DENVER | Main Development Thread #7

[TakeFive]

Did I ever tell you Ken and I are best buddies?

Originally Posted by bunt_q

Article for TakeFive: https://denverite.com/2022/07/14/denver-...,around%20the%20world%20from%20NetCredit.

Anecdotally, I do not know anybody who uses rideshare in the way you describe. Granted, that's not much of a dataset. But it could be related to the pricing.

I looked at that article, laughed and moved on.

So, like Ken, I decided to do a little digging. They based their fares on a 6.2 mile trip claiming Denver charges the equivalent of $5.50 per mile. Holy Schnitt, wish I could make half of that. I get paid 61 cents a mile and 17 cents a minute plus 30 cents. Depending on specific trip it will vary some but generally I'll make about $1 per mile with Uber charging roughly double that (I do well on tips which will add maybe another 25% to what I make).

My 1st guess is that number is likely, at least with Denver, a 2021 fare. A year ago riders starting coming back but drivers were harder to find so fares were often 'surging.' The figure for Phoenix which is half as much still feels a bit high for summer 2022. I didn't start back up until last October.

It's also possible they tested at a time when Denver was slammed with tourists and if if was a year ago that number could be believable given the specific sampling.

The other point is that they specifically sampled city centers so that sample covers about 15% of the market. Most rides are suburb to suburb.

I employ different strategies on different days for variety (although once I get started I end up anywhere the App sends me). Phoenix has a huge area of lower socioeconomic people that are the nicest people in the world. I may not make as much as when I work Scottsdale but bonuses which are key to making money are based on total number of trips so it doesn't matter where or how much I make per trip. Generally I avoid downtown Phoenix like the plague although Uber pays a bit more for working the area. Don't care, downtown is too much of a hassle and too slow.

BTW, if you have the App, you could do your own sampling that's totally up-to-date.

[TakeFive]

With respect to the Broncos

I thought this was very interesting. Who knew she lived in Denver?

Rob Walton issued the following statement on behalf of the Walton-Penner ownership group on Monday:

“We’re pleased to welcome former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to our ownership group. A highly respected public servant, accomplished academic and corporate leader, Secretary Rice is well known as a passionate and knowledgeable football fan who has worked to make the sport stronger and better. She is the daughter of a football coach and served on the inaugural College Football Playoff Committee. She moved to Denver with her family when she was 12 years old and went on to attend the University of Denver for both college and graduate school. Her unique experience and extraordinary judgment will be a great benefit to our group and the Broncos organization.”

So far as where the stadium is located, bunt has aptly pointed out how few days the stadium is utilized.

[TakeFive]

Props to Denver for not being on the dangerous driving list

Most car crashes per 100,000 miles driven

1. Philadelphia
2. San Francisco
3. New York
4. Los Angeles
5. Houston
6. Chicago
7. San Diego
8. Las Vegas
9. Dallas
10. Seattle
11. Phoenix

Source

Wait for all those under construction projects to complete. Streets could complete a scene out of Taxi.

[gopokes21]

New Park Hill Golf Course masterplan just got dropped:

https://parkhillgolfcoursereimagined.info/#development



I think this is awesome. The new park portion alone would become the 4th largest park in Denver.

[bunt_q]

Originally Posted by gopokes21

the new park portion alone would become the 4th largest park in denver.

But it could be bigger. You developer-schill. You earth-hater. Rahhhhh.

[EngiNerd]

Originally Posted by bunt_q

But it could be bigger. You developer-schill. You earth-hater. Rahhhhh.

Don't forget about the buildings across the park blocking views of the mountains...

[Sam Hill]

Originally Posted by EngiNerd

Don't forget about the buildings across the park blocking views of the mountains...

I just read a poorly written Denverite article about this plan. The last half of the article read like an opinion piece in opposition to the plan. The last section, entitled, “here’s what people who live nearby think about the plan,” only included anti-development comments. First comment: “It blocks the view of the mountains! I wanna see mountains, not buildings! Waaaaah!”

I’m paraphrasing.

[Brainpathology]

Originally Posted by Sam Hill

I just read a poorly written Denverite article about this plan. The last half of the article read like an opinion piece in opposition to the plan. The last section, entitled, “here’s what people who live nearby think about the plan,” only included anti-development comments. First comment: “It blocks the view of the mountains! I wanna see mountains, not buildings! Waaaaah!”

