Denver
I think I’m getting better about “uploading trip photos in a timely manner”:http://flickr.com/photos/paytonc/sets/72157594419601104, although more will certainly trickle in over the next year. Some things I noticed in Denver:
* Street-runing LRT along Welton Street is resulting in gentrification of a historically Black main street, with surprisingly good retail occupancy. Not many intact Black main streets are left out there, so it’d be a shame to see this disappear.
* South Broadway has what looks like a Motor Row, also threatened by development.
* What is up with the giant arched atria in every 1980s building? Wells Fargo has by far the most ostentatious of the bunch, even more so than the performing arts center, but sheesh. Was it city policy at the time?
* Stapleton, slightly to my surprise, is in the metro’s unfavored sector (northeast; “MARC”:http://www.metroresearch.org/projects/national_report_region.asp?region=9 has favored/unfavored sector maps). In fact, to get there from downtown you take “Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard”:http://www.sallygreene.org/mlk.htm. Apparently, it’s not a big challenge for retail leasing — there’s little competing new retail along the corridor, and a large population base — but they’ve done an admirable job with addressing the “schools issue”:http://www.sellstapleton.com/schools.php through choices like charter schools.
* Add Boulder to the short list of places where driving has declined considerably. Mode split of downtown commuters, 1999 to 2005: drive alone 59% to 36% (-39%), transit 14% to 34% (+143%). Walk/bike accounted for 14% in 2005, carpooling for 9%.
