Rate Downtown Denver (from 1-10)

[davidv]

Originally Posted by filmsequal

Infrastructure-wise downtown Denver is incredible. But the retailers are all either geared towards lower class or business class and tourists, which leaves very little room for middle and upper class consumers.

People with money go to Cherry Creek, and Cherry Creek will eventually dominate downtown Denver because of this oversight (unless zoning stops them).. but IDEALLY speaking.

Very few mid-sized cities have extensive high-class shopping downtown. During the 1970s, cities experienced white flight as a result of busing, and as a result the downtown areas lost their major department stores to the suburbs and the malls that were built there. In Denver, the 16th Street Mall was created during the 1970s around major local department stores like Fashion Bar, May D&F, the Denver, Neustetters, and Joslins which closed their 16th St. Mall locations in the 1980s and were bought out by national chains soon afterwards.

Downtown department stores were the product of a different age. From the 1900s through the 1960s, most people lived in what was known as the "streetcar city." People lived in small houses in neighborhoods that had small corner stores for their day-to-day needs. On the weekends, they would take the streetcars into downtown to do their major shopping. The auto-centric suburbs and large shopping mall changed all of this.

Economically speaking, the downtown area does not meet these types of retailers' threshold for customers, and combined with the lack of free parking found at shopping malls, we will not see upscale stores downtown anytime soon.

There are exceptions, of course, but the cities that still have a large retail presence in their downtown areas (like Manhattan), are home to a large population which can support those stores.

[Mezter]

King Soopers to open downtown Denver store - Denver Business Journal
Real Estate: Denver Cracks List of Cities Nationwide With Emerging Downtowns | 5280 Just an update. Downtown Denver seems to be moving foward! Two links I've found from other threads.