DENVER | Main Development Thread #7

[bobg]

Originally Posted by AlSmithee

I was pointing out that that increasing supply isn't the "only" way to deal with constraints, as was claimed.

Ugh. I intentionally replied with an egregious strawman to point yours out.

Bunt said it was the only way to deal with water supply constraints, in other words the only way to ensure supply was not restricted. You countered with a way to achieve market equilibrium and argued storage is not the only way to achieve that, but that's not what was claimed. Two different things, and it's a silly strawman argument to instigate, especially over water supply on a denver development forum.

Further I'm sure there's other ways to ensure water supply is not constrained (although most are economicaly impractical), but I'm also fairly certain Bunt was being hyperbolic with his use of the word only.

Anyway 200 Clayton looks nice. Thanks for the renderings everyone. And that video Ryan as always great job.

[wong21fr]

Originally Posted by RyanD

*Gondola Noises*


Bunt - we really need to get on it.

Would a gondola through Bunt's neighborhood (FYI the whitest one in Denver- possibly the oldest as well) really fly?

I'm all for a gondola going from the Lower Highlands through downtown and heading to Cherry Creek via Speer. Perhaps with a automated floor drop system to dump out scofflaws in a humane manner.

[SirLucasTheGreat]

Would you want the gondola to hover over the road or the creek?

[seventwentyone]

Y’all are just begging for Cirrus to talk about the Schwebebahn aren’t y’all.

[wong21fr]

Originally Posted by SirLucasTheGreat

Would you want the gondola to hover over the road or the creek?

Dumping scofflaws over the creek would probably be more humane.

[twister244]

It's been a minute since I've dropped in this thread since I spent the Summer in Chicago and two weeks away from hopping over to London for Sep, maybe October depending on the variants.

Looking at the census numbers, while it's always easy to cheer on ~20% growth in a decade, the metro area of Denver really needs to get their collective crap together on housing costs, and fast....

You guys all just had a massive debate on how Boulder has created affordability issues for other parts of the metro. While that's been true for decades now, don't forget.... We just had Lakewood pass their own cap a few years back, and they aren't small fish when it comes to their size in the metro. That's going to just squeeze things for Denver even more going forward. You now have caps in Boulder, Golden, and Lakewood. What happens when the next town/burb decides they want in on this because they don't like the growth?

And the decision to prioritize the train to Boulder over other transit is not good. Less transit options means more traffic, which means more bitching, which means more political ammunition for.... a cap on new housing.

Eventually, things will slow down if costs continue to go up. People simply will bypass Denver city limits, and buy a house sprawled out into Kansas.

I think Denver has a lot going for it, but man it just doesn't feel like it's worth the costs of admission anymore. When I first moved to Denver in 2015, prices were high, but reasonable enough that if they had stayed at that level, I might be persuaded to buy something bigger than a 1-bedroom condo. But now? Forget it. It's one of the reasons I have taken a break from Colorado, and the longer I am here in Chicago, looking at their housing prices (even with higher taxes), the more I am getting tempted to buy something here instead and just base my career out of here since most of my family is here and will likely be in a job I can do mostly remote for the rest of my life. I mean..... Look at the following Zillow comparisons of average SFH prices for Chicago/Denver/Austin:

https://www.zillow.com/chicago-il/home-values/

https://www.zillow.com/denver-co/home-values/

https://www.zillow.com/austin-tx/home-values/

I threw in Austin just to show Denver isn't alone in these problems.... But still, it's gotten crazy in cities like Denver/Austin, and it's not sustainable.

Again, trying not to crap on Denver, but if you guys aren't careful, you will have a city that feels not much different than Boulder soon.

Side note for Boulder - I feel like this pandemic is going to have a permanent negative effect on Boulder. Think about it, all the people that used to commute to work in Boulder five days a week are now going to come in just a couple days a week. That's a ton of money not being spent on the local economy there.

[TakeFive]

It goes to Denver's Western Heritage

Originally Posted by Denver

I could not agree more. The national western center is one of the oldest and most important institutions in the region!

I can acknowledge that when I was young and dumb I didn't necessarily appreciate "those who came before" but as time goes along these things have become sacred.

