DENVER | Main Development Thread #7

[DenverInfill]

Originally Posted by RyanD

It's fairly common especially for larger projects. They're probably lining everything up on the construction side and will pay it when they're 100% ready to go.

That's right. Typically you'll see the fee paid and then bam! site prep begins.

[Denver]

Originally Posted by DenverInfill

That's right. Typically you'll see the fee paid and then bam! site prep begins.

It is surprising they are not doing an presales. In my experience, lenders will want to see a certain percentage of units with commitments before they fund.

[mhays]

A developer with deep pockets and strong partners doesn't necessarily have to. This gives them a huge advantage: They can build at today's prices but sell at tomorrow's.

[twister244]

Originally Posted by Denver

It is surprising they are not doing an presales. In my experience, lenders will want to see a certain percentage of units with commitments before they fund.

That had kinda been my hesitation on getting on the hype train for this. I still am waiting for shovels in the ground before eating crow.

[laniroj]

Originally Posted by Denver

It is surprising they are not doing an presales. In my experience, lenders will want to see a certain percentage of units with commitments before they fund.

Totally true for small and local developers. Not true for giants like Amacon with huge balance sheets and major liquidity (presumably). No developer in their right mind would lock in contract prices in this type of market. Miss out on too much and they only do it because a bank or equity partner makes them.

[Chucolo]

Anybody have thoughts about the near-term future of downtown retail? 16th Street is a continuous flow of empty storefronts. Restaurants do seem to be coming back, which is good to see. Given that many downtown employees are still working from home--and the increasing homeless population--is downtown retail in a systemic decline? The mall reconstruction project ain't gonna help. Anyway...just curious. After all the strides downtown has made in the past decade, it just seems cruel to see what's happening now. Extra points for folx who actually are still working downtown and can comment intelligently on what's going on.

[jhwk]

Originally Posted by Chucolo

Anybody have thoughts about the near-term future of downtown retail? 16th Street is a continuous flow of empty storefronts. Restaurants do seem to be coming back, which is good to see. Given that many downtown employees are still working from home--and the increasing homeless population--is downtown retail in a systemic decline? The mall reconstruction project ain't gonna help. Anyway...just curious. After all the strides downtown has made in the past decade, it just seems cruel to see what's happening now. Extra points for folx who actually are still working downtown and can comment intelligently on what's going on.

I work downtown and walk up and down the mall every day.

I think the retailpocylapse started well before the pandemic but things accelerated massively over the past year. It’s too bad the boutique retail is in Cherry Creek North because that’s all that will be left in five years. You’ll be paying Jeff Bezos to deliver everything you need to your door by then.

I’d say the tourist crowd is back but the workday crowd is still only 25% of pre-pandemic which makes most of the mall stores unsustainable. Young people are partying in Lodo and Rino like there is no COVID so the bars and restaurants there seem to be doing OK. Also, I’m a man and not especially small but even I’ve been assaulted by a tweaker while walking home from work on the mall, which was not particularly enjoyable and would probably scare off most people from ever going downtown again.

[Arapahoe]

Originally Posted by jhwk

I work downtown and walk up and down the mall every day.

I think the retailpocylapse started well before the pandemic

agreed

Since pandemic on the 16th mall, I think we lost Uniqlo and Ann Taylor but gained Danner and Thule. Overall, retail doesn't seem that much different.

Clearly office workers are not back to pre-pandemic levels and some of the chain restaurants and the gazillon of Starbucks have closed as a result. That is probably temporary.

Regarding encounters with addicts and homeless: I think most people get lost in their evolutionary predisposition to focus on the negative and then hardly even notice the positives.

Downtown is overwhelmingly safe and enjoyable. There are many individuals and families out today enjoying the sunshine, and it was very much an interesting and vibrant place to be. I love Wynkoop plaza and all the outdoor patios adjacent to Union Station. I love strolling up the mall and seeing all the activity, hearing street musicians and looking in storefronts and sidewalk cafes.

No doubt that the disturbing pockets of indigents and addicts exist, but I still feel fortunate to live near all this energy. How many people can say they can walk to fantastic museums, world class performances, NFL-NBA-NHL venues, a major convention hall, hundreds of restaurants, and a train link to one of the largest airports in the world? Not many.

[Sam Hill]

Way back during the aughts, I used to live on 17th and Champa. Back then, it was a weird and wild “big city” experience. I loved it.

16th Street would get completely taken over by riffraff late at night, and I had many interesting experiences crossing that street late at night. I remember once being surrounded by a gang of teenagers, one of whom proclaimed, “I wanna 🞵🞵🞵🞵 somebody up and I don’t give a 🞵🞵🞵🞵 who it is yo!”