I’m paraphrasing.

Because of our forward thinking efficient government here in Florida there isn't a single building in the ENTIRE state which robs its neighbors of mountain views.

[Dallas Snob]

OMG! SO FUNNY! For those of us who are geographically challenged, its because there ARE no mountains in Florida. Having said that though, you do hear on occassion whwn the ocean view is going to be blocked. Ive heard the mountain view issue in several cities ive lived in; Seattle, Salt Lake and Burlington, Vt to name a few...although in Burlington its the mountains AND the lake. I never understood it though. Perhaps because i have actual intelligence.

[DenvertoLA]

Originally Posted by TakeFive

Props to Denver for not being on the dangerous driving list

Most car crashes per 100,000 miles driven

1. Philadelphia
2. San Francisco
3. New York
4. Los Angeles
5. Houston
6. Chicago
7. San Diego
8. Las Vegas
9. Dallas
10. Seattle
11. Phoenix

Source

Wait for all those under construction projects to complete. Streets could complete a scene out of Taxi.

Ahhh I loved to rub this in the face of all the anti weed moms haha

[TakeFive]

Cherry Creek developer jumps on trend of offices leaving downtown with new project
Jul 19, 2022 By Kate Tracy – Reporter , Denver Business Journal

"Why would we commute downtown when we can be right here: safe, clean, with all these walkable amenities?"

Office space is trending in Cherry Creek. After seeing the demand left over from pre-leasing one of its other projects, real estate firm BMC Investments is building yet another new office building in the Denver neighborhood. “You look at the amount of demand: we probably have three-four times the demand as there is available trophy, class A office space,” said Jeff Stonger, chief investment officer at BMC.

242 Milwaukee


Rendering courtesy of BMC

BMC Announce 10th Office Project in Cherry Creek North
July 19, 2022 - Mile High CRE

The new seven-story project will be built at 242 Milwaukee Street and BMC recently acquired the adjacent site (240 Milwaukee Street), completing an assemblage of a roughly .43-acre site consisting of 240, 242 and 246 Milwaukee Street. BMC recently began the design process and is targeting a Q1 2023 groundbreaking with anticipated completion in Q4 2024.

The architect for the project is 4240 Architecture and the contractor is Haselden Construction. BMC has engaged the same team it put together on 255 Fillmore, its other Class A office building in Cherry Creek, which has already experienced significant leasing success.

Don't miss Ryan Dravitz's Cherry Creek Roundup JUL 2022

Lot's going on and he covers the landscape like a champ.

[RyanD]

Originally Posted by TakeFive

[SIZE="3"]
Don't miss Ryan Dravitz's Cherry Creek Roundup JUL 2022

Lot's going on and he covers the landscape like a champ.

Walked it all in 96+ degree heat. If that’s not dedication I don’t know what is..

[TakeFive]

Side Pocket Topic - The Urban Plague

On a lark, I decided to check into urban poster child Seattle.

Recent Headlines

Amazon moves employees out of downtown Seattle office due to crime
March 12, 2022 - GeekWire

Law enforcement at all time low in WA; violent crime surging
July 20, 2022 - KIRO

Seattle struggles with 'reinventing' policing as crime soars
Jul 20, 2022 - The Center Square

Gun violence in Seattle's Capitol Hill neighborhood has tripled in past year
July 18th 2022 - KOMO

This is NOT the place for debating problems and/or solutions but making observations might be good.

• Fentanyl is a growing social/crime menace.
• Crime, undeterred seems to grow. What a concept.
• Denver leads the pack in car thefts.
• It used to be a 'rite of passage' meant having sex; now it means our teens are packing heat.

The Vision Zero Dance

• Guy steals car, uses it in a burglary, crashes car fleeing the scene.
• Drunk Driver blows through red light, crashes.
• Driver under 25 years old, in a hurry rear-ends the car at the Stop Sign.

I don't have a particular problem with dropping the speed limit down to 20 mph. Just know the the problem drivers likely don't even know what the speed limit is or care. This should slow down those that aren't the problem though.

