2. We Stopped Going Downtown

The lifeblood of any vibrant city is the right mix of daily visitors to the urban core. Humans on foot—whether they’re tourists or office workers or downtown residents—keep restaurants full, street-level retail humming, and public transit busy. They also provide a lively atmosphere and deter crime and open-air drug use.

Denver’s foot traffic hasn’t fully recovered—it’s at about 89 percent of 2019 levels—for a variety of reasons, but the biggest factor may be that office workers simply haven’t returned. As of November, only about 60 percent of folks who worked downtown in 2019 had settled back into their cubicles on weekdays. Traffic does, however, appear to be up for nights and weekends, a positive sign that could mean Denverites are at least heading back downtown for restaurants, bars, hotels, shops, and sporting events, if not for the nine-to-five grind.

As the half-decade mark hits, we spoke with several people about downtown Denver’s recovery.

• “The hotel business is back. That’s not universally true in all of downtown, but it’s mostly back. The convention center expansion is helping convention business return, and we are already about 30 percent ahead of 2024 bookings for 2025. Hotels are in better shape than restaurants—we’re still not doing lunch service at a few places—but that’s improving. I’m bullish on downtown Denver.” —Walter Isenberg, CEO and co-founder, Sage Hospitality
• “The 16th Street Mall renovation being done in parts is already changing the vibe downtown. It should be done this fall, and that’ll be huge. Crime is numerically down. Union Station’s redesign is a big deal. There’s just more positive events happening. LoDo is the heart and soul of Denver. There’s optimism now.” —Ed Blair, area general manager, the Crawford and Oxford hotels
• “The Downtown Development Authority is creating optimism and new tools for revitalization. Also, the block parties we’ve been having as the 16th Street Mall reopens have been a wonderful experience and a great way to change perceptions about downtown. The Downtown Area Plan from 2007 is getting a massive revision—which should be complete in fall 2025—that will help create a new trajectory for downtown with an emphasis on being a complete neighborhood with commercial and residential spaces.” —Kourtny Garrett, president and CEO, Downtown Denver Partnership
• “I spent my teen years riding the 16th Street Mall shuttle and have always believed the mall has an opportunity to be a positive representation of our city. When I was opening Little Finch in late 2022, I wanted to be on the mall. In 2025, I’m opening Olive & Finch at Union Station and at the Denver Performing Arts Complex because I’m all in on downtown. Anything that’s rewarding and worth it has challenges—and we have had challenges with the mall construction at Little Finch—but if we want to see Denver be a great city, we have to do the work. As a business owner, I want to put my money where my mouth is.” —Mary Nguyen, founder and president, Olive & Finch Collective

By the Numbers

10th: Colorado’s state rank for economic impact from outdoor recreation. There’s no question that the pandemic—and social-distancing measures that encouraged outdoorsy Centennial Staters to get out even more often—boosted those numbers. “Colorado’s outdoor industry has continued its robust growth since the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis started to measure this metric in 2012,” says Conor Hall, director of Colorado’s Outdoor Recreation Industry Office. “The pandemic did have a significant impact on the industry—first cratering it in early 2020 [during stay-at-home orders] and then driving unprecedented levels of growth over the ensuing years.”

$17.2 billion: Economic impact of Colorado’s outdoor industry in 2023, a 24 percent increase from 2022. The economic value of outdoor activities—from skiing to boating to cycling to RVing—now accounts for 3.2 percent of the state’s economy.