Downtown Denver As We Know It Is About To Change Forever · Denver's LoDo Neighborhood

LoDo is one of those neighborhoods that feels like it's always on the edge of something. Right now, that's more true than it's ever been. Two major development projects are quietly taking shape that could fundamentally change how this part of Denver looks, functions, and feels — and if you live here, plan to move here, or just spend time downtown, you should probably know what's coming.

The short version: Stan Kroenke and Rob Walton, two of the wealthiest sports team owners in the country, are behind projects that would reshape the land surrounding Ball Arena and Mile High Stadium into something closer to a full neighborhood than a collection of parking lots and game-day bars. One is called The River Mile. The other is The Sports Mile. Together, they could add thousands of residents, new streets, new retail, and a level of walkability that downtown Denver has never really had in those corridors.

That's the optimistic version, anyway.

What The River Mile Actually Is

The River Mile is the Elitch Gardens piece of this. The amusement park sits on a prime chunk of land along the South Platte River, and for years it's felt like wasted real estate — a seasonal attraction ringed by parking and highway infrastructure, not exactly contributing much to the urban fabric around it. The plan is to replace Elitch Gardens with a dense, mixed-use neighborhood built along the river, with housing, retail, green space, and connections back into the existing street grid.

Elitch's owners have been talking about this for a while. The idea of relocating the park has floated around long enough that it's easy to be skeptical, but the financial pressure to develop that land is real. Whether the replacement park actually gets built somewhere else, or whether that part of the promise quietly disappears, is an open question. What seems more certain is that the riverfront land gets developed one way or another.

If it works the way it's described, it would extend the walkable part of downtown significantly to the west and create a genuine connection between LoDo and the river that doesn't really exist right now.

The Sports Mile and What Kroenke Is Building

The Sports Mile is the more immediately relevant project for anyone who's ever tried to navigate the area around Ball Arena or Mile High on a non-game day and found... not much. Right now, that whole stretch feels like it exists primarily to serve events. On a random Tuesday it's desolate in a way that doesn't make a lot of sense given how close it is to Union Station and the rest of LoDo.

The proposal is to turn that corridor into an entertainment and mixed-use district that has reasons to exist 365 days a year. Think of it as Denver's version of what other cities have built around their sports venues — places like the Power & Light District in Kansas City or the area surrounding Staples Center in Los Angeles, where the arena becomes the anchor for a whole neighborhood rather than just a destination you drive to.

For Broncos fans specifically, there's a layer of urgency here. The team's lease situation at Mile High has been one of the more quietly significant ongoing storylines in Denver sports. The possibility that the Broncos could eventually relocate to Aurora is not just idle speculation — it's a real scenario that depends in part on whether Denver can offer an environment that makes staying downtown attractive. A developed Sports Mile corridor changes that calculus considerably.

Why LoDo's History Actually Matters Here

It's easy to look at all this and think of it as new, but LoDo has been through versions of this before. The neighborhood's modern identity was basically invented when the Rockies moved downtown in the 1990s. Coors Field landing in what was then a run-down warehouse district is the reason LoDo became LoDo — it was the spark that turned old industrial buildings into lofts and restaurants and bars, and created the neighborhood that people actually want to live in now.

The same pattern played out before that with Union Station, which anchored the original reason lower downtown existed in the first place. The first neighborhood nickname in Denver to really stick was LoDo, and it came from that warehouse area around the station. So the idea that a major anchor project can transform a neighborhood isn't theoretical here. Denver has seen it happen twice.

The open question is whether the city has learned from the parts that didn't work as well. Westword and others have pointed out that Denver has not managed traffic and pedestrian flow in LoDo particularly well over the years — it's gotten harder to navigate in some ways, not easier, even as the neighborhood has grown. Any new development that doesn't take that seriously is going to create the same friction at larger scale.

What This Means If You're Thinking About Moving Here

The timing of these projects matters a lot for anyone considering a move to downtown Denver. LoDo already has one of the more compelling urban cores in the Mountain West — Union Station, the 16th Street corridor, walkable access to the ballpark and arena, good transit connections. But the areas immediately west and southwest have always felt like they were almost there, not quite finished.

If River Mile and Sports Mile both come together, that changes. You'd be looking at a downtown that extends meaningfully toward the Platte, with actual street life in areas that currently don't have much. Housing near those corridors could look very different in ten years than it does today — either more desirable as the neighborhood fills in, or stuck in a frustrating middle state if the projects stall.

If you want to get a feel for how LoDo actually fits together on the ground, the

Denver City Railway Building - Lodo Walking Tour

is a reasonable place to start. It's at 1801 Lawrence St, which puts you right in the thick of the historic warehouse district, and the tour gives you the context to understand why these blocks look the way they do — the old rail infrastructure, the warehouse conversions, how the neighborhood got assembled over about 150 years of growth. It's rated well and priced accessibly, which is not something you can say about a lot of downtown Denver activities.

Understanding what LoDo already is makes it easier to understand what it might become. The bones of this neighborhood are genuinely strong. The question with River Mile and Sports Mile is whether the new development respects and extends that, or just stacks density on top without connecting to what's already working.

The Bottom Line

These projects are real and they're moving, but "moving" in Denver development terms means years, not months. Don't expect LoDo's skyline to look dramatically different in the next two or three years. What's worth paying attention to now is the direction — because the combination of Kroenke's resources, Walton's investment in the Broncos, and the genuine development pressure on that riverfront land is more aligned than it's been in a long time.

Denver has done this before. It can do it again. Whether it does it well is a different question, and one worth watching closely.