As downtown Denver struggles to fully recover from office vacancies and a drop in visitors, city planners hope a blueprint that is taking shape will turn the city center around for the next generation.

Halfway through the Downtown Area Plan process, city planners are looking at an approach geared toward catalyzing “nodes” of downtown to inspire investments into the surrounding area.

“We’re using the playbook from Denver Union Station,” said Andrew Iltis, Downtown Denver Partnership’s vice president of planning and community impact and co-leader of the plan, citing the 2014 restoration.

At a Denver Planning Board meeting on Wednesday, Principal City Planner David Gaspers and Iltis presented the group with updates on the 20-year Downtown Area Plan in development.

The team behind the document identified several proposed solutions and geographic parts of downtown to focus on:

• Turning the Central Business District into a more residential “Central Neighborhood District” with Skyline Park as the living room of downtown

• Making the Ballpark neighborhood and the Cherry Creek/Speer corridor a gateway into downtown

• Encouraging redevelopment on Broadway and Arapahoe Street

• Making Civic Center an anchor to 16th Street Mall

• Using the South Platte River as an economic engine in the Central Platte Valley

“We need to focus the investment in certain geographies so that the spillover effect will connect those,” Gaspars said.

The Downtown Area Plan is a blueprint drafted about every two decades to guide city leaders on policies affecting the urban core for each generation. The 2007 plan currently in place highlighted a reevaluation of 16th Street Mall’s transit services and supported the 2014 redevelopment of Union Station.

It also laid the groundwork to make downtown more residential, something expected to be supercharged in the next reiteration.

Work began on the next area plan a little earlier than necessary following the COVID-19 pandemic.

Downtown Denver has struggled ever since the pandemic hit five years ago, when governments shut down businesses and limited public gatherings. It’s dealing with rising office and retail vacancies, further strained by the years-long 16th Street Mall renovation construction project, homelessness, and some high-profile violent and drug crimes recently. Foot traffic has yet to fully rebound.

The Downtown Area Plan is spearheaded by Denver Community Planning and Development and the Downtown Denver Partnership. Urban planning and design consultancy firm Sasaki is assisting.

In a memo to the planning board, city planners outlined seven recommendations to address downtown’s issues.

• Double down on existing initiatives and developments to get early wins that move the market

• Establish key areas to pilot, concentrate and incubate programs, policies and funding

• Catalyze the central business district with jobs, new residents and more visitors

• Create a clear hierarchy of public realm improvements to enhance connections to key areas

• Build a network of parks, plazas and open spaces for people to gather, recreate and relax

• Improve access to, through, and around downtown breaking down barriers, clarifying movements and minimizing conflicts

• Create a park a car once and move around mentality by developing a mobility network that encourages people to walk, cycle and take transit around downtown regardless of how they got there

“Thinking about these issues like mobility or office investment or employment in silos isn’t working,” Iltis said. “We need to be addressing these things as overlapping systems.”

Iltis explained how downtown can be catalyzed by having blocks with more character, where one block can specialize in mountain fashion brands on the ground level and the next block can focus on something a little different like residential retail.

A big question is how the plan would be implemented, as some initiatives from the 2007 plan never fully came to fruition. One thing that’s different is the expansion of the Denver Downtown Development Authority, a financing tool expected to bring $570 million in investment into downtown.

“We have money behind this plan,” Councilmember Chris Hinds, who represents the district covering most of the city core, told the planning board.

The city is accepting applications for the money generated with tax-increment financing to help fund gaps in financing for projects, such as office conversions. City agencies can also apply for the funding.

While half-a-billion dollars sounds like a lot of money, Gaspars said, it can run out quickly spent on downtown projects.

“The big intent for this plan is that it’s catalytic by leveraging public dollars to get private market reaction in these focus areas,” Gaspars said. “Then hopefully find other funds as we continue to implement the plan over the course of its lifetime.”

The Downtown Area Plan has to be approved by the Denver City Council. A draft plan is scheduled to be released in the summer for community feedback, Gaspars said.