Is your area a “community center” or “regional corridor”?
Denver’s effort to update a map that has influenced development patterns for the last 15 years has shifted to a new phase that proposes new ways of channeling growth.
A series of five meetings that kicked off Wednesday night in Montbello gives residents a chance to provide input on designations in the Blueprint Denver plan that could chart out new aspirations for density in some areas — and make clear that others value their tranquility. Three remaining meetings are set for the coming week.
The update of the 2002 plan is part of a larger twoyear city-planning effort called “Denveright.” While the three other plans are focused on parks, transit and pedestrian access and trails, Blueprint is a master plan for land use and transportation.
Anticipated for adoption next summer, the new Blueprint will help city planners and elected officials guide growth. The state’s demographer projects that by 2040, Denver — which has about 700,000 people now — will grow by 100,000, while the metro area could grow by more than 1.2 million.
“The original Blueprint Denver plan was innovative for its time, and has served us well in many ways,” said Brad Buchanan, Denver’s planning department director. “This month’s workshops are an opportunity to push for more modern approaches that better serve Denver’s neighborhoods today and address the things Denverites care about most.”
Gauging just what city residents care about has been the leading challenge up to now.
One thing that was clear at the outset last year: Blueprint Denver’s simple designations for the entire city — with areas shaded as either change or stability — might now be too simplistic. The map has provided fuel for rezoning fights and other growth disputes in fast-changing Denver in recent years.
City planners who gathered feedback have taken a stab at a more complex system that uses categories and contextual gradients to shade a new map with “future place types.” They will seek responses to that map at the meetings. (View it here, along more information and a survey.)
David Gaspers, the principal city planner managing the Blueprint update, has overseen drafting a potential map that identifies current and possible ]corridors (oriented to streets) as well as neighborhood centers such as employment and residential hubs, each of them identified as local, community or regional draws. The map also has a range of districts that include industrial areas,
Blueprint Denver meetings
The first two meetings were Wednesday night at Maxwell Elementary in Montbello and Thursday at the University of Denver. Here are the remaining meetings, all starting at 5:30 p.m.:
•Tuesday: Doull Elementary, 2520 S. Utica St. •Wednesday: Scheitler Rec Center, 5031 W 46th Ave. •Thursday: East High School, 1600 City Park Esplanade parks, entertainment areas and campuses.
And then there are the city’s remaining residential neighborhoods, which range in designation from suburban in character to “urban center” or “downtown” labels, for areas closer to the central business district.
Gaspers said feedback from a Blueprint task force and from community meetings indicated a widespread desire to factor in inclusivity and equity and reflect each community’s evolution.
The city’s outreach included development of an in-person board game, adapted for online play, that has allowed users to experiment with tools to guide growth.
Now it’s up to the planners to find consensus in coming months as they fine-tune the map.
“We are hearing voices from all over the gamut … dating back to our visioning and values sessions, where we had thousands of people submit online comments. And we had over 1,000 people play the board game over April and May,” Gaspers said. “So in relative terms, that’s a lot of voices being captured. We hope to do the same thing here with these five workshops.”