Updating icon to be no walk in park

Say goodbye to the center median on the 16th Street Mall. Say hello to more trees and more space for pedestrians on the sidewalks along the iconic downtown thoroughfare.

That’s the recommendation, released Wednesday, from the city of Denver and the Regional Transportation District as urban planners ramp up a multiyear effort to overhaul one of the city’s most heavily used and highly visited corridors.

The redesign plan for the original stretch of the 35-yearold mall, which runs from Broadway northwest to Market Street, could break ground next year and wrap up in 2022. The cost: from $90 million to $130 million.

“To so many people, 16th Street is Denver’s Main Street,” said Andrea Burns, spokeswoman for Denver’s community planning and development department. “So it’s really important we get this right.”

The city, which in recent months has been considering three options for a mall redesign, held public meetings this past fall to gather feedback on those ideas. Burns said getting

rid of the median between Tremont Place and Arapahoe Street and moving the free MallRide shuttles side by side in the center of 16th Street in that stretch would constitute a big step toward improving pedestrian safety.

“What we’ve heard is that the pedestrian spaces are constrained,” Burns said. “And what we’ve seen is that the median is underused. It doesn’t feel safe in the median, it doesn’t feel welcoming because you are surrounded by buses on both sides.”

The recommended plan would place trees and lamp posts between the sidewalks and the shuttles, providing a “physical and visual buffer” between people and buses, Burns said. It would also open up more space for outdoor seating opportunities at restaurants on the mall.

That extra sidewalk width — a total of nearly 20 feet more on both sides between Tremont and Arapahoe — should help bring more vibrancy to the mall, as stores and restaurants get more square footage to play with outside their front doors, said David Sternberg, executive vice president with Brookfield Properties.

Brookfield owns the 56story Republic Plaza — Colorado’s tallest building — which rises at the east end of the 16th Street Mall.

“You may see more sidewalk cafes and opportunity for retail to open up into the street and be more inviting,” Sternberg said.

He said the recommended plan should make the mall “safer and more active,” a goal the city has been pursuing for years.

Downtown Denver Partnership president Tami Door said the median, which is 22 feet wide for most of the mall, has become a bit of a “no man’s land.”

“It’s too big to ignore, but it’s too small to do anything impactful with,” Door said.

But the median is an important resting spot for homeless people such as Lloyd Garcia, who said he uses the various benches and seats that line the mall’s center strip every day.

“There won’t be room for the homeless to sit in,” he said Wednesday, as he emptied a package of potato chips into a Ziploc bag. “And that’s not right.”

While details aren’t yet clear, Burns said future design work “will identify specific amenities like gathering spaces, flexible spaces for occasional special events, outdoor furniture and other features” that will ensure the redesigned mall is a “great public space for everyone.”

Although Wednesday’s announcement was largely about changes to the mall, planners are mindful about retaining one of its major historic attributes — the “rattlesnake” pattern of black-, gray- and red-hued granite pavers, which is a hallmark of architect I.M. Pei’s design from 1982.

“It’s very important to us and the historic (preservation) community to keep that pattern,” Burns said.

It’s too early to tell whether some of the pavers in place now would be refurbished and reinstalled or whether new materials would have to be brought in, she said.

Annie Levinksy, executive director of Historic Denver, said she was “encouraged” by what the plan showed in terms of the preservation of the mall’s surface, but she said there are too many questions about materials for the roadway and other yet-tobe-determined details to celebrate just yet.

“We think it’s essential that the granite be the material on the mall and the pattern stay the same,” she said.

She also hopes the city can keep as many mature trees in place as possible. The plan makes it clear that some older trees would have to be removed from the mall in order to complete the redesign but that new ones would be planted, with an increase in the total number of trees from around 150 today to more than 200 at completion.

Burns said the tree-canopy strategy for the mall would include different kinds of trees rather than just the one type — the honey locust — that dominates the mall’s landscape today.

Changes would also be made to the mall’s “compromised sub-layer,” giving the city a chance to upgrade underground utilities, such as drainage, electric lines and fiberoptic lines for the first time in more than three decades.

Construction, which is bound to be disruptive in a corridor that sees more than 40,000 shuttle riders a day, will probably happen in phases to keep impacts to a minimum, Burns said. Funding still needs to be identified for the overhaul, although at least $13 million should be available from the $937 million bond that Denver voters passed in November. Burns said federal funding and money from tax increment financing could also help pay for the project.

Because federal dollars were used for the original building of the mall 35 years ago, any modifications must undergo a National Environmental Policy Act review and a cultural resources evaluation. The city and RTD are jointly responsible for coming up with a final design in the spring before submitting it to the Federal Transit Administration this summer for final approval.

In the meantime, the city will hold two open houses March 8 to solicit public feedback on the plan.