At the time there was a regular story in the local news about people getting beat up by a random gang of teenagers downtown. I assumed this gang of scrawny teenaged kids was that gang.

I bashed that kid in the face as hard as I could, then ran to the side entrance of my building and pressed the entrance code as fast as I could. That kid collapsed and his buddies weren’t able to catch me before I snuck into my building and onto the elevator.

I remember being back in my apartment, safe and sound, pacing back-and-forth filled with adrenaline - a baseball bat in hand - fantasizing about what I would do to those gangbangers if they tried to mess with me now. I remember it so well and yet it feels like a million years ago.

Anyway, as bad as that neighborhood was then, it is infinitely worse now. I just walked through that hood recently, and I have to admit, I was a bit shocked. 16th St. has been completely taken over by riffraff – even in the middle of the day. Maybe now that I’m a middle-aged man, I’ve become timid; I don’t know. All I know is, that whole New Jack City scene along 16th Street can’t be good for business.

I - the same guy that once boldly walked that neighborhood in the middle of the night, and bashed that kid in the face - am now intimidated by 16th Street. Folks visiting Denver for a conference are probably at least equally intimidated.

Any of you that have paid any attention to my posts are probably aware that I’m ridiculously liberal. But I have to say - even as a ridiculously liberal man - I have little compassion for the masses of riff-raff ruining this city.

Back in my youth I was a musician that experimented with basically every drug there was to do, and all the while, I always managed to hold a job and pay my rent. In this economy - in this extreme labor shortage in which literally anyone with a pulse can get a job - there’s simply no excuse for living in a tent on the sidewalk. I’m sorry. It’s past time for The City to start doing something to make our urban neighborhoods worth living in.

You want to make living in the city, without a car, near transit, viable? Well then I’m sorry but you’re going to have to do something about the omnipresent, aggressive riffraff.

[SirLucasTheGreat]

Do you think any part of the equation relates to Denver being seen as the Amsterdam of the United States? I was very pro-legalization but I think there was certainly a reputational impact that came with being the first place to legalize.

[Sam Hill]

Originally Posted by SirLucasTheGreat

Do you think any part of the equation relates to Denver being seen as the Amsterdam of the United States? I was very pro-legalization but I think there was certainly a reputational impact that came with being the first place to legalize.

Yep. As far as I’m concerned, our liberal drug laws should be even more liberal, and I was initially proud of Denver being “that” city - having a chip on my shoulder for being from a town considered redneck by coastal elitists - but now I’m realizing Denver’s status as America’s Amsterdam is probably detrimental.

Anyway, I suspect our ridiculous homelessness problem is only partially due to the Amsterdam effect, and mostly due to other issues I can’t quite place my finger on. It’s happening not just in Denver but all along the West Coast. Rents in NYC are insane, yet they don’t have the homelessness problems we’re experiencing out west. Why? Climate? I don’t know. I can’t quite figure it out. All I know is, allowing every urban neighborhood to be enveloped by tent cities isn’t good for any of us.

[mojiferous]

I don't know where everyone got the idea that New York was some kind of homeless-free miracle, but it definitely isn't - at least if you leave heavily-policed areas. The NY Times has run multiple articles about tent cities, like this one from August https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/02/nyregion/homeless-camps-relocate.html and the stats about the number of homeless people in NYC are depressing: https://www.coalitionforthehomeless.org/basic-facts-about-homelessness-new-york-city/

That's an estimate of almost 50,000 homeless people just in the shelter system in August. Not total. Not counting the people in tents on the street. And 122,000 different people over the last year in shelters. That's more people than live in Boulder.

Compare that to Denver articles from August https://www.rmpbs.org/blogs/news/study-finds-drastic-increase-in-denverarea-homelessness/ that estimate about 5000 sheltered homeless people in Denver proper. That's still a lot of people, but 1/10th the NY estimate. Searching for totals and this comes up: https://kdvr.com/news/local/denver-unsheltered-homeless-counts-almost-tripled-since-2014/ and it looks like they estimated about 6000 people last year. The unsheltered total has gone way up, BUT overall the numbers of homeless people for the metro area are waaaaaay lower. And that 100k in NYC looks like it is only for the 8 ½ million 5 boroughs. So that would be about 1/20th the homeless population for about ¼ of the population.

And it's not just us and the west coast and NYC. Just google "🞵🞵🞵 city homeless population" and the first result is usually some news article or a non-profit trying to help. Our counts are low compared to a lot of places. Even Phoenix with their aggressive policies has 7000-something. Nashville has 20,000 homeless people?

