Click the link to read the article on The Denver Post website (Elise Schmelzer and Joe Rubino). Here’s an excerpt:
September 8, 2024
…after decades of revitalization and efforts to stabilize flows, sections of the urban South Platte still smell of decay and waste, and city officials discourage swimming. But cyclists also pedal along miles of paved trails on the riverfront. Kayakers and surfers play in the whitewater. Carp and trout lurk under bridges, while families of ducks paddle along the calmer waters. And strips of green parks border long stretches of the river where, in previous decades, factories spewed sludge and landfills leached pollutants. After a long era of neglect and abuse, city officials, nonprofit leaders and developers hope to build on that progress as they pose a question for the future: How can we turn the city toward the river — the waterway that made Denver’s existence on the High Plains possible — instead of putting it at our backs and ignoring it? More than a quarter of a billion federal dollars are flowing into ecosystem restoration and flood management along the South Platte. For the first time, the Denver City Council recently created a committee dedicated to issues on and development near the river…
Developers plan to invest hundreds of millions of dollars along the river in coming years, building as much as 15 million square feet of combined new residential and commercial space on the land where Elitch Gardens Theme and Water Park sits today. If completed, that square footage will be nearly five times larger than Denver International Airport’s terminal building. Should that and other ambitious projects reach their full potential, the Platte would serve as a focal point of brand new high-rise urban neighborhoods that expand the city’s skyline in a new direction…Property owners ranging from the Denver Housing Authority to Stan Kroenke, the billionaire owner of the Colorado Avalanche and Denver Nuggets, to the city itself will all play roles in determining how new construction capitalizes on a restored South Platte. The impending turnover of underutilized and unappreciated land has generated buzz and a glut of glossy renderings. At the same time, it’s inducing heartburn in some corners of the city that have seen new investment like that drive gentrification in nearby low-income and minority neighborhoods.
Still, establishing the river as an asset rather than a barrier to urban growth is a sea change that veteran Denver city-builders like architect Chris Shears have hoped for decades would come. His firm, Shears Adkins Rockmore, has its hands in nearly every landscape-shifting project being contemplated near the South Platte today. The plans include transforming the vast parking lots around Empower Field and Ball Arena into new mixed-use neighborhoods.