The council unanimously supported applying the pack of new rules, collectively known by the active centers and corridors design overlay, to a stretch of Colfax that by 2027 is slated to be home to Denver’s first bus rapid transit line.

That transportation system is designed to use dedicated bus lanes and high-frequency, quick-boarding buses to transform the way people move along East Colfax. The design rules stand to change what the street offers to people walking and rolling along its sidewalks.

The rules will apply to all new buildings within two blocks of a planned bus rapid transit, or BRT, station between Sherman and Yosemite streets. Not only will projects in those areas be required to feature an active, non-residential use on at least a portion of the ground floors, they will also have to be set back at least two feet farther from the street to widen sidewalks.

“This overlay is not just as a zoning change, this really signals the beginning of an investment in the future of our city and the Colfax corridor,” Councilwoman Amanda Sawyer, one of the measure’s co-sponsors of the zoning change, said. “It really underscores our commitment to creating a vibrant and walkable neighborhood that is unique to the city of Denver.”

Sawyer represents east Denver’s District 5, one of four council districts that will have properties impacted by this change. The rules were now applied to every property along the 5 miles to allow for some larger housing developments to pop up, she said. Residential density will be needed to feed the new businesses city leaders hope will populate the new ground floor spaces.

Denver resident Robin Rothman was among a trio of Denver residents who spoke against the design overlay Monday, saying it did not go far enough because fast food drive-thru restaurants could still develop along portions of Colfax. She noted a Jack in the Box restaurant is being planned for the corner of Colfax and Williams Street, a property not covered by the rules changes.

“Businesses like fast food operators, banks and gas stations have overcome far more onerous requirements than what (the zoning overlay) asks for and the result has health consequences,” she said, pointing to unhealthy food choices and air pollution for idling cars.

Councilman Chris Hinds, the measure’s other co-sponsor, said that while he favors regulations that tip the scale more toward pedestrians and road users other than cars, he felt the design overlay stuck a balance.

Twelve projects already in the planning stages are exempt from the rules, senior city planner Libbie Glick said Monday, but the rest of the properties in the ordinance are now subject to the requirements.

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In the January 2020 evening incident, the car the woman was riding in was forced off the road in the 300 block of North Federal Boulevard, crashing into the Columbine Steak House and Lounge. Denver police officer Thomas Moen had attempted to make a right turn from the middle lane of northbound Federal in his department SUV and struck the sedan, which was in the right lane, according to a complaint filed by Tanya Martinez Perez’s attorney earlier this year.

The sedan was forced off the road where it collided with a parked car, crossed over the sidewalk and hit the building, coming to a stop. The complaint cites the building’s address as 300 N. Federal Blvd., which is where Columbine is located.

The complaint alleges that because Moen failed to drive safely, Martinez Perez suffered injuries to her left shoulder, arm and wrist as well as a concussion that caused post-concussion headaches.

The Denver City Attorney’s Office declined to comment on the agreement on Monday.

If approved by the City Council, the package of proposed zoning changes will govern future development for hundreds of properties between Sherman and Yosemite streets with an eye toward ensuring ample shopfronts and more space for sidewalk users along Colfax.

The measure comes before the council as the city’s Department of Transportation and Infrastructure marches toward a final design for the long-anticipated East Colfax Avenue Bus Rapid Transit network. Crews are expected to begin construction on the first segment of that project — which will install dedicated lanes and more than two dozen loading platforms to accommodate a network of high-frequency, fast-loading buses — next year.

While BRT will change the face of transportation along Colfax, the new zoning rule would change the face of buildings around the bus stops.

The rules — technically known as a design overlay — would not impact the base zoning or building heights allowed on any properties. The most important thing it will do is dictate that at least a portion of the ground floor of new buildings includes active, commercial uses. That could be anything from a pizza parlor to an office space.

New buildings would also have to be set back at least two feet farther from the street if the overlay is adopted, expanding sidewalk space, according to city planning documents. Property owners could leave more space between the fronts of their buildings and the property line, creating space for patios that might entice pedestrians.

