A new era for the Denver Pavilions is beginning to take shape

There’s a table of scientists who attended the last day of the Aerospace Medical Association and Undersea and Hyperbaric Medical Annual Scientific Meeting just a few blocks away at the Sheraton Downtown. A businessman typed pensively on his laptop across the bar from me. The table of tourists erupted in laughter behind me as they looked over photos they’d taken on their trip. A smattering of locals filled in a few tables. These are the kinds of people Denver officials want to see at the Pavilions — they just want to see a lot more of them. 

The Pavilions is a 350,000-square-foot retail and entertainment complex along 16th Street that opened in 1998. The complex, which fronts two blocks of 16th Street between Tremont Place and Welton Street, once offered visitors a premier outdoor mall experience in Upper Downtown. The complex is just a few blocks east of the Colorado Convention Center, and a short walk from the Civic Center Plaza transit hub. There’s a movie theater with 15 screens, restaurants like Maggiano’s Little Italy that can host large parties, a bowling alley and more than 1,000 parking spots. 

Like the city that surrounds it, the Pavilions has also undergone a rapid change since the COVID-19 pandemic. From my seat at the bar, I can see “open” signs illuminated in ground-floor businesses, but there are only a handful of customers. On the second level, all the “For Lease” signs hanging in the windows of former retail stores seem to veil the complex’s value. 

LEFT: Coyote Ugly Saloon and Victoria’s Secret boarded up due to fear of violence during the 2021 presidential inauguration. (Denver Public Library Special Collections) RIGHT: Shoppers at the Denver Pavilions in August 2020. (Eric Lubbers, The Colorado Sun)

It’s an admittedly strange sight for a place that to me once symbolized the proverbial melting pot of downtown Denver. The first time my life partner, Tori, and I visited the complex, it had a certain buzz. People milled in and out of a collection of shops and restaurants that illustrated Denver’s eclectic identity. The Funko Pop Valentine’s Winnie the Pooh vinyl figure that we bought at Hot Topic during our excursion still lives on a shelf in Tori’s home office, a relic of one of the few stores that survived the turmoil. 

Now, the Pavilions evokes a story of opportunity and potential. Gone are the days of downtown office workers strutting to restaurants for lunch. (Our faithful editor says the Pavilions were a welcome reprieve from an otherwise unbearably sunny walk from the Rocky Mountain News to restaurants in Upper Downtown.) Families who once made a standing weekend shopping trip to the complex now seem to prefer the convenience of e-commerce to rifling through the racks at the H&M. 

“We’ve got to figure out what the future for retail and what the future for this property is as an anchor in Upper Downtown,” Bill Mosher, a consultant to Denver Mayor Mike Johnston, told The Colorado Sun. “And the jury’s out as to what we do.”

Cultural connection

Upper Downtown is at a crossroads. The corporate workers who once inhabited the office towers have been slow to return since the pandemic, leaving restaurants and bars pining for new customers. Old office towers like Republic Plaza, the Wells Fargo Center, and Columbine Place, which were rendered obsolete by the pandemic, also seem unappealing for developers to reimagine as apartments or other use types. 

The struggles Upper Downtown faces seem foreign to other parts of downtown Denver. For instance, leasable retail space at Union Station in Lower Downtown has become hard to find, and the station has hosted events ranging from fashion shows to weekend craft markets and immersive book readings with local authors. The struggle to attract office workers to downtown is also alien to nearby Cherry Creek, which boasts one of the lowest office vacancy rates in the country. 

These nodes of activity need connection points that inspire people to wander through all of downtown. Some Denver officials have suggested that the Pavilions could serve as that bridge between the ailing Upper Downtown and livelier parts of Denver. The vision includes creating cultural centers that attract people from the nearby Civic Center and the McNichols Building areas, about half a mile south of the Pavilions. It also includes new homes for families and workers in Upper Downtown, as well as new hotel rooms to serve tourists and the Colorado Convention Center. 

Elements of that vision already exist. The challenge Denver now faces is how to maximize the opportunity presented. 

“Not going to be the savior of downtown”

All of this raises the question: What’s a city to do with a massive, underutilized shopping complex like the Pavilions? 

The short answer is to redevelop it. But the how and why of the effort are the two most important aspects. 

As for the “why,” Denver seems to think that the Pavilions could be a catalyst for future development in a downtrodden part of the city. The Downtown Development Authority seems to be betting big on the project, as it has approved nearly $225 million in funding for developments in Upper Downtown, including the $45 million it spent to acquire and renovate the complex. 

Other investments include $63 million to convert High Fidelity Plaza near the 18th and California RTD station into a mixed-use building with about 1 million square feet of commercial space and roughly 700 apartments. Another $17 million was approved to convert the historic Symes Building at the corner of 16th and Champa streets into apartments, although the project is currently on hold due to other funding issues. All of these investments are part of Denver’s vision to turn downtown into a neighborhood rather than a strictly commercial corridor. 