Also, limited experiences within the little mini police states the NYPD has set up does not mean that reactionary "justice" will somehow make Denver safer again. Throwing the homeless in jail is more expensive than offering services. It would be cheaper to just build housing for them, because it costs us almost $40k a year to house someone in a prison https://www.vera.org/publications/price-...15-state-spending-trends-prison-spending or about $3,300/month.

I think there are a few causes for homelessness that we as a society just refuse to do anything about. First, we have a housing crisis and our local governments would rather pander to people who prefer to keep things "the way they are now" than to really address the crisis. Secondly, and compounding that, is that we've built the economy around exploitative wages and a lot of working people struggle to afford to rent an apartment. For example, those striking janitors at DIA? The agreement they just signed would raise the top-level pay to $21/hour. "TOP LEVEL PAY" and still not enough to afford to rent a "median" apartment according to Apartment List. And third, our approaches to addiction and mental health services are mostly mediocre and trend towards the prohibitionary and masochistic. All three of these things contribute to our homeless problem and are brought up by advocates again and again and again.

And that's the worst part: instead of ever facing some of these issues causing homelessness we're always talking about fighting the symptoms. Clearing camps, bringing in more police, hardening drug penalties, locking people up (or worse). None of these things have worked so far and they aren't going to work in the future if we don't begin to address the causes of homelessness in the first place.

For example, the camping ban made certain spaces safer but it didn't stop people from camping, it didn't make the homeless go away just because they couldn't camp somewhere. It pushed the problem to other places, and if we just "clean up" downtown without addressing other issues, we're only going to shift the problem somewhere else (I would actually bet that a lot of the 16th street problem is because the junkies can't congregate at Civic Center any more, the same as Union Station got worse after they started policing the hill at Confluence more)

So to wrap up all this late night ranting: 1. I think we need significant systemic change to make this "better", and 2. it's not just a Denver problem

[twister244]

Originally Posted by Sam Hill

Yep. As far as I’m concerned, our liberal drug laws should be even more liberal, and I was initially proud of Denver being “that” city - having a chip on my shoulder for being from a town considered redneck by coastal elitists - but now I’m realizing Denver’s status as America’s Amsterdam is probably detrimental.

Anyway, I suspect our ridiculous homelessness problem is only partially due to the Amsterdam effect, and mostly due to other issues I can’t quite place my finger on. It’s happening not just in Denver but all along the West Coast. Rents in NYC are insane, yet they don’t have the homelessness problems we’re experiencing out west. Why? Climate? I don’t know. I can’t quite figure it out. All I know is, allowing every urban neighborhood to be enveloped by tent cities isn’t good for any of us.

I think it has more to do with the fact there's this culture of acceptance that has grown in many of these Western cities over the past decade. Somehow, you are perceived to be a horrible person for wanting the the city to do homeless sweeps. This is coming from the same folks who tried to ban homeless sweeps, calling it inhumane - or whatever. The dirty secret though is most people want the sweeps. They don't want to live in a city with tents up and down every sidewalk. The key is to speak up and be heard with respect to local government. The more people voice their concerns, the more local leaders may start to realize they have a problem that needs to be addressed. Or I hope that's how the process would play out.

[twister244]

Originally Posted by mojiferous

For example, the camping ban made certain spaces safer but it didn't stop people from camping, it didn't make the homeless go away just because they couldn't camp somewhere. It pushed the problem to other places, and if we just "clean up" downtown without addressing other issues, we're only going to shift the problem somewhere else (I would actually bet that a lot of the 16th street problem is because the junkies can't congregate at Civic Center any more, the same as Union Station got worse after they started policing the hill at Confluence more)

So to wrap up all this late night ranting: 1. I think we need significant systemic change to make this "better", and 2. it's not just a Denver problem

Ok... but letting people just camp out and 🞵🞵🞵🞵 on the streets is equally unacceptable. The hard truth is that the solution involves forcing people into treatment and devoting funding towards facilities/people that can do this. Good luck getting both of those into law....

[Arapahoe]

Originally Posted by Sam Hill

16th Street would get completely taken over by riffraff...
Anyway, as bad as that neighborhood was then, it is infinitely worse now.

wow! It is wild how two different people can have entirely different perceptions of the same place. Being a city dweller in present day, I walk my dog through downtown nearly every day and, no joke, haven't had a significant negative encounter with anyone since moving here 7 years ago. Maybe its the dog? Surely I don't just have infinitely lucky timing.

I do see the crazies and now a growing wave of addicts in passing, yet, those poor souls are mostly lost in their worlds of misery and rarely take notice of me.

