Welcome back to this biweekly meeting of the South Platte River Committee of Denver City Council.

Join us for the discussion as the South Platte River Committee starts now.

I've got always agreements.

Good afternoon, everyone.

There we go.

Hi, welcome to the South Platte uh committee corridor committee.

Um, Councilwoman Jamie Torres who represent West Denver District 3.

Um, we have a um packed and really exciting agenda, I think today.

Um so I want to get started with uh council member introductions.

Um, do we have anybody on Zoom?

Great.

Um so I'll start to my left.

Uh good afternoon, Darrell Watson representing the flying district nine.

Rora Elvidres with Lucky District 7.

Perfect time.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, sir.

Um, and uh we've got a few action items.

Um, we'll go ahead and start with uh the downtown Denver area plan, and I'll hand it over to uh our guests, and please introduce yourselves and go ahead and get started.

Thank you, Councilman Tours.

David Gaspers with Denver Community Planning and Development.

Uh I'll walk you through some more of the technical slides, but first I'll hand it over to Courtney Garrett of the Downtown Denver Partnership to start us off.

Amazing.

Um, as David said, Courtney Garrett, president and CEO of the Downtown Denver Partnership, want to thank you all for this opportunity.

And I want to start with a little bit of the potential of this plan and why we at the Downtown Denver Partnership care about it so deeply, why we've become both financial and project management partners with the city and why this is a true North Star for our organization moving forward.

Um, so David, could you just go back to the opening slide?

Um wanted to start by just kind of thinking about when we look back at the 1987 downtown area plan and then what we saw again in 2007, it's absolutely undeniable that despite two recessions.

So if you think about 87 to 2007, two recessions, so many market ups and downs, yet despite all of that, over the course of 40 years, those plans fueled more than four decades of unprecedented growth.

And our city changed, and our city continues to change.

So whether you're looking at that change through the lens of a global pandemic or historic office vacancy rates, or you're more of the cup half full kind of a person, and you see that we have massive new development being proposed and new investment in our city, it leaves us at this moment when we can either choose to let these things evolve around us, or we can lead a vision for the future and write our own story.

So that truly is the impetus for this plan and why we believe it's so important at this moment in time.

So we all often point to Denver Union Station as a vision-turned reality.

That's one of our best examples that's looked at internationally.

And it's because of the thoughtful planning, the multi-agency partnerships, private sector moving in the same direction, this complete neighborhood that truly is a Mecca for transit, amenities, housing, entertainment, open space.

That has been delivered in our city because of the vision and the collaboration on the front end.

So now we sit, and next slide, David.

We sit at this moment when we can do the same.

The real urgency around this plan and what this plan presents is a plan that calls for immediate and urgent and important action items today, as well as setting a long-term vision for the future.

So to reiterate why now, you all have heard all of us talk about these statistics over and over and over again.

Downtown continues to be an economic engine for this entire city.

But if you'll go to the next slide, David, we'll see, and we all know that this is incredibly fragile.

When we look at office vacancy rates, we see the lack of green space.

We see the lack of diversity of housing stock to really care for our community.

We also know that just at a baseline, we are missing people back in downtown.

So that's where the plan started, is with that, the people.

So even though we were on a very short time frame, because we knew, again, those near-term urgent and important action items are imperative.

So even with a short time frame, the community engagement, the high engagement has been very robust.

Over the course of time, we received some positive feedback, but by and large, we heard concern.

We heard concern about affordability, about vacancy, about safety, and this overarching feeling of downtown just doesn't feel like it's ours anymore.

Heard in multiple, multiple communities.

So when we talk about solutions, the converse sort of of that theme was well, what will bring Denver together?

And over and over again, we heard this theme of play.

Play unites us.

Places where all backgrounds, all communities, all neighborhoods in Denver feel that they have a place and that they have a piece that they own that's a part of the city.

Carol Coletta, some of you may know, is an amazing thought leader in urban planning space.

She calls downtowns the civic commons, the historic places in our cities where government, where neighborhoods, where jobs, and where memories all come together, and it's all within this notion of diverse play.

So when we look, and you know, it's very coincidental.

Your agenda in front of you today talks about this quite a bit.

Where have we been successful?

Why do people come downtown?