The proposed standards won’t run for the entire 5-plus-mile length of the corridor, with gaps provided in some places where bigger residential projects could spring up. The impacted properties are all clustered within two blocks of planned bus rapid transit stops.

“The purpose of the design standards themselves is to promote walkability and small business,” said Councilwoman Amanda Sawyer, one of the measure’s co-sponsors. Her east Denver District 5 is one of four council districts that will see properties rezoned should the bill pass. “We’re trying to find the right balance. We want businesses in places everyone walks to and rides to and we want housing, particularly affordable housing.”

There are a few uses that would not meet the criteria for nonresidential active uses facing Colfax, essentially banning them near future BRT stops. Those include storage facilities, car washes, auto shops and drive-thrus that would have entrances and exits on Colfax itself, according to city documents.

“It’s past time that Colfax prioritized people over stuff,” said Councilman Chris Hinds, the bill’s other co-sponsor who represents the city’s central District 10.

Long-term plans drafted over the last two to three years for the city’s east and east central neighborhoods both call for design standards that emphasize active uses like storefronts on busy street corridors while discouraging car-oriented development.

Hinds sees the design overlay, already in place on portions of Tennyson Street and Santa Fe Drive, as Denver living its values on Colfax.

The overlay plan cruised through the council’s Land Use, Transportation & Infrastructure Committee in October. But there was some heartburn among members of the Denver Planning Board when they reviewed it this fall.

The design overlay was created by District 1 Councilwoman Amanda Sandoval’s office to address concerns about the wave of redevelopment sweeping over Tennyson Street between 38th and 46th avenues. Sandoval and others were concerned about blocks of new apartment and condo buildings popping up, crowding the sidewalk and choking out the small business feel of the corridor, a historic node on the city’s long-gone streetcar network.

The overlay has since been adopted for a portion of Santa Fe Drive, another corridor of Denver that is rapidly densifying as developers seek to cash in on one of the priciest housing and rental markets in the country.

The Planning Board voted 5-2 to recommend the City Council apply an overlay to East Colfax but not before discussing whether it was the right fit for the storied avenue. Unlike Tennyson and Santa Fe, north-south streets where properties are generally deeper and backed by alleys that allow for deliveries and other services, Colfax is an east-west avenue and lots are much shallower and without alleys. That means new standards that increase setbacks from the street could make it harder to design a workable building.

“I think Colfax is unique enough with the BRT to deserve a little more attention than just implementing something that was started elsewhere. I think the conditions are very different here,” said Gosia Kung, one of the two members who voted against recommending the council approve the rezonings. “It’s a problem that we are expanding the right of way. We’re pushing buildings away.”

Andy Baldyga spoke at that Planning Board meeting. An architect and former member of the board, Baldyga is now the vice president of the Colfax Ave Business Improvement District, which covers Colfax from roughly Sherman to Josephine streets.

Baldyga lives within a block of Coflax and is excited by the prospect of improving transit services along a road that carries one of the Regional Transportation District’s highest ridership bus lines already. But he, too, has concerns about how an east-west avenue will fare under design standards created for north-south streets.

“Colfax can stitch neighborhoods together and become a uniting element. There are strong neighborhoods on the north and south; great density, great housing stock, people want to live there,” Baldyga said. “I think what the city needs to do is look at all the east-west corridors and develop new standards that incentivize new development in a way that works for east-west streets.”

Hinds, Sawyer and their partners in the planning department did consider tweaks as a nod to these differences. Skinny properties, those under 37.5 feet in width, are exempted from the commercial use requirement, Sawyer said.

Exemptions for shallow properties along Colfax, those that are less than 70 feet deep, were also considered, but the group determined those properties would also struggle to fit new projects into the existing zoning code. Instead, the overlay was extended at least 100 feet to the north and south of Colfax to make sure that developers who assemble multiple properties for a new project would also be subject to the new rules.