[mojiferous]

Originally Posted by twister244

Ok... but letting people just camp out and 🞵🞵🞵🞵 on the streets is equally unacceptable. The hard truth is that the solution involves forcing people into treatment and devoting funding towards facilities/people that can do this. Good luck getting both of those into law....

I agree that people shouldn't be able to just camp out - and not just because of the mess etc. but because camping in an urban setting is dangerous. The Lakewood Gulch area in west Denver has so many people camping in it and it is prone to floods and has no facilities or support. After every summer deluge I would see the remains of tents and clothes hanging in trees along the creek. I think the Denver progressive community also poured a lot of effort into a classic short-sighted effort - fighting to let people sleep in tents on the side of the street and patting themselves on the back instead of ever for one second wondering what could have caused the problem and how they could solve it.

And I know hard structural change is not likely to happen. I had written an additional paragraph last night that I deleted about how dark I think the future looks, because the issues that are prompting people to sleep on the streets aren't being addressed and as a society we seem to be teetering on the brink of just accepting mass death as a cost of not having to make serious changes to how we live. Considering the mood towards homelessness, both on here and at large, it almost seems like we're headed towards a decision point - either we all have to pay more taxes and make a real effort to extract money from the wealthy or we're all going to have to justify and make excuses as we build camps to "house" the homeless.

[COtoOC]

Originally Posted by Arapahoe

agreed

Since pandemic on the 16th mall, I think we lost Uniqlo and Ann Taylor but gained Danner and Thule. Overall, retail doesn't seem that much different.

Clearly office workers are not back to pre-pandemic levels and some of the chain restaurants and the gazillon of Starbucks have closed as a result. That is probably temporary.

Regarding encounters with addicts and homeless: I think most people get lost in their evolutionary predisposition to focus on the negative and then hardly even notice the positives.

Downtown is overwhelmingly safe and enjoyable. There are many individuals and families out today enjoying the sunshine, and it was very much an interesting and vibrant place to be. I love Wynkoop plaza and all the outdoor patios adjacent to Union Station. I love strolling up the mall and seeing all the activity, hearing street musicians and looking in storefronts and sidewalk cafes.

No doubt that the disturbing pockets of indigents and addicts exist, but I still feel fortunate to live near all this energy. How many people can say they can walk to fantastic museums, world class performances, NFL-NBA-NHL venues, a major convention hall, hundreds of restaurants, and a train link to one of the largest airports in the world? Not many.

I took my teenage kids downtown last weekend to bowl at Lucky Strike. We also went out to lunch, walked the mall, and had no issues. I didn't see anything odd going on. The only thing "off" seemed to be the closed storefronts here and there, and it just didn't seem as busy as normal for a beautiful Sunday afternoon.

[Sam Hill]

Originally Posted by Arapahoe

wow! It is wild how two different people can have entirely different perceptions of the same place. Being a city dweller in present day, I walk my dog through downtown nearly every day and, no joke, haven't had a significant negative encounter with anyone since moving here 7 years ago. Maybe its the dog? Surely I don't just have infinitely lucky timing.

I do see the crazies and now a growing wave of addicts in passing, yet, those poor souls are mostly lost in their worlds of misery and rarely take notice of me.

You’re probably right. I’ve only visited the mall a couple times in the past year and the last time it was pretty nuts.

Man, I was in a cranky mood last night, lol. I re-read my little rant this morning and realized with some of it, I don’t really know what I’m talking about, and some of it I don’t really even believe, but I guess I was in the mood for a petulant rant. I need to take it easy, lol.

[DenvertoLA]

Originally Posted by Sam Hill

Yep. As far as I’m concerned, our liberal drug laws should be even more liberal, and I was initially proud of Denver being “that” city - having a chip on my shoulder for being from a town considered redneck by coastal elitists - but now I’m realizing Denver’s status as America’s Amsterdam is probably detrimental.

Anyway, I suspect our ridiculous homelessness problem is only partially due to the Amsterdam effect, and mostly due to other issues I can’t quite place my finger on. It’s happening not just in Denver but all along the West Coast. Rents in NYC are insane, yet they don’t have the homelessness problems we’re experiencing out west. Why? Climate? I don’t know. I can’t quite figure it out. All I know is, allowing every urban neighborhood to be enveloped by tent cities isn’t good for any of us.

Amsterdam is a beautiful and vibrant city, I suggest all of you visit. For that reputation to hold up we'd need about a $100 million in protected bike lanes though, and maybe a red-light district on Colfax.

[SirLucasTheGreat]

It's not $100 million but we did recently pass a measure to fund the 5280 trail and some other bike infrastructure. Doesn't half of Amsterdam commute via bike?