Observation

When the car thief gets caught, goes thru one door to be arrested, then da judge say "Son, don't do dat," releases him out the other door and says "go buy an ice cream cone," does it take this person even 24 hours to steal his next car?

How many 'gangsters' or 'sickos' care or even know what the gun laws are let alone one more law.

Maybe the people will decide to elect City Councilors that want to do something that moves the needle instead of just polishing up their resumes with new laws that accomplish nothing.

[mhays]

Yes and no. KOMO is basically Fox News these days. Downtown Seattle's gotten better with new leadership in January, including a new mayor and city attorney. Most of the camps are moved out, though office workers are around 35-40% normal, business travel is lagging, and the lack of police staffing is still a big problem, particularly for retail.

It's a wierd dichotomy...the standard 8,000+ housing units are underway, we keep starting office buildings (in the northern districts, despite very high vacancies in the old CBD), and the tourist districts are packed like 2019, but retail dependent on office workers and conventions has declined quite a bit, with way too many vacancies. Belltown, my residential-focused edge district, is like 2019.

[COtoOC]

Does anyone know what's going on with the development on the SE corner of Central Park Blvd. and MLK? I noticed yesterday that a fence is around the lot.

I know there was backlash years ago from nearby neighbors who apparently didn't read the "future site of high density, multi-family housing" sign when they bought their houses across the street from it. But hopefully this will finally be filled in. I assume it's probably just apartments or condos, but some retail there would also be nice.

[Sam Hill]

Originally Posted by TakeFive

Side Pocket Topic - The Urban Plague

On a lark, I decided to check into urban poster child Seattle.

Recent Headlines

Amazon moves employees out of downtown Seattle office due to crime
March 12, 2022 - GeekWire

Law enforcement at all time low in WA; violent crime surging
July 20, 2022 - KIRO

Seattle struggles with 'reinventing' policing as crime soars
Jul 20, 2022 - The Center Square

Gun violence in Seattle's Capitol Hill neighborhood has tripled in past year
July 18th 2022 - KOMO

This is NOT the place for debating problems and/or solutions but making observations might be good.

• Fentanyl is a growing social/crime menace.
• Crime, undeterred seems to grow. What a concept.
• Denver leads the pack in car thefts.
• It used to be a 'rite of passage' meant having sex; now it means our teens are packing heat.

The Vision Zero Dance

• Guy steals car, uses it in a burglary, crashes car fleeing the scene.
• Drunk Driver blows through red light, crashes.
• Driver under 25 years old, in a hurry rear-ends the car at the Stop Sign.

I don't have a particular problem with dropping the speed limit down to 20 mph. Just know the the problem drivers likely don't even know what the speed limit is or care. This should slow down those that aren't the problem though.

Observation

When the car thief gets caught, goes thru one door to be arrested, then da judge say "Son, don't do dat," releases him out the other door and says "go buy an ice cream cone," does it take this person even 24 hours to steal his next car?

How many 'gangsters' or 'sickos' care or even know what the gun laws are let alone one more law.

Maybe the people will decide to elect City Councilors that want to do something that moves the needle instead of just polishing up their resumes with new laws that accomplish nothing.

That’s not an observation; that’s a nuance-lacking, trope-laden, myopic viewpoint that could be debated to death and exactly the kind of post that tends to derail this thread.

I agree with some of it, disagree with some of it, but I’m not going to clutter up this thread. Wrong forum.

[mojiferous]

Originally Posted by TakeFive

Gun violence in Seattle's Capitol Hill neighborhood has tripled in past year
July 18th 2022 - KOMO

I don't want to start yet another off-topic argument thread, but I do want to talk about media literacy and statistical manipulation and how with media consolidation and the collapse of paid journalism it has become very, very important to be critical of all "news" stories and seek more information or secondary sources. This most definitely applies to articles about infill and development and imho is why social media NIMBYism is so popular.