BRT itself will completely reshape East Colfax. The high-frequency transit service will be made possible by converting two general-purpose lanes between Broadway and Yosemite Street into dedicated, center-running bus lanes, said Jonathan Stewart, the project’s director within the city’s Department of Transportation and Infrastructure, or DOTI.

It is worth noting that Aurora is the city’s partner in the project and once the BRT lanes cross into that city’s territory east of Yosemite the buses will share lanes with traffic, Stewart said. The eastern terminus of the BRT line will be near the R Line rail station just before Colfax meets Interstate 225.

Design work is well underway for the project ahead of an anticipated fall 2024 groundbreaking on the first segment between Broadway and Williams Street. City transportation officials have pinned 2027 as the projected start of revenue-generating operations on the new mass transit service.

DOTI was not directly involved in the design standards discussions, Stewart said, but the department is soliciting feedback from business improvement districts along the avenue about what the streetscape should look like between the curbs and the front doors of shops, restaurants, and other businesses.

“It’s part of the larger effort of the city, trying to plan more holistically,” he said of working alongside the planning department. “We’re both wanting to enact the people’s will transforming this into more of a Main Street-type corridor.”

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Nearly five months after being sworn into office, he renominated Sheriff Elias Diggins and Fire Chief Desmond Fulton, subject to City Council approval. Those nominations follow last month’s announcement that Johnston plans to keep Armando Saldate III as executive director of public safety and Ron Thomas as police chief.

If all four picks are approved, it will leave the public safety leadership chosen by former Mayor Michael Hancock intact.

“These are leaders who have grown up in this community, have served this community, and share our vision for bringing public safety to every neighborhood in Denver,” Johnston said about Diggins and Fulton in a news release. “I look forward to working with them shoulder to shoulder to deliver a safer Denver.”

His decision to retain all four safety leaders has drawn criticism from some community advocates who had pressed for change, including Lisa Calderón, a former mayoral candidate who endorsed Johnston in the June runoff.

Diggins has been a member of the city’s sheriff’s department since 1994. He had a stint as the city’s interim sheriff in 2014 and 2015, and Hancock later chose him to succeed former Sheriff Patrick Firman on a permanent basis in 2020. The news release lauded him as an “advocate for the mental health community” who created a management-level position to focus on the issue in the department.

Hancock nominated Fulton to lead the Denver Fire Department just months after nominating Diggins. Like Diggins, Fulton is a veteran of his agency, with more than 25 years of experience with DFD.

Johnston’s cabinet still has some key openings, including permanent leaders for three major departments: Public Health and Environment, Community Planning and Development, and Transportation and Infrastructure.

Last week the mayor’s office announced Johnston had chosen Jaime Rife, most recently the director of the Metro Denver Homeless Initiative, to lead the city’s Department of Housing Stability. That department is tasked with overseeing homelessness response and the mayor’s approach to affordable housing.

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It was the fourth and, so far, the largest action at an encampment yet as part of Mayor Mike Johnston’s House 1,000 homelessness initiative. With another mass relocation planned in the coming days at an encampment near East 48th Avenue and Colorado Boulevard, administration officials say the city is on track to shelter more than 500 people by the middle of next week as part of the effort that has been Johnston’s primary focus since he was sworn in in July.

“After we bring people indoors from these two encampments, we will be more than halfway to the mayor’s stated goal,” Johnston spokesman Jose Salas said.

The online dashboard tracking the administration’s progress showed that 317 people had been moved off the streets and into shelter or housing as of Thursday afternoon. That will be updated in the days ahead once the relocation work is complete, Salas said.

The Johnston administration previously carried out an encampment closure in the area of 20th and Curtis streets, relocating 61 people in that effort, which concluded Nov. 1, according to a new release at that time. Thursday’s action area was much larger, covering rights of way on both sides of 20th from Stout Street to Curtis and both sides of Curtis from 20th to Broadway. A map included as part of a legal notice providing residents with seven days’ warning of the action also showed 21st Street between Champa and Curtis as part of the cleanup area.

