Can the South Platte finally overcome its polluted past? Big investments aim to transform Denver’s riverfront.

Writers and historians have labeled Denver’s South Platte River a melancholy stream. An open sewer. A miserable, nothing river with so fickle a flow a dog could lap it away — maybe the sorriest river in America.

Even now, after decades of revitalization and efforts to stabilize flows, sections of the urban South Platte still smell of decay and waste, and city officials discourage swimming. But cyclists also pedal along miles of paved trails on the riverfront. Kayakers and surfers play in the whitewater. Carp and trout lurk under bridges, while families of ducks paddle along the calmer waters. And strips of green parks border long stretches of the river where, in previous decades, factories spewed sludge and landfills leached pollutants.

After a long era of neglect and abuse, city officials, nonprofit leaders and developers hope to build on that progress as they pose a question for the future: How can we turn the city toward the river — the waterway that made Denver’s existence on the High Plains possible — instead of putting it at our backs and ignoring it?

More than a quarter of a billion federal dollars are flowing into ecosystem restoration and flood management along the South Platte. For the first time, the Denver City Council recently created a committee dedicated to issues on and development near the river.

Developers plan to invest hundreds of millions of dollars along the river in coming years, building as much as 15 million square feet of combined new residential and commercial space on the land where Elitch Gardens Theme and Water Park sits today. If completed, that square footage will be nearly five times larger than Denver International Airport’s terminal building.

Should that and other ambitious projects reach their full potential, the Platte would serve as a focal point of brand new high-rise urban neighborhoods that expand the city’s skyline in a new direction.

“The South Platte River is the birthright of Denver,” said Jeff Shoemaker, who for 40 years led a nonprofit group created to advocate for the river. “We took that birthright and made it a toilet. Fifty years later, it can once again be celebrated as its birthright.”

Property owners ranging from the Denver Housing Authority to Stan Kroenke, the billionaire owner of the Colorado Avalanche and Denver Nuggets, to the city itself will all play roles in determining how new construction capitalizes on a restored South Platte.

The impending turnover of underutilized and unappreciated land has generated buzz and a glut of glossy renderings. At the same time, it’s inducing heartburn in some corners of the city that have seen new investment like that drive gentrification in nearby low-income and minority neighborhoods.

Still, establishing the river as an asset rather than a barrier to urban growth is a sea change that veteran Denver city-builders like architect Chris Shears have hoped for decades would come.

His firm, Shears Adkins Rockmore, has its hands in nearly every landscape-shifting project being contemplated near the South Platte today. The plans include transforming the vast parking lots around Empower Field and Ball Arena into new mixed-use neighborhoods.

Another project to the south would turn the long-vacant field once occupied by the Gates Rubber Co., just south of the Regional Transportation District’s Broadway Station, into a mixed-use community. Plans call for more than 550,000 square feet of office and retail space and nearly 900 apartments.

He compares the opportunities in front of the city today to the 1980s, when then-Mayor Federico Peña set an ambitious agenda that would lead to Denver’s evolution from a stagnant plains town to a modern metropolis.

“This is the time to plan for the future and be optimistic,” Shears said. “The river is going to be much, much more important.”

The South Platte has served as a geographic divide between east and west Denver for nearly all of the city’s existence. Generations of city residents compounded that division by adding man-made barriers, including Interstate 25 and the consolidated freight rail lines, that follow the river’s path.

For Denver city planner David Gaspers, the public and private investment in the river’s restoration and the surging interest in new development near the water present a chance to overwrite some of the mistakes of the past.

“It’s an opportunity to make Denver feel whole again,” Gaspers said. “It’s not a barrier. It’s actually a place where people want to come together.”

After century of neglect, a flood changed everything

French explorers named the South Platte River for its lassitude — in French, “platte” means flat. Some called it the “upside-down river” since, in some places, one had to dig into the riverbed to find water.

Indigenous people for centuries wintered near the confluence of the South Platte and Cherry Creek, eventually joined by explorers, French trappers and Mexican gold seekers. In 1858, after prospectors found gold nearby, Denver was born on the banks of the confluence.

The South Platte’s year-round water allowed for settlement and population growth on the arid High Plains.

