Larimer Square

Larimer Square in today’s Lower Downtown is in many ways where Denver began. The site of original staked-claim of “Denver City” – where General William Larimer jumped the original claim of William Russell’s St. Charles – Larimer Square’s history dates back to the beginning of Denver itself.    For much of Denver’s history, the area remained its thriving commercial center, but in the aftermath of the Great Depression and two world wars, the area suffered decades of deferred investment and the lower downtown area fell into disrepair.  By the 1950s the area was widely known as Denver’s “skid row.”

Following the “Flood of the Century” in 1965, public support for revitalizing the Central Platte Valley and lower downtown began to coalesce.  While the City and agencies like DURA were focused on large redevelopment efforts like creating the Auraria Higher Education Campus, pioneering developers like Dana Crawford were at work getting lower downtown declared Denver’s first historic district.   The district was created in 1971, and with it, the three-decade effort to revitalize lower downtown into the high end retail and entertainment area we know today as LoDo was put into motion.

In the early 1990s, Larimer Square Parking Associates’ renovation of the long vacant Graham and Buerger buildings helped catalyze revitalization of the Larimer Square area.   The project also included redevelopment of a vacant parking lot on nearby Market Street into a six-story, 310-space parking garage.  The historically sensitive structure provides much needed parking for the LoDo area and added 6,000 square feet of in-line retail space along Market Street.

DURA provided $1.43 million in assistance through TIF financing to help finance the $5.8 million project.  The developer reimbursement obligation was fully repaid in 2005 and the increased property and sales taxes generated by the redevelopment now flow to the benefit of the original taxing entities.