The first phase of Denver’s project to revitalize Civic Center Park has hit a roadblock.

The city is proposing to reorient the Greek Theater 180 degrees, build a new canopy and stage, make it more accessible with new pathways and create a pedestrian loop around the park’s Central Promenade.

A majority of commissioners at the Landmark Preservation Commission meeting Tuesday voted in favor of the Greek Theater project, but it didn’t get the needed five votes to move forward because only six out of nine voting members were at the meeting. Commissioners Graham Johnson and Rusty Brown voted against it.

The project has sparked concerns from historians and architects worried it would damage historic features of the only National Historic Landmark in Denver.

Vice Chair Erika Warzel said after the vote that Denver Parks and Recreation staff will have to bring back the application to the Landmark Preservation Commission to review at a later date. Officials at Denver Parks and Recreation and architectural firm Studio Gang did not immediately respond to questions about how Tuesday’s vote will impact the project’s schedule.

Modifications to Civic Center Park aren’t new but the current ones proposed are among the most expansive since the park became a National Historic Landmark in 2012, the highest designation in the U.S. for historical sites.

Denver’s Civic Center Park is one of the few fully-realized examples of American civic parks inspired by the City Beautiful movement and Washington D.C.’s National Mall.

The late-1800s urban design era pushed to encourage political and cultural engagement through public spaces, such as parks and cultural institutions, and features neoclassical architecture.

Studio Gang – the renowned architectural firm commissioned by Denver Parks and Recreation – proposed flipping the stage to address the sun facing the audience all day long, to transform the Greek Theater into a gateway for the park, and to make the public venue experience more intimate to attract smaller events.

“It’s still a space that hosts amazing, large events really well,” Jenna Harris, Denver’s downtown parks program manager, told commissioners at Tuesday’s meeting. “But we really hope and dream to see Civic Center activated better on a daily basis for community-based performances.”

Johnson, who voted against the project, said flipping the stage would go against how the Greek Theater was originally designed and compared it to Red Rocks Amphitheater, another National Historic Landmark in Colorado.

“I don’t think that we’d ever consider reversing Red Rocks,” Johnson said.

Meanwhile, Commissioner Larry Sykes said the current plan is a stark contrast to an earlier proposal in 2021 for a canopy built directly over the theater.

Sykes, who voted in favor, said Studio Gang’s plans are a “more thoughtful” and “delicate way” of addressing problems with the Greek Theater. It also adds the advantage of making downtown Denver the backdrop for concerts and showing the evolution of the city, he added.

The current setup facing the Civic Center Cultural Complex “doesn’t have the same degree of presence and impressiveness as the view toward the north,” Sykes said.

In public letters submitted to the city, several architects, preservationists and architectural historians who helped nominate the park as a National Historic Landmark spoke out against the plans, saying it wouldn’t be reversible if implemented and would remove historic features such as the curved seating and paving materials in the theater’s bowl.

Historic Denver and Colorado Preservation voiced their support for the project but also brought up concerns such as the proposed canopy’s closeness to the freestanding columns and the removal of the curved seating.

The city defended its plans to remove the seven levels of seating surrounding the theater, saying the seats used to almost fully wrap around the theater and a portion was removed in the 2000s to create an entrance from the Central Promenade into the theater.

“Staff feels that the current seating does not quite match the historic design,” said Brittany Bryant, principal city planner for landmark preservation.

Bryant also said the current pavers were replaced to match the historic design but are not original and from a 2000s restoration project.

Sarah McCarthy, a former member of the Landmark Preservation Commission in the early 2000s and a self-described student of the City Beautiful movement, said during public comment that the proposed modern canopy wouldn’t match the style of Civic Center Center.

“It is not compatible with the original design of Civic Center as part of the City Beautiful movement using monumental neoclassical buildings,” McCarthy said.

Bryant added later in the meeting that the city does feel the “neoclassical character of the canopy structure could probably be strengthened” as the design continues to evolve, though steel and glass can also fit into the neoclassical style.

There’s also efforts to move the canopy further from the columns but architects are struggling to do so without making the structure bigger for support.

The project was slated to begin construction late next year with completion in the spring of 2027, but it’s still unclear whether the timeline will change due to the vote.