downtown denver
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Mayor Michael Johnston says he’s ready to back big projects to revitalize downtown. His actions to date suggest otherwise.
He and his team have wasted tens of millions on parcel-specific projects, when projects that lift all downtown properties would provide way more bang for the buck.
They’ve shepherded through a plan for downtown that’s a collection of micro-steps that even collectively won’t do much for downtown.
And they’ve done nothing to promote the kind of big-picture magnates necessary to create a fun, safe environment necessary to attract the millions of new visitors, employers and residents that downtown needs to thrive again.
Here’s an idea that would boost all of downtown: build an automatic network of elevated gondolas connecting all of downtown with on-demand, customizable cabins whisking visitors, residents and workers to every significant downtown attraction at up to 35 mph, either on the ground or in the air (across major streets, I-25 and the South Platte River). Raise millions from fares, sponsorships and advertising, and use some of that money to install a new battery of surveillance cameras and hire security staffers to monitor the video in real-time and alert guards in the streets of potential trouble before it becomes real trouble. Build community by offering half-price rides to Medicaid recipients, seniors, kids and the handicapped.
Los Angeles is going to build such a system to and from downtown to Dodger Stadium. Las Vegas already has a monorail system. Portland built a gondola years ago. A Dallas suburb has launched a study of one.
But none of them serve – or will serve if built – an entire downtown. Denver has a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be the first to do so, and put itself on the global map with an innovative transportation system that plays off the state’s signature form of winter outdoor recreation. This “DEN-VAIR” system would attract the hundreds of thousands of visitors required to bring downtown back to life and put its economic development growth on steroids.
Too expensive? Nope. We’ve already received an offer from a transportation company that specializes in these systems to put together a team of investors providing capital for projects like this. They’d finance 100 percent of the construction costs in return for annual payments once the system is operating, derived from fare, sponsorship and advertising revenue.
All it would take is creating a public-private partnership led by a task force committed to transparency to raise the $200,000 for the initial scoping study. That task force would then issue a request for proposals to the companies that design and build these automatic transit network systems and any other big-picture proposals to revitalize downtown (such as a Ferris wheel), and then evaluate the responses and green-light the one they like best, or mix-and-match from two or more of the proposals.
The good news? It’s not too late. There’s no deadline that has to be met to get started. But these kinds of projects are years in the making. The only way to make them happen is to take the first step.
New Downtown Denver has invited three manufacturers of urban gondola systems to present their technologies at a public hearing at 6 p.m. Tuesday, April 7, in the Denver Post Building Auditorium at 101 West Colfax Avenue.
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