs the length of the street. While many stores are of the chain variety, there is still a good mix of smaller chains and local shops. This would be absolutely awesome to have in KC, especially for us downtown residents. I really don't know how it supports that much retail when there is about 0 condos on 16th street and only about 5,000 people living in LoDo (by their own counts). Maybe people actually enjoy coming downtown and experiencing it. Anyways, this should be a model for any kind of SoLo development down south.
After spending some time there, we hit LoDo for the first time for the game....great collection of bars, independent restaurants, & lofts.....very naturally built out of old building stock and some new condos mixed in. Can really see how a downtown sports facility made this area boom. Great collection of bars with a high number of patios & rooftop seating areas....wish we had more of them here in KC.
Didn't get to see much else. For everything denver has done with their downtown area, what they are lacking is in attractions. In the 48 hours there, my friends who didn't join us for all the games, had to drive to a mountain town to find something to do....past 16th street and drinking in LoDo, it seems there is a lack of attractions that people w/o kids could take in....not everybody gets a kick of just walking downtown among a well kept area.
Larimer square is probably the coolest area....many sidewalk cafes and felt much more natural than it's 16th street neighbor...wish I had more time to eat at the local places there.
While it's easy to become jealous of what Denver has done with their downtown, there is much hope for KC....what they've done with this entire area has been completed in around 10 years...that is a very short time. Talking with people who saw these areas before, they had a downtown in much worse shape than KC has ever had.....it can be done and in a short time. All that is needed is the plan and the people to do it. Hopefully our new EDC director, Urdis and new City Manager from Denver, Cauthan (sp?) can bring this winning attitude from outside of KC into the area. While I'm not big on bringing things like Niketown, Wolfgang Puck's, etc. to the downtown area, having a retail/restaurant space where people can come and be together is a great thing...while much of 16th street is nice, it does almost have a fabricated feel...it wasn't built naturally and has lost some of the urban feel.
Also, what they have in downtown close together, they quickly lose. Downtown is very compact and the urban areas drop off quickly....there is nothing like a Plaza, City Market, Crossroads, 39th street, westport, brookside, etc...it all seems compact onto 16th street and Blake street (major LoDo street) not that this is all bad but it is still nice to have the unique urban areas that KC posesses.
Here are some picttures I took....
Larmier Square
Had to get one unflattering shot of Denver
Love their loft architecture
You can see the rest of the pictures here: http://www.kcskyscrapers.com/kcpics/Denver Didn't take as many as usual...wanted to go out on an urban hike on Saturday afternoon but the Royals game was rescheduled after the rainout, so didn't get to.
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