“The South Platte is the cradle and birthplace of the city,” said Tom Noel, a professor emeritus of history at the University of Colorado Denver who has authored numerous books and textbooks about Colorado history. “But it took quite a while for people to respect it.”

Early Denver’s industry grew along the river. Hog farms, stockyards, factories and landfills sprouted on its banks in the late 1800s because the river could carry off all the waste, Noel said.

Workers at a paint factory on the river used to stand behind the facility and watch the river turn the color of the paint being made that day as the factory’s discharge reached the water.

The river held the city’s darker secrets: bodies, cast-off burglary loot. Only the poorest of the poor lived near the water.

The waste, the chemicals and the sludge accumulated. A Rocky Mountain News reporter in 1962 toured the river as the city considered building a sanitation project and wrote that he came away with tears in his eyes.

“The tears weren’t from emotion,” the reporter wrote. “It was from the stench. The foul odors were enough to lift the hat from your head.”

The neglected river took its vengeance in 1965. After days of rain, its waters surged on June 16, building into a moving wall that picked up debris as it rushed toward Denver — cars, mobile homes and heavy equipment all caught in the swell.

The flood killed at least 20 people in the Denver area and caused $5.4 billion in damage in today’s dollars — one of the most devastating natural disasters in city history. It wiped out railyards, warehouses, neighborhoods and all but one of the city’s bridges spanning the water.

As the river split the city, Denver state Sen. Joe Shoemaker received a call while working on his family’s farm in Iowa during a summer break. His son, Jeff, remembered his father coming back from the house, face white as paper. He told the family the river had flooded.

“What river?” responded Jeff Shoemaker, then 11 years old.

Despite growing up in Denver, he didn’t know a river existed — an ignorance, or at least common disregard, held by many in the burgeoning city until the river tried to wash it away.

The flood — and the phone call to the Shoemaker farm — altered the future of the South Platte.

In the aftermath, Denver Mayor Bill McNichols created the Platte River Development Committee in 1974 to restore the river and mitigate future flood risk. He appointed Joe Shoemaker as chairman.

A year later, the committee opened Confluence Park — the first park on the river. Though crews could build only a quarter mile of riverside trail in either direction before being blocked, the creation of the park marked a turning point in the river’s history.

The committee in 1976 morphed into the nonprofit Greenway Foundation, which methodically transformed landfills and industrial sites along the river into parks. A landfill became Globeville Landing Park. Eleven industrial sites became Commons Park, a stretch of green behind Union Station. A city maintenance site became Gates-Crescent Park, now home to the Children’s Museum of Denver.

“My dad’s motto, which is now mine, was: ‘There’s no done, there’s only next,’ ” said Jeff Shoemaker, who took over leadership of the Greenway Foundation in 1982 and worked there until his retirement in 2022.

As green spaces prospered on the riverbanks, more Denverites came to run, bike and picnic. The Greenway Foundation looked to the future, creating a series of master plans for the river and the land around it.

But the foundation — and other advocates who hoped the river could be more than a moving sewer — needed to overcome a culture that for decades ignored or scorned the South Platte.

While most Denverites now know the river exists, there is still work to be done to overcome its negative image, said Ryan Aids, current executive director of the Greenway Foundation.

“Every great city has a river running through it: Chicago, New York,” Aids said. “And every city has done what Denver did to its river in the beginning, which is neglect it, abandon it, pollute it, turn its back on it.

“Then cities started revitalization — to turn their front door to the river. And Denver is starting to do that as well.”

“A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity”

City documents recognize the potential in the land along the river.

The 2019 version of Blueprint Denver, the city’s comprehensive plan, includes a growth strategy map. It shows clusters of dense future development along the river, marking those areas as “regional centers.” Regional centers, as a category, are expected to provide 50% of the city’s job growth and 30% of its housing growth by 2040.

But with the renewed attention to long-neglected areas near the South Platte comes the specter that new money will push out longtime residents. As the city mitigates flood risk and pollution — the factors that made living near the river more of a curse than a blessing — low-income residents will be vulnerable to rising costs.

That’s a reality Denver knows well after some of its long-established Black and Latino neighborhoods, themselves largely the result of racist housing policy, faced rapid demographic change as the city’s population grew over the last two decades.