Denver's Western Heritage is heavily featured at DEN so it's a significant part of the first impressions of arriving passengers.

A few examples of DEN's extensive collection

........
Images courtesy National Western/City of Denver via DEN

Visit Denver also features Denver's Western Heritage.

Despite its metropolitan, 21st-century leanings, Denver still retains a good deal of its Old West legacy. Around every corner, you’ll find some remnant of the pioneer era, as the past blends seamlessly into the present. Take some time to explore the city's bygone days by visiting a few of the attractions below.

Last but not least is my favorite Colorado Song.

The new arena, if built, would host over 300,000 people when the Stock Show is in town. Then the rest of the year it would be a great facility for Denver's schools to hold basketball, volleyball etc tournaments. Even (liberal) political rallies could be held there.

It's beyond me why there could be so much opposition - except for petty animosity towards Mayor Hancock which as I've already stated is myopic, short-sighted and selfish. But I'm counting on the voters throughout the city to bring this one home.

[laniroj]

Originally Posted by wong21fr

Would a gondola through Bunt's neighborhood (FYI the whitest one in Denver- possibly the oldest as well) really fly?

I'm all for a gondola going from the Lower Highlands through downtown and heading to Cherry Creek via Speer. Perhaps with a automated floor drop system to dump out scofflaws in a humane manner.

Just like the old Elitches sky ride!!!

[TakeFive]

Déjà Vu

https://www.bizjournals.com/denver/news/...nargo-rezoning-rejected-rino-denver.html

When a developer's rezoning request for a parcel in Denver's River North Art District went before City Council on May 11, the final vote seemed destined to be little more than a formality.

Cypress's rezoning request had received unanimous approval from both the Land Use and Transportation Infrastructure committee (LUTI) and the Planning Board. Cypress had signed a voluntary agreement with Denver's Department of Housing Stability (HOST) to designate 10% of the project's units at 80% AMI for 99 years, the maximum term length. The Community Planning and Development Department also backed the rezoning, with a senior city planner outlining the department's support in a presentation before Council prior to the final vote.

Then when it came to final approval many Councilors on the Denver City Council decided that Cypress and this proposal was responsible for everything that was wrong with Denver and the rezoning was denied by a 7-6 vote. It was in hindsight a terrible decision.

The Right to Petition; the Right to Protest; the Right To Redress
It's all good; it's what makes this country so great. It's been 50 years but I've been there and done that.

So who all is unhappy with the proposed new National Western Arena and why?
It sort of feels like the confluence of "Urban" special interests.

They haven't involved the neighborhood
which is patently false. The Elyria Swansea neighborhood has been a revolving door of presentations and neighborhood outreach going back a decade - and it continues. Do people not show up and then after-the-fact decide they're unhappy? Happens all the time.

There are ongoing specific efforts to create benefits to the neighborhood resulting from the new National Western Center but it's tricky. It's hard to project all revenues and the City can only do so much to benefit one specific neighborhood w/o upsetting 77 other neighborhoods who would also like 'special' treatment.

The Triangle Crowd
"They keep stealing our land" going all the way back to Auraria. Consider all the ordinary people who have found a pathway forward thanks to Auraria. "The Triangle" refers to the National Western parcel of land that was to be a P3 and is now totally dead.

The Sidewalk People
are frustrated (and jealous) at the slow pace of repair and replacement of sidewalks. Partly a Pandemic issue and a lot of this turning out to be a logistical nightmare. But there is additional money in the bond issue and they are proceeding.

The Leftovers
Some are still bitter about the Central 70 project. Pointless to say perhaps but over time this will prove to be the most critical infrastructure project for the city center in the last 30 years.

The Social Equity Crowd
I'm not against the concept per se but the reality is that take all the wealth from Billionaires across the globe and you couldn't make everybody happy.

Esteban L. Hernandez/Denverite has a follow-up piece that is largely "Fair and Balanced".

I trust that cooler heads, especially the city-wide voters will see the benefits of the proposed arena so that the National Western Center can build the most critical piece of the whole redevelopment.

