16th Street Mall Reconstruction

December 2019: Denver Receives Federal Approval to Advance Reconstruction of 16th Street Mall

Denver’s plan to reconstruct the 16^th Street Mall took a major step forward with the completion of the project’s environmental phase. The City and County of Denver and project partners the Federal Transit Administration (FTA), Regional Transportation District (RTD), Denver Urban Renewal Authority (DURA), and Downtown Denver Partnership (DDP) will next initiate the process to select a design/build contractor to reconstruct the 16^th Street Mall including gathering feedback from the community on key components of the reconstruction process.

The Mall Experience: The Future of Denver’s 16th Street Mall

The ultimate goal of the The Mall Experience study is to have people enjoy the 16th Street Mall more: come more often, stay longer. To achieve that, we’re studying mall activity and conducting public outreach to identify ways to help the mall reach its full potential as a welcoming place for everyone, and the heart of a vibrant downtown.

We’ve brought on Gehl Studio — a global leader in people-centered urban design — to study the mall and identify challenges and opportunities. This will be an iterative process of outreach, observations, testing and refining as we consider the many possibilities to improve the mall. We’ll start with Meet in the Street, a series of weekends involving events, activities and alternative transit options, hosted by the Downtown Denver Partnership.

The Mall Experience study builds on years of community input and planning: the 2007 Downtown Area Plan (PDF) and the 2010 16th Street Mall Urban Design Plan (PDF) established a strategic vision for the corridor. Now, we’re ready to ask more of the 16th Street Mall.

UPDATED 2017: View the Gehl Report, Small Steps Toward Big Change (PDF) and the 2016 appendix (PDF); and RTD 16th Street Mall survey (PDF).

• 16th_St_Mall_Urban_Design_Plan_web pdf (27307kb) [ download ]
• 16th_street_mall_fact_sheet pdf (3428kb) [ download ]
• 16th-Street-Mall_OpenHouse_February2020 pdf (3256kb) [ download ]
• 16th-Street-Mall-Report_Final pdf (1468kb) [ download ]