Colorado Sunday | Can’t win the mall (2024)

Happy Colorado Sunday, friends!

For a large number of years that I am not going to describe in precise detail here, the 16th Street Mall was a crucial part of my work day. We walked there to eat spicy Chinese green beans at the food court in the basem*nt of Republic Plaza (aka Lower Hell) or for coffee at Starbucks, or Cooks, or Ink, or hopped on a MallRide to take a quick browse through Tattered Cover in LoDo or catch the L bus home. It was just there for me — a place to sit when I needed air or a walk to declutter my brain. I loved the randomness of a stroll down the patterned pavers leading me from one end to the other.

We moved offices five years ago, leaving the glorious historic Petroleum Building at the corner of 16th and Broadway, where I could stand on the roof and see from one end of the mall to the other, first heading home for the pandemic and then posting up in shared workspace at the Buell Public Media Center. The new place is not far away, but it is in a different ZIP code both literally and spiritually.

My strolling patterns have adjusted to include a new coffee shop and some decent lunch spots, so I wasn’t really aware of the scope of change afoot on my beloved mall until Robert Davis pitched a story about the transformation going on there and what it means for the retailers and restaurateurs still trying to stick it out.

I got a taste, though, when I was walking diagonally across town with a friend on an urban adventure a few weeks ago. I imagined that at least part of our journey would follow the mall. But it was not to be. Chain-link fences, Jersey barriers and scary-deep trenches got in the way.

The Cover Story

Can 16th Street Mall get its mojo back?

The word “place” is often used to describe something impersonal, like a collection of buildings in a certain part of town. But behind those buildings is a relationship, one that expresses the different dimensions of human life. We attach our emotions, imaginations and personal experiences to places.

For many Denverites, the 16th Street Mall evokes a strong sense of place. When I first moved to Denver in 2015, it was one place everyone said I had to visit. You could grab a couple of slices at Lucky Pie and listen to the buskers at Independence Plaza belt out their favorite tunes. In the summer, hordes of tourists would shop before ducking into a local restaurant. When my parents visited during the holiday season, we’d go to the Denver Christkindlmarket, then held near the Daniels & Fisher clocktower, to grab a hot chocolate and find something unique to ring in the season.

Fast-forward a decade, and that mall is almost unrecognizable. As I write in this week’s Colorado Sunday cover story, the sense of place the mall once evoked has disappeared. The sidewalks are empty as people skip the mall to avoid the hassle of navigating the city’s massive and delayed efforts to rebuild and redefine the role of 16th Street through downtown. Once-bustling restaurants and shops are struggling to survive.

Denver has been trying to revive the mall for the past two years by working to make it more of a neighborhood. But business owners like Shanti and Shyam Shrestha, who have owned Mt. Everest Imports since 1998, say the upgrade represents an existential threat to their business. Even award-winning restaurateurs like Edwin Zoe, who owns Dragonfly Noodle and Zoe Ma Ma, are not immune.

A lot of people told me that rekindling that sense of place will take time. Yet time is a finite resource, and with all the work still left to do to create the 16th Street Mall 2.0, the damage may already be done.

READ THIS WEEK’S COLORADO SUNDAY FEATURE

The Colorado Lens

The Northern Hemisphere’s summer solstice just passed. For some it’s a transition, a time of reflection on the past six months and anticipation for the next six, or simply a celebration of the longest day of the year. Here are some recent shots from our place in the heart of the Rocky Mountains.

Flavor of the Week

How to deal with Colorado’s persistent summer pests

Ninety million people will travel to Colorado this year. And sometimes it feels as if all of them are close relatives of mine. I love ’em all. Still, living in this state is like winning Powerball: Suddenly your name is on everybody’s “must hit up” list, even if you last saw them at a bar mitzvah during the Obama administration.

The key is to welcome your guests in a way that doesn’t make them feel too welcome. That’s why I’ve adopted Blucifer as my Martha Stewart. As a host, he projects equal parts menace and hazard, which is just the way I want it.

Welcome to Colorado, and I’ll stare at you with my glowing red eyes until you leave!

