After months of speculation, city officials confirmed Tuesday that downtown Denver’s main corridor will no longer be known as 16th Street Mall, but simply as “16th Street.”

The city is dropping “mall” from the name, Mayor Mike Johnston said at a news conference.

The move is to emphasize the corridor as a street-wide experience and not a shopping center, Johnston said.

“What this has become is something very different than a suburban mall,” Johnston said at the news conference at 16th and Curtis streets.

Not only will the street be known as 16th Street, it will also come with the tagline “The Denver Way,” which is a nod to the corridor as downtown’s main street and an introduction to visitors of what Denver has to show.

“We are telling them who Denver is right here on 16th Street,” said Councilman Chris Hines, who represents the district covering downtown.

The Mallride shuttle will also be renamed as the Freeride, said Angel Peña, deputy CEO of the Regional Transportation District.

The new name and branding comes as 16th Street is nearing completion of its lengthy $172 million construction project, which has compounded downtown’s problems of high office vacancies, homelessness and higher rates of crime following the pandemic. The project is expected to be completed in the fall.

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The construction and limited foot traffic has driven businesses out, leaving nearly a third of shops empty along 16th Street.

Against this backdrop, city officials have launched several campaigns to boost the mall’s image and secure the busy corridor, notably adding a dedicated police unit to the area.

The Downtown Denver Partnership hired DNCO, a London-based global branding agency, to create a brand and visual identity for 16th Street Mall within a $100,000 budget, which had terms including reconsidering the name.

On Tuesday, the city revealed the new brand look for 16th Street to be used in promotional material to attract people back to downtown and as signage in the area.

In some logos, “16th Street” is in between two small diamond accents similar to the transitway’s iconic paver design inspired by Navajo rugs and diamondback rattlesnakes.

The design’s colors are also inspired by Colorado’s landscapes using orange, purple, green and blue.

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It also utilizes different icons designed by local illustrator Brayan Montes showing 16th Street features or experiences such as the beehive sculpture, Daniels and Fisher Tower and tickets to a Colorado Rockies game.

The icons represent moments on the street, said Montes.

“I’m inspired by the colorful, whimsical, multicultural and adventurous nature of my community, and these icon illustrations are a reflection of that,” Montes said.

History of 16th Street’s many names

Malls are most commonly a description of the shopping centers that had a golden era during the 1970s and 1980s, when 16th Street first debuted. But the term originally meant a walkway lined with trees.

Malls started to fall out of fashion in the 1990s as consumer shopping habits changed and shopping centers struggled to adapt to the rise of Walmart, Target and eventually Amazon.

But this wouldn’t be the first time 16th Street’s name has been adjusted.

During Denver’s earliest days, it was first called “G Street” before the city switched to the numbered grid system in use today.

While Denver’s founder William Larimer planned for the road named after him to act as downtown’s main corridor, 16th Street became more popular during the department store boom of the 1900s.

National chains came to the area as well as movie theaters and it became the commercial and entertainment heart of the city. As cars grew to be a staple of daily life, traffic increasingly clogged downtown’s streets.

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To ease downtown congestion, the Regional Transportation District hired the architectural firm led by I.M. Pei, the designer of Paris’ famous Louvre Pyramid, to turn the street into a pedestrian mall with shuttle buses connecting downtown’s largest transit hubs: Union Station to Civic Center Station.

The transformation in 1982 originally debuted as the “16th Street Transitway Mall,” a name that never stuck.

A summer of reactivating the area 

Downtown and city leaders are planning on attracting people back to the mall this summer, despite not being fully complete, with a series of events. 

The city awarded the Downtown Denver Partnership nearly $2 million to activate 16th Street for its reopening. The organization plans on filling empty shops with art installations and hosting a variety of events for 90 days. 

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Reopening events begin with the 16th Street Summer Kickoff from May 31 to June 1, corresponding in time with the Outside Festival at Civic Center Park. 

The Summer Kickoff will include a bazaar of local businesses, a beer garden, a major speed climbing competition, a kid adventure zone and live music.

The corridor will also host a music series nearly every weekday in the area most affected by empty office buildings, “Upper DownTUNES,” according to downtown’s summer calendar.

The event descriptions say its geared toward office workers going out for lunch or after-work drinks, as the area tries to incentivize employees to enjoy working in downtown again.