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Downtown Denver aims to double residents by 2045

What could downtown Denver look like by 2045? The city’s official vision is starting to get clearer.

On Monday, city planners and the Downtown Denver Partnership released the first draft of the 2025 Downtown Area Plan, which will, once finalized, guide city policies on growing and improving the urban core over the next 20 years.

It’s filled with dozens of ideas to help downtown get back on its feet, like reducing about 7 million square feet of empty office space through various methods (such as conversions or demolitions), doubling the number of residents and redeveloping surface parking lots.

Other ideas propose converting downtown’s one-way streets to two-way streets or reconfiguring complex intersections, such as the one on Broadway and 18th and 20th Street, to make more room for a park and a potential mixed-use tower.

The plan also looks into improving coordination between city agencies for downtown development projects and see if any overlapping regulations, such as sunlight preservation areas, view planes or Landmark Special Review areas, need to be simplified.

Work on the Downtown Area Plan began last year and is nearly complete.

The plan still has several gaps left for “10 key projects” and a “roadmap for action” left intentionally for community input following the first draft, city planners told The Denver Gazette. The public is invited to comment on the new draft up through Aug. 29. After that, the final draft will go through the city’s planning board and will need approval from the City Council.

When developments go under review, city planners will reference neighborhood plans to determine whether the project fits within Denver’s standards and priorities. 

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For the Downtown Denver Partnership, CEO Kourtny Garrett said it’s also used as the base for her organization’s work plans, so they can make sure the strategies will cross the finish line.

“We’re oftentimes sitting down with developers who are just starting a project or just getting interest,” Garrett said in an interview. “So, we can talk about the vision, we can help to steer and to say this is what the community has said that they want for X, Y and Z.”

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One of the main goals of the plan is to double down on the push to make downtown more residential. City officials are trying to diversify the city center after the office market tanked at the height of the pandemic, which has made Upper Downtown, where most skyscrapers are located, a priority area.

“One thing that makes us very optimistic is that our occupancy and our residential towers has remained strong through the pandemic,” Garrett said.

Downtown currently has about 35,000 residents, according to the draft plan. Doubling it would bring it up to nearly 70,000 residents by 2045.

Denver is facing a slowdown in apartment construction after a wave of supply hit the market, which could affect downtown’s ability to attract new residential developments.

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Downtown’s inventory is primarily luxury studios and one-bedrooms, according to the plan, and there’s a need for larger apartments to accommodate families and more affordable options for middle-income households — if the goal is to become a more fully-fledged neighborhood.

“We do believe that there’s significant demand there, and particularly in demographics that we know are attracted to employment and moving here to Denver, as well as locals looking for a more urban environment,” Garrett said.

While downtown office-to-housing conversions are an option, the plan also encourages flipping old offices for artist studios, entertainment venues, indoor public space, small-scale manufacturing, recreational amenities or vertical farming.

The Downtown Area Plan is also supposed to last during several market cycles, said Denver’s Principal City Planner David Gaspers.

Part of doubling downtown’s population by 2045 would include the major Ball Arena development project set to bring in about 6,000 units of housing, said Paul Donegan, a senior city planner.

5 things to know about massive Ball Arena project extending downtown Denver

“We’re not necessarily expecting just adaptive reuse of office buildings to do it. We’re not expecting just River Mile to do it,” he said. “But through all these different elements.”

Another part of the plan is advocating to boost residential amenities, such as playgrounds, parks and grocery stores. The plan also wants downtown to boost its programming of events, such as hosting markets, festivals and other cultural activities, in order to lure people back to the city center.

It proposes to bring back “Meet in the Street” days, when 16th Street would temporarily move the shuttle to host live music and family-friendly activities.

“The vision really is to make it more of a downtown that’s a complete neighborhood,” Gaspers said.

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