Not sure how long we can wait, though, to purchase property if we're serious about a square in that area. Something I've been thinking about for a long time, actually... how to get something started to purchase property for an eventual park/square. There's obviously no city money now, but it'd be nice to do it before we have to pay $300 a square foot...

You're either not looking hard enough or aren't at events that they street food follows. Last Wednesday there was a truck that specialized in crock-pot food. Dunno if they'll be there this week or someone else. There are stands all over downtown. Tooey's usually has a truck out front. And the street burritos, god, the street burritos....

I don't consider truck food street food, I guess. I don't want to chase it down, I want to know where a guy is and go to it. On foot. It makes sense, I suppose, that American cities would resort to trucks for street food. A driving solution for spread out, driving cities. We don't have the pedestrian density - basically anywhere, except for the mall (which is limited) and as you said, special events - to support it. But holes in the wall, carts, what any other city on the planet would consider street food - that we don't have. I guess I want street food that gets better than 10 miles-per-gallon, or that I don't have to check in at Westword to find.

The downtown stands are weak. They're there...but it's sparse. It's gotten better, though, I will admit. Compared to other cities, it's still weak.

Street burritos are good, yes. Mexican food is the only street food we can support, I assume because of a very large and loyal community. I just don't particularly like Mexican food. :( I'm still waiting to see street tacos like you would see in actual Mexico, those I would do. I've eaten my way through those things (and corn at night) in Mexico City. Yum. Maybe it's a different regional variant of Mexican food we get here, because I ate well in the DF, but can't seem to here.

Ever been to Bourbon Chicken?

The little place on Colfax, at Park-ish? Or is there a cart someplace also?

There is an article in the June issue of Life on capitol hill about the new development at the old CU med center. LOCH's website hasn't been updated so I can't link to it. They said it would be a mix of small and big box retail, stepped height grades from the street, use of materials that already are present on the site. The plan is to use the existing zoning that Shea got approved, a mix of C-MU 10, 20, 30, and utilize the existing general development plan. There was also a sentence saying the new plan will be about 25% less dense than what Shea had planned. :(

Next meeting is June 16th at 4pm at the Molly Bank Conference center. The article stated that Sembler was planning on having a site plan presented at that meeting.

There was a conceptual rendering in the article, it looked like standard fake urbanism in the burbs. I don't think this one is going to turn out stellar.

It was already a bad plan and they're making it even worse.

*sighs*

It just adds to the other wasteland that is Colorado Boulevard. There is nothing on that street that is appealing to the pedestrian. And it's hell to drive on at any hour.

I don't understand how you can reduce density by 25% and still use the same zoning? That shouldn't be allowed because it becomes something completely different at that point. If I still lived in Denver I'd go to that meeting and fight it. A large turnout of people against the new proposal needs to happen.

This is really disappointing but not surprising given what the new developer has been saying over the past month or two.

The zoning is typically framed in terms of maximums - maximum allowable floor area, maximum height, etc. Minimums (other than open space, parking, and the like) usually aren't included. Especially under the old code, and these are old code districts.

Although, even under the new code, if you were in, say, the C-MX-20, the code envisions building heights between 3 and 20 stories. That leaves a lot of flexibility.

I think it's generally assumed that a developer will build toward the upper end of allowable density, especially since that's probably priced into what he pays for the property. But it certainly doesn't have to be the case.

I'm also not sure why we need outrageously high densities at that site. It's fairly isolated, not really central, doesn't have particularly great transit access, isn't all that walkable (or it's at least not where most folks would choose to base their car-free lifestyle), it's potentially a traffic nightmare if you pack too much in there. I think moderate densities are perfectly appropriate here. There's only so much demand for very dense development; I'd also prefer this not compete too strongly with proposals closer to Central Denver. It's close enough to compete/take away from closer in projects, but not really where I'd choose to focus our density given the choice between this and other sites in a zero sum game.

^Why would the neighborhood want a high density development? These are the same folks who drove CU medical to Aurora because they didn't want to allow higher density on the old campus.

Plant a bit of big-box retail, some apartments and offices and be done with it.

It's the same misplaced desire that was seen in the urge to have Stapleton be this hyper-dense urban neighborhood. The more of this that is done outside of DT, the less development that will done within DT and the core neighborhoods.

That's true, basically all of the homeless shelters are clustered in that area. I don't know if the neighborhood will ever be fully gentrified until some (not all) of those shelters move to a different area. There are 7 different shelters in that general vicinity!

In the mean time more of a hard-scape plaza would probably be better than a park anyway. Something like this that encourages businesses to open around it:
http://criticaldetroit.org/wp-conten...apitalPark.jpg

There are a couple cool old buildings around the parking lot/billboard triangle at 22nd & Broadway/Champa that could be redeveloped if something like that were there. Such a park/plaza would also have a really nice skyline view. :)

I've never heard of Benedict Fountain Park. Will have to check it out next time I'm in Denver.

You take that back!
I refuse to believe there's nowhere in Denver you can buy a beef tongue taco from a Mexican guy pushing around a cart. Probably not downtown, though.

^Peoria Blvd in Aurora is the mecca of Mexican street food. Though I do wonder if that will continue as Fitzsimons gentrifies the area and Stapleton grows east towards Peoria.

Mmm, beef tongue taco. Lunch idea. Or maybe some Rico Pollo, mmm. I'm sure we have push cart guys in the neighborhoods down by me too, around South Federal... there's just not a whole lot of walking that goes on. No shortage of taco shops though. Central Denver, less so. The only guy we ever had in Curtis Park was a popsicle cart.

I guess it's downtown street food I'd like to see more of. We need more peds off the highly regulated Mall first probably.

Here's a couple of shots I found of the park on my Flickr account. None show the park particularly well, but I have some excellent shots that I'll be posting soon in my upcoming 5 Points/ Curtis Park thread.










The park is to the right in this shot

Nice shots cpv. I think that park will be pretty nice when the construction on the north side fills in.

Blasphemy.. the taco stands on Federal between like 1st ave and Mississippi are where its at:)

^Someone's asking to be crucified. Let me just run to Home Depot for some 4x4's and some nails....