• Click-bait-y headlines always use non-specific increases or decreases. Something tripling means nothing if the numbers are too low to be statistically significant or if the change is vs a statistical outlier. There were a bunch of NIMBY articles at the beginning of this year about how housing construction increased exponentially and open spaces were threatened, but they never mention that the increase was for 2021 vs 2020 and when you actually dig deeper you see that the numbers vs 2019 were lower. But most people share articles on social media based on headline alone, and the site gets ad revenue based on clicks (friendly or angry) regardless of whether you read the article or realize it is total junk. And because most corporate news outlets destroyed their internal advertising departments and handed the power to Google and other PPC advertisers, they are dependent on visits to the page and not on being a trusted source of information. They will definitely put total junk numbers in a headline just so you click it. And with all of these articles, the scarier the stat and headline the better.
• Year-over-year trends for sociological statistics are poor indicators of actual trends - there are too many factors and data points and variability to be able to accurately judge whether a single year increase or decrease is due to a real trend or some combination of other anomalies (what are the gun violence stats for Capitol Hill in 2000? 1990? 1960?). It is also useful to look at trends for larger areas than just single neighborhoods (what do the gun violence statistics look like for all of the Seattle metro area and not just Capitol Hill?) Housing construction is a good example of this too - everyone has been freaking out over the number of housing units built in Denver, but when you look at the entire metro area we're still building less than we were in the 80s, with a much larger population. If you just look at RINO it seem like there has never been so much construction in Denver, but when you look city-wide the picture is much bleaker.
• And I know I have said this before and no one likes it, but always question statistics coming from the cops. And while you're at it, question the stats from the city government. And the federal government. And the party not currently in power. Hell, you should question statistics from everyone. Reading this article you realize a) the 3x increase is from 4 total gun violence incidents last year to 12 so far this year with one fatal shooting. To me that doesn't seem like a horrible plague of violence, but it is still bad IF they're all random shootings. But if you know anything about police statistics and reporting you know they probably aren't. What we're talking about here: "... shootings that caused injuries or property damage..." - in police/municipal communications parlance this could include suicides and accidental discharges and someone shooting out a window in an empty building. And without a breakdown, this could be 11 people shooting themselves in the foot in their own homes and 1 incident of actual person-to-person violence. And even the interpersonal violence is something to question, because strangers shooting strangers on the street is a whole different issue for the community and policing approach than domestic violence incidents.
  
  The reason I bring this up is because the same rules about questioning everyone's statistics apply to development too - a big NIMBY focus in Denver over the last few years is the "shrinking green space" statistic, which is always presented as per capita and not total acreage (because acreage has increased, but not at the same rate as population) and is always shown in comparison to cities with a higher percentage of green space (never lower). This allows them to give the false impression that Denver is destroying green space for new construction and IF that number just happens to appear in an article next to someone talking about how most of Stapleton was empty fields 20 years ago or that there are new developments in Kiowa on virgin prairie or that someone built apartments with no back yard it makes it seem that the stat is about ANY non-developed land and not about actual public park space. Your approach to voting for a candidate or poorly-written initiative is going to be different if you believe the city is actively destroying park space instead of just not building enough. You might even agitate against infrastructure that prevents your house from flooding if you believe it is reducing your access to public spaces.

Through selective presentation of stats to journalists that don't have time or budget to question or research those statistics it is very easy to manipulate a "news" story to become something closer to propaganda. And this is something that NIMBYs have used to great advantage. Everyone in Denver (and elsewhere) is feeling the effects of high housing prices, we all see the homeless and the encampments and the disintegrating infrastructure. It is really easy to find quick scapegoats for all those things and offer solutions that appeal to everyone but that don't actually solve the issues because they are built on limited or faulty information. People blame high housing prices on new apartments and condos being built and not on historically low supplies of housing! They will be caught in bidding wars with other buyers and tell you with a straight face that they read an article and say they paid 100k over asking because of all the new construction in RINO.

If you care about the future of our cities it is important to approach these things very carefully and understand how and why opinions may be manipulated. It is important for any non-NIMBY to be vocal and clear about who is doing that manipulation and why they are doing it.

And honestly I think we're far past the point of being able to convince people with stats and facts and need to take the same tact as the NIMBYs:
"Not allowing dense housing to be built in our city center neighborhoods increases inequality, increases prices, and is inherently racist and destructive. All of those junkies and homeless camps are because rich people in central Denver neighborhoods would rather have mountain views and quaint "historic" neighborhoods and not have to deal with "high rises" or apartments. The no-high-rises NIMBYs have done more real damage to our city and its citizens than any scary corporation ever has. They are complicit in everything wrong with the city right now."