The city is still working on a final tally of how many people living in tents and other makeshift shelters in the area were relocated Thursday. Derek Woodbury, a spokesman with Denver’s Department of Housing Stability, said three bus trips were required to move everyone who accepted the shelter offer.

“Outreach staff worked in this area over the past several days. During this time, we identified well over 100 individuals for the move, and staff visited the encampment daily to provide housing-focused services as well as behavioral health, substance misuse, harm reduction and emergency medical services,” Woodbury said in an email.

The residents were moved to a former DoubleTree Hotel at 404 Quebec St. in Councilwoman Shontel Lewis’ District 8. Lewis appeared alongside Johnston Thursday morning at a news conference

Lewis repeatedly has highlighted that her district is carrying a heavy share of the load of the House 1,000 effort, with multiple hotel properties being used as noncongregate shelters and a forthcoming micro-community in the parking lot of one of those hotels.

Next week, the administration will relocate people living on the streets in her district when buses pull up to the encampment near 48th Avenue and Colorado Boulevard. Lewis said she personally informed some of the people there they were going to be given shelter and said some shed tears of joy.

“You know, there are folks who have been living unsheltered in that particular encampment for months or even a year in some cases,” she said. “There’s a person in the encampment who has cancer. There is an individual within the encampment who is a veteran, who served this country.”

Lewis said temporary shelter is an important step, but she is looking forward to the city taking on new approaches to developing more housing next year including via a study of social housing that will be funded through the 2024 budget.

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That doesn’t mean there will be less to go around when candidates next line up to run for City Council, mayor and other municipal offices in 2027 and possibly qualify for public financing to fuel their campaigns.

Before Monday, the city’s annual financial obligation to the Fair Elections Fund was poised to ratchet up almost 75% next year to $5 per resident. Now the city’s annual contribution to the fund is expected to rise from $2.88 per Denverite per year to $3.45 in 2025, corresponding with the rate of inflation in the Denver-Aurora-Lakewood metro area. It will be adjusted again in 2029.

That increase should funnel around $400,000 more into the pot each year than the current annual contribution of $2.1 million, according to the Denver Clerk and Recorder’s Office. That will grow the fund beyond its existing $8 million cap but stay within the realm of what voters intended when they approved the program more than five years ago, election officials say.

Monday’s change was the result of “literally a rounding error in the bill language,” deputy clerk and recorder Audrey Kline told the council’s Finance & Governance Committee last month. The code as written called for the city’s annual contributions to rise with inflation but be “rounded to the lowest $5.” That would have meant hiking the annual transfer to $3.6 million as early as next year. Council changed to “rounded to the nearest lowest one cent.”

Monday’s changes also ensure that all contribution limits will rise with inflation and clarified financial filing deadlines in the years leading up to an election.

Fair elections fund candidates accept lower contributions limits — $500 compared to $1,000 for mayor, $350 vs. $700 for at-large council seats and $200 vs $400 for district council seats, in this cycle — in return for public matches on donations between $5 and $50. The program’s 9-to-1 match ratio turns a $50 donation into $500 with taxpayer money.

The fund doled out just shy of $7.7 million to 47 candidates in the city’s 2023 election, the first cycle since the program was approved by voters in 2018. Mayor Mike Johnston and every sitting council member except for Amanda Sawyer received payments.

The clerk’s office is considering more substantive changes to the program but expects those discussions to take place next year.

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Those relocations will happen “in the next couple of weeks,” city spokesman Derek Woodbury said Friday. A specific timeline is being kept under wraps to protect the safety and privacy of people living in the encampments, city officials say.

If those actions — which Johnston and his team call encampment closures — are successful, it would more than double the number of people the administration has gotten off the streets in three prior cleanup efforts. It would also move Johnston significantly closer to the 1,000-person sheltering goal he set on his second day in office and has made the overwhelming focus of his work as mayor thus far.

