This past week, I was in Denver for technical training, and made sure to frequent the downtown area as much as possible. This was the second time I had been to Denver, which has quite a Calgary feel: Rockies are nearby, high elevation, rather shiny downtown, downtown pedestrian mall, etc. But it just seems so much more vibrant that Calgary, even though the city proper is 1/2 a million people (to be fair, the wider metro area is 2.5 million).
It also helps that turn of the century Denver seems to stretch about 70 blocks in either way from downtown vs about 20-30 for Calgary, so Denver has and had a lot more historic buildings so in spite of teardowns there seems to be an order of magnitude more historic buildings. But the main thing I noticed, is how much more vibrant the city seemed to be, there were people, everywhere, all the time in the downtown and street after multi-block street full of small retail, restaurants, personal services, bars etc. Some stats:
Length of 16st pedestrian mall, 1 mile
(equivalent to about city hall to 8th st sw in Calgary)
# of Bars & Restaurants (this includes any sort of food service establishment) in Denver's downtown: `~324
# of Bars & Restaurants within 1 block of the pedestrian mall: ~160
# of downtown horse and carriage companies: 28
# of pedestrian mall restarants/bars with sidewalk patios: 36
# of sidewalk foot vendors on pedestrian mall (think portable carts): 39
Denver also has a warehouse district, known as Lower Downtown or Lodo, and some specs from that area:
24 restaraunts and bars
11 architectural firms
7 galleries
11 stores
12 personal services
plus museums, offices, etc
Trying to analyze why there was so so many shops/pubs/restaurants it occured to me, that for Calgary to be somewhat equivalent, 17th ave west to about 36 st sw, centre north to 32nd ave, 10th ave and 11th aves (with some 12th ave action), 9th ave in inglewood , and our 'warehouse district' would all have to be retail and entertainment, when in reality they're either extremely patchy, or partially overrun with office uses.
I'm curious if our usually tight office market creates a situation where retail and food services don't get the foothold they should as any available floor space is more lucratively leased for office? For example our warehouse district, instead of being an incredibly thriving zone, is mostly condo and office.
One other thing, Denver has downtown, and I'm meaning directly adjacent to the core: Major League hockey arena, major league football stadium, major league baseball stadium, major league basketball arena, AND, an amusement park, plus a large downtown campus of their university.
So I guess the purpose of this unstructured pile of info, is to get people's comments, wondering if there's anything to be drawn from a city that seems to 'work' as far as downtown pedestrian life which could be applied here in Calgary, or if people think that the direction Calgary is going will get there soon enough, or if it's just a lost cause.