Brad Buchanan, executive director of Community Planning and Development, told The Sun in an interview that Denver is drawing from lessons learned from the $175 million 16th Street renovation to help reinvigorate Upper Downtown. 

One goal of the 16th Street project was to get people to linger downtown longer. Denver accomplished that by creating “nodes,” or places that inspire people to stay downtown, Buchanan said. Those efforts appear to have paid off, with about 775,000 total visits to the 1.2-mile-long tourist destination through May 2026, compared with 681,000 at that time last year, according to the Downtown Denver Partnership. 

The Pavilions could become the next node along 16th Street, one with crossover appeal for tourists and locals alike. Buchanan said the future site could be an outlet for tourists who are in town for a conference, a ballgame or relaxation. It could also appeal to future households living downtown by offering unique, local experiences, he added. 

“Redevelopment of the pavilions is not going to be the savior of downtown,” Buchanan said. “But I think it will be an important piece in everything that’s going on around downtown, from what’s happening at Ball Arena and the Speer Boulevard project to the office-to-residential conversions.” 

Creating that local flavor at the Pavilions could be a heavy lift. Currently, just five of 12 leased ground-floor retail spots are occupied by local businesses. Those businesses are primarily food and beverage and retail operations like Que Rico Mexican Restaurant, Sole Street Shoes, the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory, Nook on 16th, and Ku Cha House of Tea. 

There is also nearly 75,000 square feet of available space at the Pavilions across nine open storefronts, according to leasing data from the Downtown Denver Partnership. But that space is renting in a submarket that commands an average retail rent of $22.61 per square foot, making it one of the most expensive in Denver, CBRE’s latest retail market report shows. 

The Forest City model

The “how” of redeveloping the Pavilions is just as intriguing. 

Denver seems to be borrowing from a model that was successful in Cleveland. The Forest City redeveloped its downtown into an urban “living room” starting in 2016 by focusing on a few city blocks surrounding the city’s Public Square, according to The Washington Post. Cleveland created new zoning rules and tax incentives for office-to-residential conversion projects and worked to attract unique experiences and amenities for downtown visitors. 

There were a couple of catalysts for Cleveland’s initiative. First, downtown Cleveland had become something of a ghost town, former Mayor Frank Jackson told The Post. “You could roll a bowling ball downtown after work, and you wouldn’t hit anybody,” he said at the time. Cleveland had also won the bid to host the 2016 Republican National Convention, which drew an estimated 50,000 visitors to the city, representing about one-seventh of Cleveland’s total population at the time. 

Sound familiar? It should. Out-of-market and employee visits in Upper Downtown have declined by 11% and 33%, respectively, since 2019, according to data from the Downtown Denver Partnership. That happened at a time when office vacancies in the Central Business District, which includes the Pavilions, reached 35.5% during the first quarter of 2026 as Denver’s economy adjusted to “shifting demand patterns and broader macroeconomic conditions,” Cushman & Wakefield’s latest market report indicated. 

Denver also created a bevy of incentives to spur new development downtown. For instance, voters approved $570 million in tax increment financing, or TIF, to revitalize downtown in 2024, the same mechanism it used to revamp Union Station in 2014. The city also launched a new retail incentive program for 16th Street, offering grants of up to $450,000 to eligible businesses. 

The timing of the redevelopment is also eerily similar. Denver is also a finalist to host the 2028 Democratic National Convention, 20 years after it last hosted the event. The last time the city hosted the event was in 2008, when more than 80,000 people swarmed Denver to see former Illinois state senator Barack Obama accept his party’s presidential nomination. Mike Dino, CBS Colorado’s Democratic analyst, said in May that Denver Democrats would need to raise about $75 million to host the event. In 2008, the party needed to raise just $60 million to host the DNC. 

A new era

No matter what Denver officials decide to do with the Pavilions, it’s clear that the property is entering a new era. 

Experts at the Urban Land Institute have offered a slightly different vision for Upper Downtown than the city has been pitching. Instead of the true neighborhood, experts told Denver officials April 16 that they should turn the Pavilions into a “central social district” complete with a park, apartments, and shopping and entertainment options. One expert even suggested razing part of the building to make way for new development. Buchanan said that option isn’t out of the question, but it also isn’t likely either. 

Other suggestions included building a hotel on one of the surface parking lots to support the Convention Center and creating a gathering place similar to what the city did with the Union Station renovations in 2014 and 2024. 

“It’s time to close this chapter and start the next,” Kristen Morris, one of the 12 panelists who studied the Pavilions and the president of Atlanta-based developer Morris & Fellows, said during Urban Land Institute’s presentation. 

Buchanan said he agreed with several of the Urban Land Institute’s findings, including the need for more hotel rooms near the Convention Center and cultural experiences that attract people to Upper Downtown. How that happens remains to be seen. 

“I’ve seen Denver ebb and flow over the last four decades,” Buchanan said, “and I think we’re about to see some, some really exciting times come for downtown.”