The online dashboard tracking the progress of Johnston’s House 1,000 homelessness initiative on Friday morning counted 311 people as sheltered or housed through that work. That leaves 30 days to move close to 700 people off the streets, a goal the mayor continues to say is deliverable.

“We are delighted to bring more than 200 Denverites into housing, help close encampments and reactivate public spaces all around the city,” Johnston said in a statement Friday. “Every individual we get into housing is a life changed and every encampment that we close is a neighborhood transformed.”

Media members are being asked to stay away from the encampments so that the city can carry out its relocation and cleanup work “with minimal disruption.” The locations of the converted hotels where people will be moved are also being kept confidential.

The city has already carried out one encampment closure in the area of 20th and Curtis streets. That effort, which concluded on Nov. 1, moved 61 people to shelter and resulted in the area bordered by Broadway, Curtis, 20th and Arapahoe streets being “permanently closed to any camping,” according to an announcement at the time.

In that action, dozens of people camped around the post office at 951 20th St. — on the east side of Curtis Street —  were not moved. Woodbury confirmed that the action announced Friday will focus on the encampment in front of the post office.

Converted hotels have emerged as the primary form of shelter fueling Johnston’s effort. His proposed micro-communities — collections of tiny homes or other temporary shelter units set up on vacant land or surface parking lots — have faced delays and opposition from wary neighbors.

The administration announced on Nov. 24 that a former Embassy Suites hotel at 7525 E. Hampden Ave. was being eyed as a shelter for families, transgender and nonbinary individuals. A lease agreement for that hotel was pulled from a City Council committee agenda next week to give officials more time to finalize details, Woodbury said, but the administration still hopes to bring an agreement before the council before the end of the year.

City Councilwoman Shontel Lewis — whose District 8 in the northeast part of the city is home to three hotel properties that are either already being used as shelters or are being prepared to serve that purpose — has repeatedly raised concerns about her district bearing the brunt of the sheltering effort while people living on the streets there have not been prioritized for shelter spaces. The 48th and Colorado encampment will be the first in her district closed as part of the House 1,000 work.

“While there is no magic wand that can be waved to eliminate homelessness, we know that offering stable housing works more than any other approach,” she said in a statement on Friday.

Johnston’s team is not seeking additional shelter sites in District 8 at this time, officials say.

As the administration gears up for a final push toward the mayor’s 1,000-person goal, the city is seeking volunteers to help prepare shelter sites for new arrivals. The first volunteer opportunity will begin at 10 a.m. Saturday at the former DoubleTree hotel at 4040 N. Quebec St., officials say. More information is available at denvergov.org/volunteer1000.

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Its purchase deal with the New York-based owner of 101 W. Colfax Ave. is intended to make room for the city and county’s courts. Many of the non-criminal courts are squeezed into the historic City and County Building across Civic Center Park. They’re expected to need another 280,000 square feet of space by 2040, according to a courts master plan.

The building is just shy of 306,000 square feet and is located in the heart of downtown, with building security, an auditorium, connections to the city’s computer network and a 635-space parking garage. The Post reported earlier this week that city officials were considering purchasing the building.

The proposed contract is up for consideration before the City Council’s Finance and Governance Committee on Tuesday morning. If it earns approval from the entire council in coming weeks, the deal could close in March, according to city documents.

“The Post building would help the city meet space requirements for district, county, probate and juvenile courts as well as provide dedicated space for non-profit and judicial advocate services, like Colorado Legal Services and multiple rental assistance programs, which currently have undedicated space in other city buildings,” Laura Swartz, a spokeswoman for Denver’s finance department, said Thursday.

In addition to courtrooms in the City and County Building less than two blocks from the building it plans to buy, Denver has court uses in the Minoru Yasui Building, the Lindsey Flanigan Courthouse and the Van Cise-Simonet Detention Center today, Swartz said. All of those buildings are clustered along West Colfax Avenue, between Bannock and Fox streets.

The building opened in 2006 as the joint headquarters of The Post and the Rocky Mountain News, which went on to close down in 2009. The Post’s newsroom and other operations moved out of the building in 2018, into space at the paper’s printing plant in Adams County. But The Post’s ownership group still holds a master lease for the building and subleases that space to other tenants, including the city.

