The pandemic interrupted and changed the way real estate and retail consumers interact with cities.

Some submarkets are seeing significant growth, while spaces like downtown are continuing to lag behind, according to experts at the University of Colorado Boulder’s Real Estate Forum Wednesday.

The Downtown Denver Partnership is taking this opportunity to not only build back downtown’s spaces, but make it even better, according to Sarah Wiebenson, director of economic development.

Many of the challenges Denver’s downtown faces echo throughout the country’s downtown environments, Wiebenson said. Much of the downtown problem is getting people to come back to downtown — which usually means coming back to the office.

Property owners are doing pop-ups and thinking about how to activate downtown to give people a reason to come back.

“For each challenge, we also see opportunity,” Wiebenson said.

Slightly further outside of downtown, Cherry Creek is experiencing the opposite as the “most prolific market, period, in Colorado,” according to Jamie Gard, the executive managing director for Newmark.

“It’s got housing building the community, so there’s people there day and night to stimulate the restaurants,” Gard said. “If you haven’t been out to a restaurant in Cherry Creek — I don’t know what the numbers are — but I’m sure five of the 10 best restaurants in the city and county of Denver or, heck, Colorado, are probably in Cherry Creek.”

There is significant wealth in Cherry Creek, according to Gard. The biggest selling point: people feel safe in Cherry Creek thanks to low crime, low homeless, and low civil unrest numbers. People are also coming back to work in Cherry Creek, Gard said.

“Cherry Creek is boring, but that’s what’s fantastic about it,” Gard said. “That neighborhood has made people feel comfortable.”

But operations are expensive, like security and safety, and Cherry Creek is an expensive place to operate a business. One of Newmark’s sublease deals is going to make $50 per net-square-foot and the expenses are $43.

“Cherry Creek is a high service market, so if I have a small building it costs more to operate it. Then I put a valet in there and it costs a lot to operate. And then I put a concierge in the lobby for security and helpfulness and that costs a lot to operate,” Gard said.

“So I take a normal building in downtown that I might operate at $15 and $18 and $10 or $12 of that is taxes,” Gard added. “In Cherry Creek $20 to $25 of that is taxes and another $16, $17, $18 is all these services that these tenants want to pay for because they want their people to come to work and feel safe and feel happy and make them money.”