As the holidays arrived in the year 1965, a sort of Christmas miracle happened on Larimer Street in downtown Denver: On a block that had slid from being the bustling core of a gold rush town, to a skid row lined with rundown bars and down-on-their-luck cowboys.

Two years before, Dana Crawford had walked that same block and saw past the clutter to the buildings that were a time machine into Denver’s frontier past. As a student at Radcliffe, she had seen blocks like this around Boston and Cambridge, and she had searched for something with that feel in the Mile High.

“I finally found it in the 1400 block of Larimer Street,” she told The Denver Gazette during an interview last week in her loft near Coors Field — one of countless urban neighborhoods she helped transform over the past six decades.

But Crawford’s vision wasn’t as a museum piece. Rather, she’d keep the buildings and restore the energy to what it was a century before, when the area had housed Denver’s city hall, post office, a dry goods store, jail, and The Rocky Mountain News (its first edition hit the street the day after Gen. William Larimer and his party pitched camp nearby in 1859).

“And it was all slated to be torn down,” Crawford recalled.

At Denver’s Urban Renewal Authority, the vision of the future was more along lines of what was happening along 16th Street a mile southeast, where old buildings were bulldozed, swapped for sleek concrete offices, department stores, and their parking lots.

“A lot has been made of the fact that I wasn’t the proper gender,” Crawford said, recalling her first visit to the URA to pitch the idea of saving the block. She remembers the agency’s chairman replanted his chair to face away from her.

In May 1965, a visit to Denver Mayor Tom Currigan went better. Crawford asked if His Honor would come on site to Larimer to make the announcement that the city would help preserve the block. Currigan told Crawford he wanted to start in her office in the old Granite Hotel — setting off a panic when she realized she didn’t really have an office and would be spending the night trying to create one in the old building, including cleaning a bathroom.

Currigan, indeed, showed up that Saturday morning with a crowd of city fathers. (A news photo captures the entourage in drab gray suits and skinny ties, being led around the block to Larimer by Crawford, who is wearing an Oleg Cassini inspired black dress and hat).

“The reporters went back to the Rocky Mountain News and the Post and said we’ve got the story, but the editors said it should go on the obit page,” Crawford said.

“But they didn’t have any (other) news, so it landed on the front page, like it was going to happen,” she said.

And happen it did.

Birth of modern-day Larimer Square

Six months later, after a struggle for a liquor license, Crawford’s first tenant, Your Father’s Mustache, was ready for an opening as Christmas approached.

“I strongly remember a friend from the University of Denver telling me, ‘They’ll never come to Larimer Street,’” Crawford said.

But opening night was packed, with a line of people out onto the street.

Larimer Square was anything but an overnight success, she recalls now. There were ups-and-downs trying to acquire buildings from owners unwilling to sell. Crawford’s Larimer Square Associates finagled Denver’s first historic district designation for the block in 1971 but never did acquire all of the buildings. They lured traffic with special events, including the trademark Parade of Lights and other holiday attractions, with visits by Santa Claus.

But banks and investors wanted to see more than that, before investing in what was a rundown corner of a city that was still debating whether it should remain a “cow town” or evolve into something hipper, sleeker.

“The backstory was that to be funded, you had to have milestones,” said David Prebble, who, with wife Veronica, operated Victoriana Antique Jewelry, one of the Square’s longest running retail tenants.

“When running short (of tenants) she would start another business,” Prebble said.

Crawford herself had launched the jewelry store that the couple bought from her in 1984 after seeing an ad.

Prebble previously owned an auto parts store, but “always liked old things,” he said. Victoriana settled in as one of several standalone marques with a local flavor that Crawford paired with national brands like Ann Tayor and Talbots.

A decade later, the Pebbles had a dispute with its succeeding developer, San Diego-based Hahn Company, which purchased the block from Crawford and her partners in 1986 — an ominous year for Denver, as it slipped deep into the late 1980s recession.

Victoriana moved a block north into Writer Square but returned to a new storefront at 1417 Larimer following 1993, when Hahn sold the Square to local developer and restaurateur Jeff Hermanson.

Golden age of Larimer Square

Hermanson and a team of partners carried Larimer Square into what became a golden age for the landmark.

“Jeff and his team were always there. They really cared about the tenants,” said Roxanne Thurman, who created Cry Baby Ranch.

It was another one-of-a-kind store that with Roy Rogers-themed tchotchkes and other cowboy paraphernalia became a 30-year favorite, particularly over the holidays.

“I find it a little hard to go there and remember what it was,” Thurman said.