The building is owned by Kayan LLC, an affiliate created by American Properties, which paid $93.4 million for it in 2006, as construction was concluding. That price was higher than the city proposes to pay now, especially when adjusted for inflation.

The difference likely reflects, in part, the impact of high vacancy rates in downtown office buildings after the pandemic changed commuting and remote-work habits. A presentation prepared by the city for the council committee hearing says the negotiated price “falls within the appraisal value.”

Bill Mosher led the development of the Post building. Now with Trammell Crow Company, Mosher also developed the city’s Wellington E. Webb Municipal Office Building and the state’s Ralph L. Carr Colorado Judicial Center, among other buildings near Civic Center.

Even as values have declined, Mosher says he views the proposed sale as a good deal for both the city and the seller. The city’s occupancy should generate plenty of needed activity on the eastern end of the under-renovation 16th Street Mall, he said.

“There are cheaper buildings in the Tech Center and downtown right now,” Mosher said. “I think it’s well located,” he added, in a way that allows the city to consolidate courts and courts-adjacent uses.

The city’s contract will come before the council just as work is ramping up on a two-year, $133.5 million renovation of the Webb building at 201. W. Coflax, across the street from The Post’s old building

The Webb building is already home base to 2,100 city employees. The renovation has been touted as a way to maximize space in that building and make room for 600 city workers now using subleased floors in the former Post building.

“The Post building’s proximity to existing downtown courthouses makes this a preferred location,” Swartz said. “The building also already houses city staff and has the city’s IT infrastructure installed.”

The city began subleasing space from The Post’s owner in 2016, and it has expanded since then to include more floors. The city’s cumulative sublease deal is worth just shy of $44 million through 2029.

Late that year is when The Post ownership’s master lease will expire, according to the council hearing presentation. Until then, city documents say, the building’s leasing structure will help pay off debt the city is taking to finance the purchase.

The city plans to issue certificates of participation, a form of borrowing that pledges city assets and isn’t subject to voter approval, unlike municipal bonds. As the city takes over as landlord, it plans to continue charging rent to The Post’s ownership, amounting to $7.8 million in the first year. That money will come from parking revenue and sublease payments made by tenants — including the city.

After 2029, the city will take over all leasing functions, according to the documents.

City Councilman Chris Hinds represents the Civic Center area as part of his District 10. Moving to buy the former Post building is the city “putting our money where our mouth is,” he said.

“Here we are demonstrating that we truly believe that downtown is at an inflection point,” Hinds said, “and that it will reemerge as a welcoming place to live, work and play — just as it has been in the past.”

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Members of the protest group — some waving Palestinian flags or wearing traditional scarves — implored council members to stay in the chamber and hear their concerns, but none did as the demonstration stretched on for nearly two hours.

It’s the third time in the last two years that activists have caused the council to go into recess by refusing the cede the podium after the 30-minute scheduled public comment period was over. It’s the first time the council has adjourned a meeting because of such an action.

“It was just unclear how much longer the group was going to go so I just didn’t want to keep (others) waiting on some uncertainty which is the reason behind the adjournment,” said Council President Jamie Torres, who presides over council meetings as well as represents west Denver’s District 3.

She adjourned the meeting at roughly 6:50 p.m., an hour and 20 minutes after public comment was scheduled to end.

A group waiting to accept a proclamation commemorating World AIDS Day and two groups seeking to rezone properties in north Denver were instructed to come back next week.

More than 80 people signed up to speak during this week’s public comment period, with almost all of them listing opposition to the Jewish National Fund USA as their reason for speaking. That group is the organizing body for the Global Conference for Israel, a four-day event that starts Thursday in Denver and will feature Gov. Jared Polis, who is Jewish, as a speaker.

