The 16th Street Mall revitalization project will be receiving additional funding to begin phase II of the overhaul. It's the first major change of the mall since its inception in 1982.
In a 7-3 vote, City Council approved a $1,150,000 for a contract between the city and the Downtown Denver Partnership to continue redesigning and reactivating the strip. The funding will come from the American Rescue Act.
DDP began their revitalization of the strip in 2022 when they were initially given $2.4 million, also from ARPA. The plan coincided with the reconstruction of the strip, a now $173 million project that broke ground in April 2022.
In phase II of the project, DDP will continue working on its ground floor reactivation process. That includes more community engagement with business owners, landlords and stakeholders, creating new tenant-landlord relationship strategies, identifying any barriers, both policy-wise and financially, that could affect business owners as well as identifying new retail types and location spaces.
DDP's initial process included collecting data on what current businesses and stakeholders were experiencing on the corridor.
The second phase will also dive into recruitment and retention efforts, branding and ultimately the public experience - including sitting structures, kiosk layouts and refreshing the Free Mall Ride buses.
When the resolution was presented at the Business committee in December, Councilmember Sarah Parady questioned using ARPA dollars for this type of project. She was the lone dissenting vote in committee. On Tuesday, she again voted no on the resolution. However this time she was joined by Coucilmembers Shontel Lewis and Serena Gonzales-Gutierrez.
During Tuesday's meeting, Lewis questioned why the majority of the funding was going to marketing as opposed to the businesses along the strip.
Deborah Cameron, the Chief Business Development Officer at Denver Economic Development & Opportunity, said the marketing aspect is vital and will assist in attracting people to new space once the mall reopens in 2025.
"After we've invested all this money in the actual infrastructure of 16th street itself, we need to make a big deal," Cameron said. "We only get one opportunity to do this right, and these funds will be supporting these opportunities."
Parady has previously said she believes ARPA funding should be used to support low-income Denverites who are essentially the backbone of the city's economy.
She added that, with the contract, $5 million would have been given to the downtown area for revitalization through ARPA funding out of $17 million for business support. She believed that was enough.
"Understanding that [downtown] is where a lot of city business happens and we have a lot of sales tax revenue from downtown, I think we've already invested pretty heavily," Parady said.
Councilmember Kevin Flynn and Amanda Sawyer disagreed.
Both said they believe more money should be used to revitalize the mall, especially with how the city and DDP are looking to change the downtown area, making it more of an urban neighborhood then just a place where people work.
"This is a very meager amount of funding to try to seed the growth and change that needs to happen on 16th street," Flynn said. "I think, 10 years from now, we're going to see a lot more people living downtown than officing downtown. COVID changed a lot. It changed the world. It changed a lot of work habits and we have to change with the times. I think this is a completely appropriate expenditure."