She had been a regular at flea markets across the High Plains, fascinated by western wear and mid-century furnishings, during 1989, when there were plenty of vacancies on the Square. Hahn Company offered her a six-week Christmas shopping season tenancy, after seeing how she had decorated the windows down the block for Garbarini and its line of shoes and fashions.

“It worked out well,” said Thurman in an understatement. “We became legitimate overnight.”

At some point, as crowds lingered over the merchandise taking too much time to reminisce, Thurman said she had to decide whether Cry Baby Ranch would turn a profit or become a museum. That led to adding lines of western fashions and Native American jewelry that resonated with the Square’s theme.

“It was a magic time,” she said.

Including when she saw Bruce Springsteen walk in one day and buy something — then return for visits during concert tours in following years.

Finding a balance of chain stores and unique stores, such as Cry Baby Ranch and Victoriana, themed to echo the history, is something Crawford said has been essential to the Square’s enchantment.

Now, she and others worry the magic is fading, as Larimer Square moves into the future under new management by Asana Partners of Charlotte, N.C.

New owners

Asana took over the property from Hermanson’s group in 2020, as the pandemic was closing stores to indoor traffic and forcing restaurants out onto the street.

Three years hence, with the COVID-19 pandemic slipping in and out of the rearview mirror, a walk down Larimer Square shows over half of 34 street-level storefronts vacant. A good number of those appear under renovation, including an arcade that had housed a few more stores. Some have “Coming Soon!” signs in the windows.

Meanwhile, a numbers of staples like Victoriana have departed for other locations or switched to online sales. (CryBabyRanch.com plans an updated site in early 2024). Ted’s Montana Grill left in May, followed by Green Russell, Russell’s Smokehouse and Bistro Vendome.

Starbucks’ exit left a yawning gap in the very essential coffee-bar category. In a prepared statement to The Denver Gazette obtained by Asana’s local public relations agent, the developer said that Huckleberry Roasters is expected into that space next year.

Local vs. chain

The departures of those self-styled retail stores are being mourned.

“An effort should be made to maintain local tenants,” Crawford said. “Losing Gusterman Silversmiths is so sad. They were there every day since we opened.”

“And to have The Market go,” she mused.

It had been a landmark arcade that housed numbers of providers — one of the venues Crawford herself had started.

Hermanson said he has been hesitant to weigh in on the direction of Asana’s business model during the interim. But he wrote a letter last March to 5280 Magazine after he had declined to be interviewed for a story on the Square.

“Their business model is different from my approach, which was very much oriented around local restaurants and retailers and creating a sense of community and collaboration,” Hermanson told 5280 in the letter, which was not published. “But there’s always more than one way to do things successfully, and in my opinion, Asana needs more time to prove its model.”

“With careful curation, we created one of most vibrant retail blocks in America, with one of the highest concentrations of chef-driven restaurants,” Hermanson told The Denver Gazette from his mountain place in Crested Butte.

“It was a true success story for street retail.”

“It was the place to go. It was in the paper every week or two,” Victoriana’s Prebble said, recalling when his North High School class had shot yearbook photos of the homecoming queen and king at the Square.

“Jeff had good marketing,” he said. “The chalk art festival brought tens of thousands, people would bring the kids down, and (during Christmas) Santa would be there all weekend long.”

Asana’s agent sent The Denver Gazette a schedule for this year’s holiday events at the Square, counting an adopt-a-dog affair on two weekends, holiday lights and carolers, an ugly sweater contest, and three Saturdays when Santa would show for brief 3-hour stints – something Prebble and other tenants particularly noted.

“I hear people say, ‘I don’t go down there anymore unless it’s to a restaurant.’ There was a synergy that no longer exists,” Prebble said.

Prior to selling, Hermanson and his team had floated a plan to build out the back of Larimer Square with multistory residential — an idea that ran into a wall of opposition, including from Crawford.

“The community said no way,” Crawford said.

Hermanson now says the idea was a much bigger vision and would have been transformative.

“Our plan mimicked a lot of historic cities from London to Paris, Toronto and on, where historic buildings butt up to new buildings,” he said. “Density is an ally to activation and community and that was our goal.”

In the wake of selling to Asana, Hermanson said he remains concerned.

“The block is a testament to change,” he said. “One of the commentaries about our ambitious plan was that (it could be) respectful of history and still evolve.”

Looking to the future

But the broad number of departures, which cover a range of motivations, leaves questions about the new developer’s direction at a moment when tenants are complaining about Asana’s operating proficiencies, its seeming lack of accessibility to storeowners, and failures to communicate plans on restorations and ongoing construction.