Echoing talking points that pro-Palestinian demonstrators have been voicing in council comment sessions since August, speakers on Monday referred to the Jewish National Fund-USA as an organization that raises money for the brutalization of Palestinians. One speaker, Abdul-Karim Khan, compared the event to hosting a fundraiser for Nazi Germany.

Sam Goldberg, president of the Jewish National Fund-USA Mountain States, last week told The Denver Post that he expected “reasonable and thoughtful critiques of Israel” to be voiced at the conference but added that anyone who supports Israel’s destruction would be “unwelcome.”

Pro-Palestinian and progressive groups are expected to protest the conference throughout with the goal of shutting it down.

Speakers on Monday also implored the council to pass a resolution supporting a permanent cease-fire in Israel’s war in the Gaza Strip that began after Hamas carried out terrorist attacks on Israeli soil on Oct. 7. A four-day pause in the hostilities that allowed for hundreds of hostages and prisoners to be exchanged has been extended until Wednesday. More than 13,300 Palestinians have been killed — a majority of them women and minors, according to the Hamas-controlled Health Ministry in Gaza — since the war began. An estimated 1,200 Israelis, mostly civilians killed in the initial attack, have died.

Torres said that the council has no legislative authority to dictate who rents the Colorado Convention Center, which is city-owned.

There were Denver sheriffs and police officers in the chamber on Monday but she never considered asking them to remove anyone. The council is reconsidering how it approaches its schedule and the public comment sessions specifically.

“If I’m presiding over the meeting I am still going to preside over our process and we’re hopefully not developing too much of a pattern here of postponing our meetings and our work,” she said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

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Now, more than 20 years after it was built at 201 W. Colfax Ave., work is underway on a $133.5 million overhaul. The renovation will touch all 12 floors of the gray, oval-shaped office tower north of Civic Center park over the next two years.

And even while it’s under construction, the Webb building is playing a part in Mayor Mike Johnston’s economic plans for downtown Denver. Displaced employees won’t be working from home — while their typical office spaces are being painted, carpeted and furnished with new equipment and gear, they will simply shift a block or two away.

Thanks to some carefully planned phasing and a $4.9 million lease for space in nearby Republic Plaza, city workers will remain on hybrid work schedules that keep them coming downtown at least three days per week, according to Lisa Lumley, the city’s director of real estate.

“By all accounts, we anticipated everybody could work from home,” Lumley told City Council members last month about the city’s initial plans for disruptions in the Webb building. “When Mayor Johnston took office … he had asked us to reevaluate this — from an economic development, revitalization standpoint downtown, to reconsider and go back out and find very inexpensive space.”

The Webb renovation is designed to set the building up to be a functional hub of local government into the future. Officials project that the city will need seats for 600 more office workers downtown by 2027, and that is not possible in a building occupied by bulky office furniture that’s well spread out under the original floor layouts.

Some of it is so old that the manufacturers are no longer making replacement parts.

The project will improve capacity, catch up on decades’ worth of maintenance needs and improve accessibility to meet Department of Justice standards for public buildings. That means lowering drinking fountains and kitchen counter heights, adjusting bathroom stall sizes and more, according to city spokeswoman Laura Swartz.

The building was named after the still-living former mayor, who left office in 2003 — just after the building opened in late 2002. It cost $132.4 million to build, which is nearly $230 million in inflation-adjusted dollars.

As city officials looked for outside office space to accommodate the rotating moves into and out of the Webb building, they opted to piggyback on another recent city deal for space in the 56-story Republic Plaza, Denver’s tallest building.

The agreement, approved by the council in October, added 72,000 square feet of furnished office space to a $49.9 million lease inked there in June to house the Denver District Attorney’s Office through 2036. The DA’s relocation also will free up future space in the Webb building.

Before the council’s recent 9-4 vote on the added space, Lumley explained to some skeptical members that the decision to lease more space at Republic Plaza was, in part, about ensuring smooth operations for city teams. They include portions of the Department of Transportation and Infrastructure that officials found did not thrive in a work-from-home environment, she said.