[DenverInfill]

Originally Posted by mojiferous

I don't want to start yet another off-topic argument thread, but I do want to talk about media literacy and statistical manipulation and how with media consolidation and the collapse of paid journalism it has become very, very important to be critical of all "news" stories and seek more information or secondary sources. This most definitely applies to articles about infill and development and imho is why social media NIMBYism is so popular.

• Click-bait-y headlines always use non-specific increases or decreases. Something tripling means nothing if the numbers are too low to be statistically significant or if the change is vs a statistical outlier. There were a bunch of NIMBY articles at the beginning of this year about how housing construction increased exponentially and open spaces were threatened, but they never mention that the increase was for 2021 vs 2020 and when you actually dig deeper you see that the numbers vs 2019 were lower. But most people share articles on social media based on headline alone, and the site gets ad revenue based on clicks (friendly or angry) regardless of whether you read the article or realize it is total junk. And because most corporate news outlets destroyed their internal advertising departments and handed the power to Google and other PPC advertisers, they are dependent on visits to the page and not on being a trusted source of information. They will definitely put total junk numbers in a headline just so you click it. And with all of these articles, the scarier the stat and headline the better.
• Year-over-year trends for sociological statistics are poor indicators of actual trends - there are too many factors and data points and variability to be able to accurately judge whether a single year increase or decrease is due to a real trend or some combination of other anomalies (what are the gun violence stats for Capitol Hill in 2000? 1990? 1960?). It is also useful to look at trends for larger areas than just single neighborhoods (what do the gun violence statistics look like for all of the Seattle metro area and not just Capitol Hill?) Housing construction is a good example of this too - everyone has been freaking out over the number of housing units built in Denver, but when you look at the entire metro area we're still building less than we were in the 80s, with a much larger population. If you just look at RINO it seem like there has never been so much construction in Denver, but when you look city-wide the picture is much bleaker.
• And I know I have said this before and no one likes it, but always question statistics coming from the cops. And while you're at it, question the stats from the city government. And the federal government. And the party not currently in power. Hell, you should question statistics from everyone. Reading this article you realize a) the 3x increase is from 4 total gun violence incidents last year to 12 so far this year with one fatal shooting. To me that doesn't seem like a horrible plague of violence, but it is still bad IF they're all random shootings. But if you know anything about police statistics and reporting you know they probably aren't. What we're talking about here: "... shootings that caused injuries or property damage..." - in police/municipal communications parlance this could include suicides and accidental discharges and someone shooting out a window in an empty building. And without a breakdown, this could be 11 people shooting themselves in the foot in their own homes and 1 incident of actual person-to-person violence. And even the interpersonal violence is something to question, because strangers shooting strangers on the street is a whole different issue for the community and policing approach than domestic violence incidents.
  
  The reason I bring this up is because the same rules about questioning everyone's statistics apply to development too - a big NIMBY focus in Denver over the last few years is the "shrinking green space" statistic, which is always presented as per capita and not total acreage (because acreage has increased, but not at the same rate as population) and is always shown in comparison to cities with a higher percentage of green space (never lower). This allows them to give the false impression that Denver is destroying green space for new construction and IF that number just happens to appear in an article next to someone talking about how most of Stapleton was empty fields 20 years ago or that there are new developments in Kiowa on virgin prairie or that someone built apartments with no back yard it makes it seem that the stat is about ANY non-developed land and not about actual public park space. Your approach to voting for a candidate or poorly-written initiative is going to be different if you believe the city is actively destroying park space instead of just not building enough. You might even agitate against infrastructure that prevents your house from flooding if you believe it is reducing your access to public spaces.

Through selective presentation of stats to journalists that don't have time or budget to question or research those statistics it is very easy to manipulate a "news" story to become something closer to propaganda. And this is something that NIMBYs have used to great advantage. Everyone in Denver (and elsewhere) is feeling the effects of high housing prices, we all see the homeless and the encampments and the disintegrating infrastructure. It is really easy to find quick scapegoats for all those things and offer solutions that appeal to everyone but that don't actually solve the issues because they are built on limited or faulty information. People blame high housing prices on new apartments and condos being built and not on historically low supplies of housing! They will be caught in bidding wars with other buyers and tell you with a straight face that they read an article and say they paid 100k over asking because of all the new construction in RINO.

