Quote:
Originally Posted by Chico Loco
I live a mile south of downtown Denver and have been here for a few decades. Be wary of commenters who say they live in Denver. When people say they are from here they are usually from a suburb.
Downtown was good 10-15 years ago. Not so much today. I don't know any of my friends who live here would go there. There are lots of sketchy people on and around the 16th Street Mall and no stores, etc., that you can't find anywhere else. A few months back I took someone from out of town who wanted to go there, and a crazy guy with a knife was chasing people around.
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Guilty as charged. I happen to be one of those crazy people who think that our municipal boundaries are largely arbitrary and that the city extends beyond Denver proper. I have some good friends who live in Baker (about a mile south of downtown Denver) and I spend time there and on South Broadway frequently. Living in a suburb does not mean that a person cannot also spend time in the city. What is crazy is that I can actually get downtown on a train from Arvada nearly fast as my friends can from their little transit-black hole around 3rd and Santa Fe.
When Denver stopped building condos in 2008 and existing home prices show through the roof, I realized I will never be able to afford a home in central Denver. I'm also a believer in TOD, so I set my sights on Olde Town Arvada. I have some gripes with the Planning politics out here in the burbs, but otherwise I like being on the west end of town. It is closer to the mountains, closer to my husband's job, and not far from Boulder (where my parents live). I used to ride the train downtown every day during grad school and still visit Denver frequently. When the new Colfax BRT begins running, we will probably even ditch the car and try using transit to get out there. Even when we are using our car like good red-blooded Americans, we often find ourselves in places like Tennyson and Sloan's Lake (in Denver). I can meet my brother in The Highlands in less than 15 minutes from my front door.
I'm not going to try to sit here and defend downtown in the post-COVID era because it is clearly struggling. But it is not the hellhole some people make it out to be. Denver was a LOT rougher around the edges before the mid-90s. Downtown was also pretty much a boring 8am-5pm business district up until at least the mid 2000s. A lot of the recent trouble on 16th Street was because the entire street was behind construction fences for almost five years, creating a classic "eyes on the street" problem. The crazy guy with a knife incident definitely made for salacious headlines, and also could have happened in just about any big city where there are homeless people who have mental health problems.
16th Street construction is done now and the street looks great. I still ride the train down there on a regular basis and downtown definitely isn't dead. Perhaps the LoDo end of things has more going on these days, but that has been the case for at least 10 years now. My favorite new local coffee shop recently opened up in a shuttered Starbucks at 16th and Market Street. Some days, believe it or not, the train is actually packed and there are plenty of people out and about near the station having fun. Denver Pride month starts this week and the festival will be up and down 16th Street all month so I can't wait to check it out!
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