In west Denver, Councilwoman Jamie Torres’ district includes some of those long-neglected areas that are now seeing a swell of interest and investment.

Sun Valley is home to both subsidized housing and the Denver Broncos’ stadium. A framework plan to build on Empower Field’s south lots could be a catalyst for a stampede of new development — though that is on hold for now and depends on the whims of the franchise’s new ownership group, which hasn’t ruled out the option of building a new stadium elsewhere.

On the east side of the river, the Auraria neighborhood is the epicenter of ambitious projects that, if fully realized, could see the city’s skyline roughly double in size.

Much of that neighborhood, once home to a largely Latino community, was already wiped away and remade in the last century. After the 1965 flood battered the economically marginalized neighborhood, voters in 1969 passed a bond measure that laid the groundwork for the multi-school college campus that anchors the area today.

All the potential development near the river “can marginalize existing communities if there isn’t any way of shepherding that dialog together — because it’s just so based on property ownership,” Torres said. “That could be a really gentrifying factor.”

But the council’s newly formed committee promises to shape the future of Denver and its river. And Torres is its chair.

The South Platte River Committee has met just twice since forming in July, but even its creation sends a message, according to council leaders. City staffer members focused on the river see it as much more than a sleepy procedural step.

“What will make any project (or) any effort great is leadership support,” said Ashlee Grace, the director of the city’s Waterway Resiliency Program, the name of the city-run river project fueled by $350 million in federal river restoration money. “This committee forming, I think, is a huge step for the city. Our elected leaders recognize the value of the South Platte River and how it can truly be a part of a vibrant future for Denver.”

The U.S. Army Corp of Engineers and then-Mayor Michael Hancock signed the agreement launching the Waterway Resiliency Program in May 2023 after years of study, negotiations and wrangling for federal funding. But even that mammoth undertaking is focused only on a portion of the river, along with its Harvard Gulch and Weir Gulch tributaries.

Private projects such as the long-awaited River Mile development — slated to eventually replace Elitch Gardens — are also aimed at improving the health of the river, while adding recreational opportunities and housing for thousands of people.

Council president Amanda Sandoval highlighted other projects with the potential to transform the city, all within half a mile of the river, including the still-progressing National Western Center campus overhaul north of downtown and the 60-acre blank slate of state-owned land at the former Burnham Yard railyards, south of the city center.

The river “is literally running through all of the catalytic projects that are all coming to fruition at the same time,” Sandoval said in an interview. “It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. If we don’t prioritize it, it will be done piecemeal.”

Smaller projects have tested the waters

The megaprojects on the horizon follow smaller redevelopments on the South Platte.

Developer Susan Powers remembers when she first came across the abandoned warehouse and barrel-roofed building that she and her partners eventually would turn into the $65 million mixed-used development dubbed Steam on the Platte.

She was riding her bike along the river when she came upon an unexpected detour that routed her onto Zuni Street near Old West Colfax Avenue. There she spotted the cluster of buildings on the river’s eastern bank. That former warehouse has been transformed into an office building that appeals to techie tenants, while the barrel-roofed building is occupied by Raices Brewing Company and its often-bustling taproom.

As far as Powers knows, Raices is the only bar or restaurant in the city that offers outdoor seating along the South Platte — for now, at least.

“When you go there, it has its own little ecosystem,” Powers said. “Rabbits are still running around. There are lots of birds, and you can really get away from what really, only a couple of blocks away, is more urban life.”

Powers has sold her stake in the office building and plans to sell Raices’ owners their building. She also hopes to sell a vacant chunk of land that could see a new condo development, with the building facing the river.

Steam on the Platte may gain much more company along those banks in the decades to come.

On the east side of the river, the potential vertical development would come on the seas of asphalt parking along Speer Boulevard and Auraria Parkway, turning them into lively mixed-use neighborhoods. The River Mile and Ball Arena projects are siblings divided mainly by the consolidated rail tracks that run between the arena and the amusement park.

The South Platte River Committee on Aug. 14 received a briefing from city planning and finance staff regarding plans to rezone 70 acres of land around Ball Arena.

