Quote:
Originally Posted by bobg
More importantly in my mind do we really need the combined capacity of Vasquez and Colorado Blvd when the vehicle counts are so low, and those roads at most are half a mile apart? It just seems like overkill to have two roads designed to carry so much more than they are (or likely ever will) half a mile apart from each other on a freeway.
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So even if you want to remove one of the two, presumably Vasquez - that does not to equate to needing a cap. It equates to leaving behind a road removal wasteland. Are we planning to pay for the removal and the cap through some sort of development? And if so, what? What are we going to do with all of that space, apart from cultivate weeds?
Because I have no patience for talk of coffee shops, parks, yoga studios, and similar gentrification-minded development fantasies. Not up there, not unless there's a mysterious infusion of capital on the horizon that I just haven't heard about. If there was ANY private market interest in redeveloping those areas, we'd already have seen evidence of it much, much closer to downtown.
And it's nonsense to think that the big bad highway is the only thing holding back those neighborhoods. I'll remind everyone that there is a highway cutting smack through the middle of Wash Park/South Pearl too.
EDIT: In my mind, redeveloping Elyria-Swansea is more akin to redeveloping Detroit than it is "the next big thing" in Denver. I'd like to be wrong, but I see problems there that the over gentrification engines of Denver never had. (Same applies to southwest Denver, for slightly different reasons. The crappy base housing stock being a major factor, though.)