October 21, 2021

Last week, ULI Colorado’s Young Leader Discovery series hosted a bike/scooter tour of new developments and public spaces along the South Platte River, from Sun Valley to River North. 40+ attended to hear such speakers as Jeff Jones of Formativ, Jeff Shoemaker of Greenway Foundation, Greg Dorolek of Wenk Associates, Meredith Wenskoski of Livable Cities Studio, Craig Coronato of Denver PnR, and more. Topics included cleaning up the river itself as well as such key projects as DHA’s Sun Valley redevelopment, the River Mile, Confluence Park, AMLI Denargo Market, RiNo Art Park and more.

Since 2019, ULI has focused on the South Platte waterfront as an opportunity to connect the entire region with quality development, affordable housing, mobility, and access to parks, recreation and nature. This resulted from an initiative created by our previous board chair, Mike Zoellner of ZF Capital.

In April we held a large focus group on this topic followed by two recent ULI Technical Advisory Panels studying opportunities for progress in Commerce City and Denver (we hope to get to South Metro next year). ULI Colo’s director Marianne Eppig has led this effort and has two reports underway.

To summarize recommendations broadly, our volunteer panelists looked at ways to create a South Platte authority or connecting special districts to fund and guide complementary efforts to improve the river and waterfront sites. The parks, riverway and development projects we toured yesterday serve as a positive template. We believe we have already built support among decision-makers and stakeholders to implement many of these ideas.

Thank you to our sponsor AMLI RiNo; our many speakers and tour guides, to Eric Veith, Seth Weiland and Kurt Schofstall of the organizing committee.

In true ULI fashion we ended with happy hour at Mockery Brewing