Details shared in that briefing included 6,000 units of apartments and other new housing, more than 1,000 of which would be reserved for low-income residents. There would be no limit on building heights on the land if the property owner — billionaire developer and sports mogul Stan Kroenke’s company, Kroenke Sports and Entertainment — were to live up to city-brokered affordable housing conditions.

The arena district wouldn’t directly touch the river, but a network of walking and biking trails would help weave it into the city’s multimodal transportation network, providing easy access to the river for future residents and visitors. In fact, plans call for eight bike and pedestrian bridges that either carry users to the South Platte or Cherry Creek or take them over those two waterways, said Greg Dorolek a landscape architect working on that project.

Dorolek is co-president of Wenk Associates, which is among the many cooks in the kitchen for the Ball Arena area redevelopment. It’s also involved in the neighboring River Mile project.

“You can live on this river and restore it at the same time, and I think it’s going to be exciting,” Dorolek said, adding that Denver is on the verge of becoming “a river city.”

The River Mile made a big splash when its ambitious plan was unveiled in early 2018. It’s a joint endeavor between Kroenke’s KSE and boutique developer Revesco Properties, and the development’s leaders seek to fill in what Revesco president and CEO Rhys Duggan has referred to as “the doughnut hole” between downtown and the rest of the city.

Renderings released over the years have shown attention-grabbing details, from tall, spindly residential towers to grand promenades that step down to the water. Anchoring it all is the river.

The development team also has pledged to invest $100 million in reinvigorating the milelong stretch of the South Platte, including likely dredging 6 to 8 feet of sand from the riverbed to create a narrower, deeper channel that would help restore fish habitat.

For now, the ambitious project is in a holding pattern as Duggan and company keep their eyes on the ebbs and flows of another often-unpredictable force: the U.S. economy.

“Obviously, the interest rate environment has shifted dramatically in the last two years, and I think we need to come into a period of normalization before we can get to work on the river,” Duggan told The Denver Post.

The development team continues to work on designs, engineering and entitlements as well as seek local and federal approvals needed for the work.

Meanwhile, Duggan is celebrating the momentum on the river.

When he rides his bike along the banks, he sees a buildup of exciting new development, including the Hurley Place and Denargo Market projects in the River North Art District northeast of downtown.

The South Platte isn’t a barrier. It isn’t a dump. Now, Duggan said, it’s a public asset.

Finding an oasis close to home

On a recent afternoon just north of Denver, Jack Borthwick tossed his fly fishing rod off the bridge to a friend standing below on the riverbank. A giant carp thrashed on the line, bending the rod — now in Nic Hall’s hands — into a sharp U.

Car tires, a Mountain Dew bottle and an Amazon box littered the bank. A broken-down and opened-up trailer sat abandoned just off the road, and an eerie industrial siren screeched from across the river.

On one side of the bridge, a water treatment plant churned through 2.2 million peoples’ waste, its smell sitting on everything in its vicinity. On the other, the smokestacks of Suncor Energy’s oil refinery thrust toward the sun.

But this is one of Borthwick’s favorite places to fish, and the carp pulling on his rod made the scramble up and down the banks worth it.

He said the thrill of sight-casting to huge carp on unoccupied riverbanks beats fighting crowds for prime fishing spots on the more famous trout waters an hour or so outside of Denver.

Best of all, this spot — known as “The Stank” —  is 10 minutes from his house in northwest Denver.

The river and its parks are critical pieces of nature accessible to people in the city who don’t have the money, means or time to drive to the mountains, said Nic Hall, Borthwick’s fishing partner and the president of Denver Trout Unlimited. The Denver chapter of the national fishing and conservation group is the only local affiliate dedicated to a city river.

“A lot of people look at an urban river and think, ‘Gross,’ ” Hall said as he scouted for carp. “But it doesn’t have to be that way.”

Slowly, Denverites’ perception of the river is shifting, said Jolon Clark, the executive director of Denver Parks and Recreation.

He worked for the Greenway Foundation for 18 years and served two terms on the City Council before joining new Mayor Mike Johnston’s administration last year.

“There’s still a lot of people who don’t know what’s going on down on the river,” Clark said. “But being in the middle of the city and seeing a skyscraper — and a blue heron fishing right beneath it — that’s just a magical experience.”

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