The 16th Street Mall failed to be the disaster its critics feared it would be. It couldn't "save" downtown retail from prevailing cultural and economic forces, either; but from a transit perspective, the mall has been a smashing success on several levels.
"If that investment had not been made, the core of downtown would have fallen apart," says RTD spokesman Scott Reed. "Before the mall, it was taking us a ridiculous amount of time to get through downtown with our bus routes. Now it's a key component of the whole downtown experience, and the spine of our entire system serving downtown."
Larry Laszlo
Work on the mall started in 1980.
The 16th Street Mall now extends past Union Station, which will reopen in 2014.
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With 50,000 passenger trips a day, the mall's free shuttle service has become not only a convenience for commuters and office workers, but a must-do for tourists. According to Reed, the mall is now the top-ranked attraction for Denver visitors.
There's no going back, and that's as it should be. But there are times — when the sun goes down and the buses lurch along the mall and the lights burn bright and sinister in this granite arroyo of tourists and bar crawlers — times when I think of Dean Moriarty, and, damn, I miss Woolworth's. — Alan Prendergast
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In June 2001, John Qualley walked into the Appaloosa Grill at the corner of Welton and the 16th Street Mall. A bass player and founding member of Oakhurst, he'd been working at the Wynkoop Brewing Company and decided to move to the company's newest restaurant, which had opened just two months earlier. "I was really just trying to see what the place was about, get to know the neighborhood," says Qualley, who's now 42. "I wasn't a big fan of the 16th Street Mall in 2001. It just wasn't nearly as cohesive as it is now.... This neighborhood down here was kind of all waiting."
But Qualley wasn't. He quickly worked his way up in the ranks, from bar manager to general manager. And in July 2005 he and his bandmate, Adam Hill, bought the place, which they've been running ever since. Today Appaloosa is best known as a venue for live music, which can be heard here every single night of the year except Christmas Eve.
Appaloosa was one of the last businesses that John Hickenlooper, today the governor of Colorado, opened while he was still running the Wynkoop Brewing Company. And both Hickenlooper and Qualley saw that this area — and, by extension, the entire city of Denver — was heading into a period of major growth and development. "I was able to see very clearly why Wynkoop and John would have selected this location," says Qualley. "I was able to see a future here that a lot of people around us weren't aware of or didn't pay attention to."
That future included a revamped Colorado Convention Center, whose debut in 2004 set the stage for a surge in downtown tourists — and Qualley knew many of them would be looking for nighttime entertainment. "With the expansion of the convention center, that's when Denver really turned the corner on tourism," he says. "As ski resorts were learning how to sell Colorado in the summertime, Denver was learning how to sell itself to people [with more than] oil and gas...and really aim high."
The Downtown Denver Partnership's "State of Downtown" report released last week shows how that growth has continued in recent years. The 16th Street Mall's percentage of downtown's total sales-tax revenue rose steadily from 2009 to 2011, according to the report; establishments on the mall collected nearly $10.8 million in sales-tax revenue in 2011, accounting for nearly 32 percent of downtown's total tax revenue. Over thirty retailers and restaurants have opened downtown since July 2011, many of them on the mall.
And attracting nightlife is increasingly important to many of those businesses. Across the street from Appaloosa, the Hard Rock Cafe in the Denver Pavilions has started focusing on providing more live events, says Sean Finney, the restaurant's general manager; in June, the venue added live comedy, too. "We've seen some good growth since 2008 — up about 6 percent," he notes. "And the late night has become a bigger part of that."
Matt Keeling, a general manager at Coyote Ugly in the Pavilions, says that tourism has been a central part of the business since it opened in March 2005. "We're always down to throw a party here," he explains. "If you show up and you want to have fun, you'll get it."
While live music attracts tourists looking for late-night activities, it also continues to grow his base of local customers, Qualley says. And keeping the kitchen open until 1:30 a.m. doesn't hurt, either. Since he became general manager, the business has grown 300 percent in sales and also expanded physically, with a $700,000 redevelopment project in 2007. When they started storing alcohol under the booths, he explains, it was clear Appaloosa needed more space.
"We fill a very unique niche that's really geared toward the musician. We're not trying to get crazy ticket sales; we're not putting five bands a night on," he says. Instead, Appaloosa has a solid roster of more than sixty bands that rotate through. "We just have a core value that local musicians that are really good have a shot at playing here."
