Sixteenth Street: The Summer It Turned Pretty

This is the summer of The Summer I Turned Pretty, a Prime series based on the bestselling book by Jenny Han whose action has been moving even more slowly than Denver's 16th Street renovation project.

Proposed long before the pandemic, as the famous I.M. Pei tiles became infamous tripping hazards and other aspects of the infrastructure along the circa 1982 16th Street Mall began deteriorating, the $175 million project hosted an unveiling at the end of May — when a half-dozen blocks were still unfinished. Its real reveal is now set for October 4, more than forty years after the mall replaced a busy, mile-long stretch of road through downtown and three years after the renovation project's construction began.

Along the way, the project has been criticized for overruns in both schedule and budget — when downtown Denver desperately needed this longtime tourist attraction and entertainment district to come back — and mocked for a $100,000 rebranding campaign that resulted in dropping the word "mall" and adding occasional references to "the Denver way."

And now, as heading-for-the-altar Belly is still trying to decide between Conrad and Jeremiah (and the Mayor's Office compares renovated 16th Street to that show), which way will this rejuvenated street take us?

Pretty is as pretty does, after all, so we set out one day in late August to determine just how sweet 16th can be.

Here are the reports from our team:

"A Mall No More": Alan Prendergast looks back at the real 16th Street before the mall arrived in 1982.

"Mary Nguyen Dedicated to Making Denver Great Again": Gil Asakawa reports on a restaurateur who's been giving back to downtown in a big way, starting with Little Finch.

"Milk Tea People Is a Real Liquid Asset": Hannah Metzger reports on the business's $640,000 loan from the Downtown Denver Development Authority

"Come On, and Take a FreeRide": Brendan Joel Kelley experiences downtown Denver on the 16th Street Bus

"Can Cannabis Hospitality Help Resurrect 16th Street?": While weed sales are welcome at dispensaries, Thomas Mitchell notes that there's still no place to consume it in public.

For a refresher course on what this stretch looked like three decades after the mall opened, check out our 16th Street Mall thirtieth anniversary package, published in October 2012.