But the extra space became even more urgent after Johnston took office. During the spring mayoral campaign, he made downtown revitalization a priority of his successful run for the city’s top office, arguing that keeping city workers circulating through the area — and spending money on lunches or shopping — supports that goal.

Keeping city workers downtown most days

Johnston pledged $58 million in spending toward that revitalization goal in his first budget as mayor. In a letter accompanying his initial budget proposal in September, the mayor highlighted the importance of office real estate to downtown’s success.

“Our downtown faces among the highest commercial vacancy rates of any city in the nation,” he wrote. “Reversing this trend will require a coordinated effort to revitalize not only the Central Business District but create a central neighborhood district where people of all income levels gather year-round.”

Republic Plaza is an example of the office market strain. It made headlines earlier this year when its ownership group reportedly was struggling to make payments on a loan that could have landed the building in foreclosure.

But Lumley assured council members that the issue had been resolved and didn’t pose a threat to the city’s plans since the building’s owners were never in default while they restructured their loan.

That lease isn’t the city’s first move into nearby private office space in recent years.

It also has subleased space from The Denver Post’s ownership group in 101 W. Colfax Ave. The downtown building facing Civic Center still bears The Post’s name but is no longer home to the newspaper’s offices.

That arrangement dates back to 2016, when the city secured two floors to make room for its ballooning employee head count. The city has since grown its footprint and amended its deal there at least six times, most recently in September. The city’s cumulative sublease total in the Post building, including rolling expiration dates through 2029, is now just shy of $44 million.

Some downtown stakeholders celebrated the decision to maintain city workers’ presence in the Central Business District, the eastern segment of downtown that was struggling with a lack of activity even before the pandemic sent many office workers home in 2020 for an extended period.

“We are really grateful for Mayor Johnson having the vision to not only improve the Webb building so city employees can be downtown in the long term, but to keep them downtown in the interim,” said Britt Diehl, a spokeswoman for the Downtown Denver Partnership.

Government workers — city, state and federal — are the second-largest segment of workers in downtown Denver, Diehl said, with a combined 25,000 stationed in the area.

Even on hybrid schedules, when thousands of them may stay home on a given day, that presence makes a difference in a city where the partnership is tracking a 30% office vacancy rate. It’s most concentrated in the blocks near the Webb building.

“City employees can be ambassadors” for downtown

Councilman Chris Hinds, now in his second term, saw the boundaries of his centrally located council District 10 expand this year to include more of downtown. He knows how tight space is in the historic City and County Building, where he keeps his office.

That makes the Webb building — which doesn’t have the limitations of its historic neighbor — critical to keeping up with the needs of city business and residents.

Maintaining a municipal employee presence downtown during construction shows the city is leading by example, he said.

“City employees can be ambassadors for those who haven’t visited downtown in a couple of years — who maybe had a bad experience” during their last visit, Hinds said. “Downtown is a better place than it was even two years ago. And (in) the next year, once we start opening up blocks of the (under-construction) 16th Street Mall … we’re going to find that people really enjoy the new downtown experience.”

The city is financing the Webb building’s renovations using up to $300 million worth of certificates of participation, a form of borrowing that pledges city assets and, unlike municipal bonds, is not subject to voter approval. That amount also covers plans to refinance some old city debt that remains from when the building was first built, officials said this summer.

When it’s all said and done, city officials expect the Webb project to allow them to move all of the roughly 600 employees currently working in the Post building back to city-owned space.

But that doesn’t mean Denver won’t remain a real estate player downtown outside of the Webb building’s curved walls.

According to Lumley, the city is considering a potential purchase, at some point, of the Post building. It’s not owned by the newspaper or its ownership group, but they hold a long-term lease of several floors, which they have subleased to other tenants, including the city.

“We’re keeping all options on the table to meet the city’s space needs,” Lumley wrote in an email when asked about the city’s future plans in the Post building. “As we free up space there by bringing city agencies back into the Webb Municipal Building in the coming years, we are also considering the future best use of this downtown office building for other public services.”

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