30 years of change along the 16th Street Mall
By Kevin Flynn 
| July 28, 2009 | 5:01 AM
RTD shuttle buses give passengers a free ride up and down Denver's 16th Street Mall. (RMI photo by Matthew Roberts)
Gone are Zeckendorf Plaza’s winter ice rink and the iconic May D&F parabaloid. Gone, in fact, is May D&F itself, along with The Denver, Joslin’s, J.C. Penney and Neusteter’s.
Gone are Woolworth’s, World Savings, Fashion Bar, Duke’s World Travel and Amters.
Gone are the Republic Building, the Centre Theatre, the Denver Theater and the Empire Building.
Nearly 30 years ago, in the summer of 1980 as construction was mounting for downtown’s 16th Street Mall, people wondered who would stay and who would go. Would the mall help revitalize the 9-to-5 downtown, attract residential development, bring new businesses and help existing ones?
Looking back, the answer is, mostly, yes.
While 30 years ago, downtown buttoned up for the night after the offices let out, today thousands of people walk the mall or ride the free RTD shuttle each day. And with nearly 3,500 housing units in the central business district, many of them stay overnight.
“The traffic pattern is what attracted us,” said Keith Herbert, owner of the mall’s newest business, ink! Coffee. It opened its eighth location last month in the historic and newly renovated Steel Building. It’s now called the Sage building but was known for many years as the defunct Fontius Shoes building.
“We’re an urban brand,” Herbert said. “People walk up and shop and go to the butcher on the corner, and the coffee guy and the grocer. The 16th Street Mall is vibrant with both businesses and residents, and that’s what we’re attracted to.”
“We have really super high feelings in there,” Herbert said of the latest shop, just down from Welton Street. “The developer put in some old globe lights that look like they’re from Restoration Hardware that match the flavor of the building. I think it’s great. The more vitality and businesses that are unique that you can bring to the mall, the better.”
‘A perfect recipe’
Susan O’Meara agrees. As the assistant general manager at Katie Mullen’s Irish Restaurant & Pub at Court Place, in the Sheraton, the former Dublin resident runs the first U.S. location for the northwest Ireland business.
“The owners researched many cities before deciding on Denver,” she said. “It has the demographics they were looking for, the beer culture, young people. And when they looked downtown, they noticed the other end of the mall used to have a couple of Irish pubs. Then the Sheraton approached them, as they were doing the $70 million renovation and space was available.
“Everything kind of came together in a perfect recipe.”
O’Meara said the mall traffic, augmented by nearby government and private office workers and the downtown crowds at night, solidifies the street as the place to be.
“We have done phenomenally here” since the Feb. 16 opening, she said.
The pub occupies the space that used to be the Supreme Court restaurant and night club. It’s part of a two-block area that was one of Denver’s first post-war redevelopment projects, Courthouse Square.
New York developer William Zeckendorf took the block where the old Arapahoe County Courthouse used to stand — but was then a parking lot — and in 1958 opened a four-story May D&F, the anchor location for the newly consolidated May Co. and Daniels & Fisher department stores. On the south side of Court Place, he opened the 22-story Denver Hilton in 1960.
The plaza on the northwest corner of 16th and Court, by May D&F, was named for Zeckendorf. In the winter it was an ice skating rink. In summer, it hosted concerts, lunches and sometimes a miniature golf course. It later became a Radisson Hotel and, when May D&F closed, the Adams Mark Hotel took over and expanded the old store into a seven-story hotel annex. Sheraton took it over last year and is investing in a big makeover.
A block north, the Denver Pavilions is undergoing a $25 million upgrade.
Making room for the new
All the changes on the 16th Street Mall didn’t happen overnight.
In 1980, the mall was about to get started and the Republic Building was about to be demolished. Soon followed the Centre Theatre, replaced by the Columbine Building. The Denver Theater came down, its site part of a full-block parking lot for many years before Denver Pavilions put Niketown on its pad.
Down between Lawrence and Larimer streets, Writer Square was under construction on the west side, and the two blocks on the east from Arapahoe to Larimer were being prepared for the Tabor Center. Shoppers with money enjoyed lunch in the Tea Room at The Denver Dry at 16th and California, while those on a budget sat at the Woolworth’s lunch counter in the Symes Building.
One by one, many of them left.
The Republic Building was torn down in 1981, and up went 56-story Republic Plaza. The Denver closed, and the building was preserved and restored through the Denver Urban Renewal Authority. Today, Jason’s Deli, Starbucks and Aveda Academy occupy the corner of the restored Denver Dry building.
Neusteter’s closed, and the building was turned into residences. Woolworth’s, one of the largest in the country, closed, and today 7-Eleven, Edible Arrangements, Famous Footwear and Sally Beauty Supply hold the ground floor of the Symes Building.
Downtown in transition
The progression of change on the 16th Street Mall over three decades reflects America’s cultural shift that sent department stores to suburban-style malls and brought residential and smaller niche retailers to revitalized downtowns.
But the mall almost didn’t happen.
Downtown business interests had pushed the conversion of 16th Street, for many years the popular cruising strip, into a pedestrian mall. But they couldn’t find the enormous amount of funds needed for the project.
The solution came from an unlikely direction. In 1975, newly elected Gov. Dick Lamm delivered his promise to “drive a silver stake” through the Interstate 470 beltway from Interstate 70 in Golden to Interstate 25 in Douglas County. After more than a year’s worth of study, I-470 was withdrawn from the map and its funding divided.
Some of it went to extending South Kipling Parkway in Jefferson County, some went to improving Santa Fe Drive and constructing railroad grade separations at Dartmouth Avenue, Oxford Avenue and elsewhere, and some even went toward building what became C-470 in the same location.
But about $70 million was redirected into transit, and Denver got a grant to convert 16th Street into a transitway. The purpose was to bring express buses into underground stations at either end and use the free shuttle to distribute riders to their jobs.
The shuttles, though, work as a circulator system for anyone downtown, not just commuters. And that helped businesses expand their reach. Workers at the Capitol could go to lunch on Market Street.
Some shops on 16th have witnessed the entire transition.
Walgreens at Stout Street is one of the chain’s highest-performing stores in sales per square foot. McDonald’s at Cleveland Place recently underwent a renovation. In 1980, Arby’s was in the Cottrell’s Men’s Store building but moved to the California Mall and remains in business.
But for sheer longevity, it’s hard to beat William Crow Jewelry. The shop is in its 85th year in business, all of them spent in the University Building at Champa Street.
“The University Building used to be the jewelry place in Denver,” said John Kaiser, owner of William Crow. Kaiser’s father came to work for Crow in 1947 and later bought the business. “It is a neat old building. At one time, it was the place to be at.”
Kortz Jewelry used to be in the building and sponsored the big clock that stood outside the entrance.
The mall “changed the culture” downtown and helped it survive the departure of the big stores, Kaiser said. Even so, he said the reality of downtowns is that they are unlikely to attract anchor department stores again, even though it would be a benefit to have them nearby.
“I don’t know if the mall kept business from disappearing completely, but it kept a downtown presence that a lot of cities would like to have,” he said.
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