Former tenants Victoriana and Bistro Vendome each cleared out during renovations, when Asana failed to offer what they considered to be comparable alternative locations in the Square.

“We had a year-and-a-half left plus a five-year option, the longest term of anybody,” said Prebble, noting the store’s 800 square feet was posting Larimer’s highest sales-per-foot. “There was a thing in the lease that (any forced move) was supposed to be to comparable space, but they wanted us to move to 400 feet across the street.

“With everybody emptying out, we (would be) the target for anybody that wanted to rob you,” he said.

Asana declined to speak directly to The Denver Gazette, but in its statement to the paper underscored that it was making some construction milestones on individual buildings, without specifying which ones.

“Since acquisition, Asana Partners has been working through the design and approval process to restore and preserve Larimer Square for the long-term,” the statement said.

“Denver swimsuit retailer Beach Haus Swimwear and Caribbean-inspired cocktail lounge Emerald Eye both opened on Larimer Square this summer and several exciting new restaurants and retailers will join the block in 2024…

“Larimer Square is working to build an extensive schedule of community events for next year, including live music, outdoor fitness classes, family-friendly activations and much more,” the statement said. “Our primary goal remains to preserve and enhance Larimer Square’s unique vibrancy long into the future.”

One of the venues still feeling the magic is chef-inspired Rioja, drawing a reservation-based dinner and lunch crowd but missing the walk-ins it had lured during the Square’s heyday. That’s according to John Imbergamo, who handles Rioja’s marketing for the ownership group, as well as for Bistro Vendome (it departed after 19 years to Park Hill) and two popular spots in Union Station.

“The lack of tenants combined with the construction going on for quite some time has impacted foot traffic,” Imbergamo told The Denver Gazette.

During the peak pandemic, the city closed off Larimer between 14th and 15th to allow bars and dining to carry on in the middle of the street — then kept Larimer closed after the shutdowns ended. That’s drawn mixed reactions from tenants, with Imbergamo weighing in on the downside.

“Regular business is good; it’s that walk-in that’s off,” he said.

He is among numbers of owner groups noting that the perceived absence of traffic accentuates what they perceive as a lack of marketing that had been hallmarks of Crawford’s and Hermanson’s ownerships.

The disparity has become more evident, owners said, as Crawford’s long-term success transformed blocks further west toward Union Station, and north into River North (RiNo), creating countless, competing dining and drinking venues.

“Think of the Dairy Block, Union Station, McGregor Square, never mind the rest of the city,” Imbergamo said. “The city has grown up around it.”

John Rebchook, who covered real estate for the Rocky for 26 years, said Larimer Square’s woes mirror those changing downtowns here and elsewhere.

“I think downtown Denver is being affected by both micro and macro issues,” Rebchook told The Denver Gazette – recalling that editors at the paper, which closed in 2009 just short of its 150th birthday, had assigned him the Dana Crawford beat after the developer had been less than pleased with Kevin Flynn’s downtown coverage.

Flynn is now a Denver City Councilmember.

Downtowns face work-from-home pattern

Those macro issues involve the work-from-home phenom.

“Fewer people are in for lunch, and people won’t stay after work, hurting the after-hours business,” Rebchook said.

“Why buy a pair of shoes downtown when you can buy them from Amazon and ship them back in one day, avoiding the hassle finding parking and all the construction?” he said.

That includes the ongoing refurbishing of the 16th Street Mall, he said, a block away — that had linked Larimer and other LoDo attractions to downtown’s core. It’s now a jumble of excavated streets and fenced barricades.

Previous developer Hermanson said he has hopes for Christmases Future.

“I think Larimer can and will play an important part in downtown Denver and will continue to be a beacon for the community,” he said.

“To be fair, Asana’s investment is disruptive, but they clearly have a long-term commitment. The money they’re going to spend on the block is very impressive,” Hermanson said.

“I’m concerned about the philosophy,” Crawford said.

“The people who bought Larimer Square are very professional,” she said, adding that Asana has an excellent portfolio around the country that includes the restaurant row along Tennyson Street in Denver’s Berkeley area, where the old Elitch Gardens had been.

Part of the responsibility weighing on the developer, Crawford added, is to bolster the underpinnings of 150-year-old buildings to make them last another century.

“At Larimer Square we never had the money to do it,” she said.

Her philosophical concern includes keeping a family orientation to the Square in an era when the bar scene rules Lower Downtown.

“One of my favorites would be when they would bring the kids down and tour,” she said. “The kids would get a huge kick out of it.

“If anything, I’m an optimist.” Crawford added that she’s looking for more workers and residents to move downtown. “If people are living in a place, they take care of it.”