[gopokes21]

Originally Posted by AlSmithee

Boulder could easily self-fund its local transit. They would likely work better, too.

But RTD needs Boulder’s money, and Boulder is kind enough to stay in.

No it doesn't. This is the most patently false self-sanctimony I've read in a long time... it almost sounds like Texas Longhorn fan drivel.

RTD needs Boulder's money to serve Boulder. If you want to leave, don't forget to take your whole county with you, and we'll be just fine.

I've been arguing for years that we need to de-regionalize RTD and provide more options at the local level. That starts with Boulder leaving. Good for everyone involved.

Douglas County would be the big loser in that, because then why should Denver keep subsidizing Castle Rock's $100/person paratransit rides?

[AlSmithee]

Does anyone have data on Denver’s in-commute volume?

[RyanD]

Originally Posted by SirLucasTheGreat

Would you want the gondola to hover over the road or the creek?

Speer is a hard corridor to do a gondola once you get out of downtown. Historic, marine crops of engineers, etc are a lot to deal with. The gondola routes themselves (serve GT and Cap Hill in the process) is pretty easy on paper, it's how and where you put the poles / stations.


Edit: Might need some of that sweet Boulder money to get this thing going too. /s

[wong21fr]

Originally Posted by RyanD

Speer is a hard corridor to do a gondola once you get out of downtown. Historic, marine crops of engineers, etc are a lot to deal with. The gondola routes themselves (serve GT and Cap Hill in the process) is pretty easy on paper, it's how and where you put the poles / stations.

Edit: Might need some of that sweet Boulder money to get this thing going too. /s

Well Boulder has given sooooo much already while receiving almost nothing (those poor upper-class white folks)..... /s

I'm ambivalent about the historic implications as I don't give a crap about Country Club's "historic neighborhood character" arguments (we know that would be used as a huge-ass cudgel to kill this proposal and the leverage those folks can bring will be hard to counter). The environmental would be manageable. An example Breckenridge's gondola across Cucumber Gulch that is arguably crossing far more sensitive environmental areas.

I'd be interested to see what you've sketched out in term of route/stations.

[SirLucasTheGreat]

As far as low cost options, if we could pimp out our bike paths with wayfinding signs, park connections, and maybe a few more elevated bicycle tracks like on Brighton Boulevard, that would be great and make a big impact.

As far as capital-intensive dreams, an elevated monorail (i.e. Seattle Center Monorail) going from at least Glendale to the Ball Arena with stops at the Cherry Creek Mall and Auraria Campus would be great.

[Brainpathology]

I missed a lot too wow..

Boulder is Colorado's intellectual equivalent of twitter.

[Agent Orange]

Originally Posted by SirLucasTheGreat

As far as low cost options, if we could pimp out our bike paths with wayfinding signs, park connections, and maybe a few more elevated bicycle tracks like on Brighton Boulevard, that would be great and make a big impact.

As far as capital-intensive dreams, an elevated monorail (i.e. Seattle Center Monorail) going from at least Glendale to the Ball Arena with stops at the Cherry Creek Mall and Auraria Campus would be great.

I like a Glendale to 6th and Speer alignment that then travels up Broadway to 17th to Union Station. Would also make sense to extend southeast along Leetsdale out to Nine Mile and densify the hell out of that corridor.

And yeah, having a decent bike network of continuous separated/protected paths without random gaps would be something we could do relatively cheaply to gear up for future urban intensification and mobility crunches. I think there's a ton of people who would ride bikes more if it wasn't terrifying for them. And compared to many other peer cities, Denver's bike infrastructure is atrocious. Maybe it was ahead of the curve 15 years ago. But we've done little in the last five years besides that four block stretch in Baker and some good protected lanes in the CBD. We need to connect our neighborhoods, not just have occasional spurts of good bike lanes that dead end.

