Mayor Mike Johnston unveils plan to break downtown Denver out of “doom loop” with $500 million in public investment

Metropolis leaders have zeroed in on a method they hope can break downtown Denver out of what Mayor Mike Johnston has described as the world’s post-COVID “doom loop.”

The important thing to that technique: the growth of an obscure particular taxing authority that performed a key half in downtown’s final large growth.

Johnston and different metropolis and enterprise leaders stood in entrance of the dormant fountains exterior Union Station on Thursday morning to announce a plan they are saying may generate $500 million in public funding in downtown Denver over the approaching decade.

The strategy depends on a strategic funding device that helped flip Union Station from an all-but-deserted bus terminal into an anchor of downtown Denver’s financial resurgence within the 2010s.  Particularly, the Johnston administration and its companions are intent on increasing the boundaries of the Denver Downtown Growth Authority to cowl the entire metropolis’s core, together with the long-floundering Central Enterprise District.

As soon as expanded, that entity — created to repay $400 million in public debt incurred constructing infrastructure across the station — would accumulate incremental property taxes from collaborating companies and property homeowners to again bonds that can be utilized to fund a bunch of financial growth work and tasks, officers defined.

What sort of work? Metropolis residents may have an opportunity to weigh in on that query, Johnston mentioned

“This marketing campaign will begin with a dialog with downtown residents,” Johnston mentioned Thursday morning. “Beginning immediately we are going to go public with an internet site on which each Denverite can chime in with their very own hopes and goals for what they need from downtown.”

Residents can go to Denvergov.org/DDA for extra data and share their ideas.

A handful of levers have to be pulled earlier than the plan can take impact, Johnston mentioned.

The Denver Metropolis Council must take motion on the plan. The mayor was flanked by council members Darrell Waston, Amanda Sandoval and Chris Hinds, whose district contains downtown. They are going to be main efforts from the council aspect, Johnston mentioned.

The governing board that oversees the Downtown Growth Authority would additionally need to approve the modifications as would the unique residents and companies that voted to ascertain the authority in its present footprint greater than a decade in the past, Johnston mentioned.

Doug Tisdale is the chair of the Downtown Growth Authority, a put up he was elected to after being appointed to the board as a consultant for the Regional Transportation District. He sees Union Station’s success and the avalanche of personal sector funding that adopted its reopening a decade in the past as a key gross sales pitch for the proposed growth.

“There’s no motive we are able to’t replicate elsewhere what we did right here,” Tisdale mentioned Thursday, gesturing towards the station.

Property homeowners within the proposed new footprint wouldn’t be obligated to pay into the authority. They might choose in, Tisdale mentioned.