City leaders have stressed downtown Denver has several things going in its favor — reopening of 16th Street Mall, new businesses moving in, stronger police presence and $570 million of investment money.

Despite efforts to make a comeback, optimism fell among the public last year.

Perceptions of downtown grew more unfavorable in 2024, according to a preview of a Gensler report shown at the State of Downtown Denver breakfast event by the Downtown Denver Partnership held on Thursday.

Gensler surveyed 500 people in Denver — from local visitors to residents and office workers — between September and October to gauge how downtowns across the country are performing.

The full report hasn’t been released and is scheduled to come out next month, but a firm’s representative presented some of the findings at the event full of city leaders and downtown stakeholders at the Sheraton Hotel next to the Denver Pavilions.

The results show the city may have more work to do in repairing perceptions of downtown, ahead of several revitalization initiatives set to fully kick off this year.

About 55% of respondents said they agree downtown Denver offers a great experience, down from 73% in 2023. For the rest, 34% said they feel neutral and 11% said they disagree.

Jon Gambrill, a co-managing director at Gensler, said at the event that he is surprised by the falling favorability from previous years.

“This is an 18 (percentage-point) decrease,” Gambrill said.

Despite several blocks of 16th Street Mall reopening in 2024, Gambrill said the construction for the rest of the pedestrian walkway was still on the minds of residents and more downtown construction from the Regional Transportation District’s summer improvements also hindered perceptions.

Safety continued to be a top growing concern among downtown’s visitors.

The Central Business District saw violent and property crime dip 8% and 9% from 2023 to 2024, respectively, according to Denver Police Department data provided by the Downtown Denver Partnership. The city also promised to boost police presence in downtown this year following a series of stabbings on 16th Street Mall, which both occurred after the survey was conducted.

Not only did the urban planning consultancy firm ask about the current state of downtown, it also asked how optimistic people were about the Central Business District’s future.

The results were more pessimistic than during the pandemic in 2021.

About 24% of respondents said they are pessimistic about downtown’s future in 2024, compared to 20% in 2021.

Positivity rebounded after the pandemic, when optimism for downtown was at 46%, but it declined down to 53% from 2023’s high of 66%.

Answers also varied across the different types of people who go downtown, Gabrill explained.

Residents in the city core and office workers are more likely to have positive views, while visitors had the lowest.

Downtown is undergoing a shift away from offices since the pandemic, said Downtown Denver Partnership CEO Kourtny Garrett.

The shift has brought a lot of pain to downtown, as office vacancies hit 35% with more expected as companies and building owners continue to downsize, according to CBRE’s latest quarterly office real estate report released Wednesday.

“As we progress through 2025, more office building owners in metro Denver are facing the risk of loan defaults and potential foreclosures due to financial pressures,” the report said.

Downtown Denver is falling as an economic generator for the city, according to data presented at the State of Downtown breakfast, as it made up 13% of the city’s sales and property revenues before the pandemic. Now, it generates 8%.

That equates to a loss of $45 million in revenue for Denver.

Since downtown is becoming less of an office hub, Garrett said, “there is a new energy that’s emerging at night and on the weekends.”

Downtown is getting 18,000 more visitors on Saturdays than on the weekdays, according to data from DDP, and foot traffic gains are largely driven by entertainment.

The parts of downtown that are performing better, she said, are the mixed-use areas, such as Golden Triangle and Union Station, as Denver leaders are hoping to turn the city core into a “Central Neighborhood District” and diversify the area.

Downtown Denver saw $1.2 billion in investments last year to build more housing, hotel rooms and a new office building at 1900 Lawrence.

And there’s still high demand for residential units, she said.

There were more than 2,000 new residential units completed in 2024, according to the State of Downtown report, much of it in the Golden Triangle neighborhood.

One thing of note, Garrett said, is that Upper Downtown is seeing a rare wave of residential units in the development pipeline.

There’s more than 2,500 units under construction, planned or proposed in the area most concentrated with empty office buildings.

Bill Mosher, Denver’s chief projects officer for Mayor Mike Johnston, said at the breakfast he’s frustrated by the amount of “negativity” downtown has gotten recently.

The Colorado-native, who ran the Downtown Denver Partnership in the 1990s, recalled how downtown had empty buildings in the 1990s and faced other economic challenges, such as the 2000s Dot Com Bubble and the 2008 recession.

“We all rallied together and figured out how to move forward,” Mosher said.

While some negativity is justified, he said, the cycle spurred by the pandemic isn’t much different from past ones and insisted it’s important to remember downtown has a lot more going for it than it did in past cycles, such as being near several major sports teams and having a vibrant performing arts center.

“We have been through this before,” Mosher said. “We need to have the old Denver way back.”