If you care about the future of our cities it is important to approach these things very carefully and understand how and why opinions may be manipulated. It is important for any non-NIMBY to be vocal and clear about who is doing that manipulation and why they are doing it.

And honestly I think we're far past the point of being able to convince people with stats and facts and need to take the same tact as the NIMBYs:
"Not allowing dense housing to be built in our city center neighborhoods increases inequality, increases prices, and is inherently racist and destructive. All of those junkies and homeless camps are because rich people in central Denver neighborhoods would rather have mountain views and quaint "historic" neighborhoods and not have to deal with "high rises" or apartments. The no-high-rises NIMBYs have done more real damage to our city and its citizens than any scary corporation ever has. They are complicit in everything wrong with the city right now."

Amen brother

[TakeFive]

I thought I thread the needle fairly well

Originally Posted by Sam Hill

That’s not an observation; that’s a nuance-lacking, trope-laden, myopic viewpoint that could be debated to death and exactly the kind of post that tends to derail this thread.

What some might have missed it was my previous post about a new Cherry Creek office building that triggered my 'Observations.' So in case you (and others) missed the connection let me repeat it:

"Why would we commute downtown when we can be right here: safe, clean, with all these walkable amenities?"

mojiferous wants to talk about housing density and other complicated things. But if Cherry Creek is safe and clean while downtown not so much that would seem to be an argument in favor of LESS density not more.

With respect to Seattle
it turns out one of Amazon's engineers was hit in the head with a baseball bat leaving the office after work. That's when Amazon closed down the whole damn building. Over the last couple of years Amazon has been building new space in Bellevue; they're now looking for space in Redmond which is where Microsoft is headquartered. Apparently, these suburban communities are much safer.

With respect to San Francisco
Ten years ago it was a bright shining star. Today people can't leave fast enough. Their tolerance for crime has hit a wall.

With respect to Denver

Fox31 lists the neighborhoods with the most crime here.
They also list the safest neighborhoods here.

At the risk of being overly dramatic, I'm simply pointing out that letting problems fester can lead to companies deciding to relocate if their employees don't feel safe. Perhaps that might mean moving to RiNo, who knows?

[mojiferous]

Originally Posted by TakeFive

mojiferous wants to talk about housing density and other complicated things. But if Cherry Creek is safe and clean while downtown not so much that would seem to be an argument in favor of LESS density not more.

With respect to Seattle
it turns out one of Amazon's engineers was hit in the head with a baseball bat leaving the office after work. That's when Amazon closed down the whole damn building. Over the last couple of years Amazon has been building new space in Bellevue; they're now looking for space in Redmond which is where Microsoft is headquartered. Apparently, these suburban communities are much safer.

With respect to San Francisco
Ten years ago it was a bright shining star. Today people can't leave fast enough. Their tolerance for crime has hit a wall.

With respect to Denver

Fox31 lists the neighborhoods with the most crime here.
They also list the safest neighborhoods here.

At the risk of being overly dramatic, I'm simply pointing out that letting problems fester can lead to companies deciding to relocate if their employees don't feel safe. Perhaps that might mean moving to RiNo, who knows?

Density has no direct correlation with safety, by your rules I could compare Cherry Creek and Westwood and come to the opposite conclusion. But you know what does correlate really well with neighborhood crime rates? Average income and property values! And denser, mixed use neighborhoods have been shown to raise both across all demographics.

Also important to reducing crime rates is providing opportunity and decent standards of living for everyone in the city - crime is higher where people see no possible future for themselves, and Denver, Seattle, and SF have all done a bang-up job of improving the real estate values of high-income neighborhoods while absolutely destroying any opportunity for anyone making less than 150k a year.

I want to be clear that I am not arguing that crime is not an issue, or that homelessness isn't getting worse - but rather that it is all tied very tightly together with our built environment and inequality and opportunity. We can continue to dump money into police and highways and endless houses further and further out or we can work to change our cities to address the problems we are facing. It is becoming ever more clear, especially based on your examples, that the current solutions are not working.