SEE OTHER PROVEN PESTGUEST-MANAGEMENT TIPS

SunLit: Sneak Peek

In “The Last Animal,” a family reeling from loss begins a Siberian adventure

EXCERPT: Fifteen-year-old Eve and her 13-year-old sister, Vera, have recently lost their father. Now their widowed mom, Jane, a graduate student in paleobiology, has brought them with her on a research trip to Siberia. Ramona Ausubel’s Colorado Book Award finalist “The Last Animal” is built around the idea of using genetic research to recreate a woolly mammoth — but as the excerpt quickly makes clear, the story revolves largely around the dynamics of family.

READ THE SUNLIT EXCERPT

THE SUNLIT INTERVIEW: Ausubel happened across the idea for her novel shortly after the birth of her daughter, when she read an article about efforts to de-extinct various creatures. But while her research into the science behind those efforts went deep, the author sought to keep characters front and center. Here’s a slice from her Q&A:

SunLit: What were the biggest challenges you faced in writing this book?

Ausubel: Every book is a new universe and no matter how much experience I have, the fact that it’s always new is both the hard part and the pleasure. The challenge this time was partly to balance the emotional worlds of the characters with the backdrop of de-extinction.

Readers needed to understand that project without giant info dumps, and always, always the lives of the characters and their relationships needed to be centered.

READ THE INTERVIEW WITH RAMONA AUSUBEL

Sunday Reading List

A curated list of what you may have missed from The Colorado Sun this week.

🌞 Before you do anything else this morning, did you vote in the primary of your choice? Time is running out before the ballots are tallied Tuesday night. Here is our procrastinator’s guide to making sure your vote gets counted.

🌞 And lest you think that primaries are boring, low-stakes races, let us tantalize you with tales of big spending in state school board races, self-dealing by party leaders, Democrats paying for advertising in Republican races, and maneuvering in statehouse primary races that could change the path of the legislature for years.

🌞 There’s been plenty of cheerleading for creating a national monument around the Dolores River in Mesa and Montrose counties. But U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet got an earful from the other side and Jason Blevins reports on what in the proposal is concerning to people who actually live there.

🌞 Can Boulder really lure the Sundance Film Festival away from Utah? State economic development types told Parker Yamasaki they’re willing to try — and cut a $1.5 million check to prove it. Honestly, while there is a certain allure to standing out in frigid weather waiting to be admitted to a theater in Park City in January, the weather in Colorado seems like a major selling point.

🌞 The clock is ticking on plans to shut down a Tri-State Generation and Transmission’s coal-fired power plant in Moffat County and two mines that supply it. Mark Jaffe reports on the big ask — $118 million — by the communities whose economies will have to deal with major job losses and lost property tax revenue as a result.

🌞 Denver recently decided to extend its basic-income program, which provides no-strings-attached funding to people who are homeless. Jennifer Brown looked at the data that made program managers think the additional spending is a good idea.

🌞 The sheriff in my county sent out a news release last week crediting two off-duty firefighters with helping to save the life of a skier who fell more than 1,000 feet down the icy Skywalker Couloir high in the Indian Peaks Wilderness. Tracy Ross asked some questions and it turned out the first-on-the-scene rescuers were actually two teenagers who put their training as junior ski patrollers to work managing a health crisis that unfolded in a perilous location.

🌞 It’s official: A pair of gray wolves released in Grand County in December have produced at least one pup. The reproductive success means the group is officially a pack, named the Copper Creek pack by wildlife officials. The narrative around this birth is lining up exactly as you would expect.

🌞 Best mountain town to live in if you’re an LLC? That would be Mountain Village, which already lets nonresidents vote in municipal elections and is contemplating adding owners of LLCs and trusts to the voter rolls. This could change the local political landscape in the Telluride suburb, Jason Blevins learned, as there are fewer than 600 registered voters in town and nearly 1,500 properties owned by LLCs and trusts.

Thanks for spending time with us today. Here’s to you not noticing that the daylight is already waning. See you back here next Colorado Sunday!

— Dana & the whole staff of The Sun

The Colorado Sun is part of The Trust Project. Read our policies.

Corrections & Clarifications

Notice something wrong? The Colorado Sun has an ethical responsibility to fix all factual errors. Request a correction by emailing corrections@coloradosun.com.