[SirLucasTheGreat]

That alignment probably makes more sense from a connectivity standpoint. I have been thinking a lot about some of the fiscal issues that COVID has presented for municipalities like Denver. I believe that the current office usage is about 30% of what it was before the pandemic. That translates to a lot less people patronizing shops on 16th street mall and paying sales tax. It seems that more should be done to expand the tax base. Some quick thoughts:

1. Parking lots are presumably less profitable now as compared to before the pandemic. I imagine that fact makes parking lot acquisitions cheaper for urban infill.
2. Improving transit infrastructure to increase accessibility to retail districts (Cherry Creek Mall, 16th Street Mall, Colorado Blvd., etc...)
3. Stadium district development. People will still go to Broncos, Nuggets, Avs, and Rockies games. Converting parking lots to mixed use districts with plenty of retail would help Denver increase their revenues from people who no longer commute into town for work.

[bobg]

Originally Posted by SirLucasTheGreat

That alignment probably makes more sense from a connectivity standpoint. I have been thinking a lot about some of the fiscal issues that COVID has presented for municipalities like Denver. I believe that the current office usage is about 30% of what it was before the pandemic. That translates to a lot less people patronizing shops on 16th street mall and paying sales tax. It seems that more should be done to expand the tax base. Some quick thoughts:

It's not as bad for retail/restaurants as you might think. We're still down about 40% in office worker activity. Restaurants and retail are only down about 10 to 20% from prepandemic. Mind you that's just activity based on cell phone data, not sure if the DDP has done any analysis on how that activity translates into dollars.

Source:
http://https://www.downtowndenver.com/wp-content/uploads/High-Freqency-Data-Update-08-18-21.pdf

It seems like there's a lot more day visitors from the metro area because there's still not a lot to do some days and people are just tired of being cooped up. Which is offsetting a lot of the office lag.

[gopokes21]

Originally Posted by wong21fr

Well Boulder has given sooooo much already while receiving almost nothing (those poor upper-class white folks)..... /s

I'm ambivalent about the historic implications as I don't give a crap about Country Club's "historic neighborhood character" arguments (we know that would be used as a huge-ass cudgel to kill this proposal and the leverage those folks can bring will be hard to counter). The environmental would be manageable. An example Breckenridge's gondola across Cucumber Gulch that is arguably crossing far more sensitive environmental areas.

I'd be interested to see what you've sketched out in term of route/stations.

I bolded the pieces of this that conflict with each other. You and I could both care less about old manses in Country Club. I think it'd be a waste to demolish them, but I'm all for adaptively reusing them and we should not be overly concerned with "spoiling their context" or whatever. They're in the middle of the city, they know what they bought into.

That said, while we could care less, Section 106 reviews and other Environmental Reviews aren't conducted by us. Sec 106 will be conducted by the SHPO (who holds an outdated purist view of historic pres) who hate what's happening in Denver and take it out on every project with an approval hook. Environmental reviews will be conducted by CDPHE/DDPHE (a bunch of overly eager recent grads who don't understand where their process fits in the grand scheme of a project timeline) who will perform the world's greatest most stringent Environmental Review every time. And then god help us all to the extent these reviews must be performed in consultation with a minimally responsive Federal agency.

This regulatory atmosphere makes a lot of great ideas virtually impossible.

I think we all agree that we need grade separated transit in the core of Denver. We don't need another at-grade LRT or BRT that will be stuck in traffic. For transit to truly move the needle, it needs to be more efficient than driving. The next transit project needs to either go up and over or down and through. I also think we need to start thinking at the system-level and not the route-level, meaning the next line needs to provide transfers to other lines. I think our most promising corridor is a dual-hub route from 25/Colorado Station up to Union Station.

I'm curious why some of you think monorail might be more feasible...

[wong21fr]

Originally Posted by bobg

It's not as bad for retail/restaurants as you might think. We're still down about 40% in office worker activity. Restaurants and retail are only down about 10 to 20% from prepandemic. Mind you that's just activity based on cell phone data, not sure if the DDP has done any analysis on how that activity translates into dollars.

That 60% of pre-pandemic returnees doesn't include a number of larger corporations that are still holding off on a return to the office. Many were planning for a post labor day return that has been now postponed to late October at the earliest due to spread of the Delta variant.

My bet is a 70-80% return to the office due to remote and hybrid scheduling as the pandemic enters the end stages.