When I moved to Denver in the early aughts, Union Station was a grand but dilapidated building that didn’t offer much beyond a couple of model train layouts that had long occupied its basement. By 2014, though, the depot had been remade—courtesy of a historic public-private partnership—into a transportation hub dressed up with high-end restaurants, a boutique hotel, smart retail, and an elegant central hall.

In those days, 5280’s office was right around the corner, a location that gave us a front-row seat to Union Station’s rebirth and what it did for the area. And what it did was spark verve: There was an energy in LoDo that hadn’t been there before. Kids frolicked in the plaza fountain, downtown workers grabbed lunch at Zoe Ma Ma, and travelers with roller bags hopped on and off the A Line to DIA. 5280 held its holiday party at the station’s Terminal Bar one year and, in 2018, celebrated its 25th anniversary in the Great Hall.

5280 September 2024
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For half a decade, Union Station breathed life into LoDo—and then the pandemic hit, taking with it much of the area’s hard-won vitality. Today, with the average of total daily users downtown still down by about 22 percent from 2019, Denver Mayor Mike Johnston is looking to the historical building for inspiration. He thinks he’s found it in the city’s Downtown Development Authority (DDA), which helped fund Union Station’s 2014 glow-up.

Johnston wants to expand the DDA beyond LoDo to include the Central Business District (CBD), which has fared even worse than LoDo since March 2020. In this issue’s “Inside the Plan To Save Denver’s Central Business District,” senior staff writer Robert Sanchez dives into the mayor’s 15-year plan to revitalize all of downtown. “People support the idea,” Sanchez says, “but there are questions about whether this will work in the CBD. That end of town doesn’t have the charming built environment that LoDo does.”

Ten months before the pandemic, 5280 moved to another office. From outside our building’s door, we can look down 17th to see Union Station—that is, when we’re in the office, which isn’t often these days. Like everyone else who frequently works remotely now, we are part of the chicken-and-egg dilemma the city is grappling with. It’s difficult to know how to revitalize downtown after so much has shifted in a post-pandemic world, but I hope the magic that once revived Union Station and LoDo can conjure a renaissance for the rest of downtown, too.

Fernando Gomes
Photographer

Photo courtesy of Hanna Bradbury

Paonia-based photographer Fernando Gomes may live in a small town these days, but the São Paulo–born artist lived in New York City before moving to Colorado three years ago. Intimately familiar with the rhythms of big cities, Gomes noticed a difference between the Big Apple and the Mile High City. “The biggest contrast when I moved to Denver in July 2021 was how empty and unused the downtown seemed,” he says.

The opportunity to explore, through his documentary-style photography, how the city of Denver is planning to change that intrigued Gomes when 5280’s photo editors came calling for this month’s “Inside the Plan To Save Denver’s Central Business District,” a look at the mayor’s plan to expand the Downtown Development Authority. “I love walking city streets and exploring different cafes and businesses,” says Gomes, who spent hours snapping shots in the city center, “so it’s encouraging that the city is making an effort to increase the walkability and livability of downtown.”

Gomes also caught up with Mayor Mike Johnston for a portrait—another of Gomes’ artistic focus areas—and learned about the rhythms of the mayor’s office. “Having only 10 minutes to take the mayor’s portrait was a bit of a challenge,” Gomes says.

This article was originally published in 5280 September 2024.
Lindsey B. King
Lindsey B. King
Lindsey B. King was the magazine’s editor from 2021 to 2024. She is currently a Denver-based writer and editor.