From the Master Streetscape Plan: Instead of Colfax being viewed as a barrier, it should become a place where the dense, vibrant neighborhoods of Capitol Hill, [Uptown, and City Park West] unite. Better pedestrian facilities such as wider sidewalks, café seating, and enhanced crosswalks will help connect the neighborhoods rather than dividing them.
The first question to ask is “how are the neighborhoods not connected,” and what kind of “barriers” do we mean? We believe that neighborhoods are connected when they are perceived as a place to come and hang-out; where people can visit with each other on patios, and in plazas, and in the small parks on Park Avenue. Colfax should be the thing that connects the community, like a virtual town square.
Our philosophy for connecting neighborhoods is to create a great place by having great destinations, public amenities, and safe and working infrastructure. Operationally, that means working with the City on an updated street design that they are leading and adding amenities like public benches, bike racks, landscaping, and plazas.
There are no walls literally separating neighborhoods like North Capitol Hill from City Park West, or CPW from Capitol Hill. But, Colfax is a State highway and, as such, it does a wonderful job of connecting Aurora to downtown Denver at the expense of Colfax’s ability to be a true “Main Street.” While the neighborhoods to the north and south of Colfax are only separated by about 100-feet, they are separated by a State Highway with vehicle speeds and volumes that, in fact, do act like a “wall.”
A “main street” should feel welcoming, safe, and comfortable that people can enjoy for any length of time. Colfax has many of the major “building blocks” for success: unique local businesses, cool, old buildings, a dense urban environment, and charismatic destinations for live music, food, and fun.
Colfax also has twenty-five thousand people living within a ten-minute walk of Colfax, thousands of people working in the hospital district just to the north, and 4,000 people crossing intersections in every direction near the State Capitol, East HS, and Park Avenue.
This creates a lot of demand and pressure on a limited amount of space in the public right-of-way (ROW). We’re certain that the foot traffic for every block on Colfax could increase with better infrastructure, amenities, and destinations — and, that is a big part of our plan to help connect our neighborhoods.
We’ll start with improving the infrastructure. We successfully advocated for City funds and staff time to engineer safer intersections. With the coming rapid transit on Colfax in the next couple of years, the City is now designing improved intersections that will make it safer to cross Colfax and easier to add amenities like trees, bike racks, and benches. By the summer-autumn of 2019 the City should have detailed drawings that everyone can view.
When the construction phase begins, Denver will build the city’s first urban rapid transit system. (Yes, Fastracks does exist already, but that mainly serves the suburbs and not the urban core.) This construction will help Colfax look and feel more like a proper “main street” that is friendlier and safer.
While that infrastructure and transit construction is happening, the BID will be installing amenities like trees, bike racks, signage, art, etc. Doing this at the same time as the transit buildout will minimize the construction disruption and save our ratepayers money by installing amenities at the times when City is already tearing up the right-of-way.
But there is another challenging component to all this: the right-of-way is very limited in most parts of the district. Any and all of our added amenities will be going in the public right-of-way where vehicles aren’t — and, that is a small percentage of the right of way. See the table below.
| West end (Grant St.) | Central (Williams St.) | East end (York St.) | |
| Public right-of-way (ROW) | 80-feet | 100-feet | 100-feet |
| Curb to Curb | 56-feet (70% of ROW) | 66-feet (66% of ROW) | 66-feet (66% of ROW) |
| North sidewalk + amenity | 11-feet | 23-feet | 23-feet |
| South sidewalk + amenity | 11-feet | 11-feet | 11-feet |
| Total sidewalk + amenity space | 22-feet (28% of ROW) | 34-feet (34% fo ROW) | 34-feet (34% fo ROW) |
See Chapter Six of the Master Streetscape Plan for details and diagrams.
In approximately 75% of our district, the sidewalks and tree zones combined for just 11-feet, and the 25% of the district on the northside of Colfax east of Downing St. has about double the space: 23-feet. There are only six patios on Colfax in 1.5 miles of the district between the State Capitol and East HS and all of them are in this eastern part of the district.
A full half of Colfax patios are within about one-half block of each other where Kinga’s, Triple Tree Cafe, and the Irish Snug are at Marion St. and Colfax. It is also a block where there is excellent tree canopy providing shade for the patios. The trees in those blocks were planted 32 years ago by Marty Amble and others who then went on to form the Colfax Ave BID. [We gave Marty one of the Characters of Colfax awards at the Art-i-fax Street Party on September 8th this year.]
Connecting the neighborhoods so that the road is not a barrier will require following through on the re-engineering the street to be safer and more comfortable for everyone. Done right, that process will create a bit more space within the public right-of-way to fit more of the streetscape amenities that the community desires such as trees, patios, benches, bike racks, wayfinding and other signage, and public art.
A safer street, with more amenities and space for people to congregate will be how we work to connect the Colfax neighborhoods and build a great community around Denver’s original main street.