12-5-25 *INTERVIEW* Helping Downtown with Denver Mayor Mike Johnston

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Ross on the News with Gena. I'm Ross.

Speaker 2 (00:02):
That's Gina Dragon behind the glass, and we are so
happy to have back on the show for yet another
Friday and on time this time Denver Mayor Mike Johnson.
I know, Mike, you said it was our fault last time. Anyway,
it's really good to have you back. Thanks, thanks for
being here. Man, appreciate it. Vette, thanks for having me. Yeah,
lots of just kind of smallish topics I wanted to
cover with you today and Gina wants to cover with

(00:23):
you today. One thing I'm kind of interested in, sort
of from my background as a business guy, is Denver
buying the Denver Pavilions.

Speaker 1 (00:33):
And this isn't so much a.

Speaker 2 (00:35):
Criticism, just like a little skeptical of government getting involved
in real estate deals, but it sounds like the eventual
plan is not really for Denver to keep owning this
thing and fully develop it themselves and so on.

Speaker 3 (00:48):
Absolutely not. Yeah, our goal is to hold it and
then put it together and then find a partner to
develop it. The reason why we did buy it was
because we could bring together two assets. If you've been
to the Pavilions, we both Pavilions itself. There are also
two parking lots behind the pavilions. Those were owned by
different people, and everyone had always wanted to develop both
blocks together, but no one could ever acquire both of them.

(01:10):
We've acquired both of them. That means you could now
put a hotel up behind the pavilions. You could put
an apartment building up behind there, and that would really
activate all those stores from the hotel apartment side as
well as from the sixteenth Street side. And we just
didn't want to see that site gets shuttered. You know,
when they're owned by out of state investors, they don't
necessarily care how your downtown feels. It's one of one

(01:31):
hundred buildings they own, and so we want to stabilize it.
We're going to go out and how people did for
ideas and what they would do for a joint development
of those two blocks. We'll find the best idea and
the best partner, and we'll hand it over to them
to turn this into a great magnet again for the
next fifty years of downtown.

Speaker 1 (01:46):
Where'd the money come from.

Speaker 3 (01:48):
It's the Downtown Development Authority, so the city doesn't directly
own it. It's a tax measure that the residents and
businesses in downtown voted for to capture some of the
tax revenue that we can use to invest in downtown.
So it doesn't not city dollars, it doesn't touch the
general fund. It's not money we could use to hire
an employee. It's the very money that was used to

(02:09):
develop Union Station fifteen years ago. And Union Station was
so successful it paid the bond back twice as fast
as it needed to, So there were fifteen years of
leftover revenues, and the voters downtown voted to use those
dollars to help support development in the rest of downtown.
So think about how vibrant and great Union Station is
now with you know, retail and stores and businesses and restaurants.

(02:29):
That's what we want to do now for the Pavilions.

Speaker 4 (02:31):
Yeah, mister Marraw was at the Pavilions earlier this week
seeing Zootopia too, great movie, by.

Speaker 1 (02:35):
The way, you were.

Speaker 3 (02:36):
Of course, I'm excited to see that one.

Speaker 4 (02:38):
It was great, honestly, highly recommend But yes, a lot
of those businesses do really need some help. You're seeing
more and more just closed businesses around those extra levels
of the Pavilions. And just need some more energy and
more life into it. Similar to other portions of the
Sixteenth Street mall. When we look at just our overall businesses,
I know we just passed small business Saturday and just
overall shopping holiday season, the busyness that sixteenth Street really

(03:02):
does have the revitalization that it's looking for. Hopefully people
can go down there and help their businesses.

Speaker 1 (03:06):
But what else do we have to.

Speaker 4 (03:08):
Do when it comes to our East Coalfax businesses, because
I know they're struggling, similar to what we saw with
Sixteenth Street when it came to just construction and the
RTD project that's underway there. There's some businesses that you
can barely find their doors right now because that construction
is all underway on Collfax.

Speaker 2 (03:24):
You got it.

Speaker 3 (03:24):
Gee, It's exactly the same thing we faced on Sixteenth Street,
which is when that was under construction. We really had
to push hard to support those businesses to come through it.
The construction's over and now sixteenth is amazing and it's active.
We have forty to sixty now new businesses that have
opened in downtown this year. That's a great sign of revitalization.
And I've been I'm on Cool Facts, you know, a
couple times a week, as I try to every time

(03:45):
I'm shopping or going out to eat, or my wife
I going out for date night. We try to do
it on Colefax. So I'd really encourage people to shop
and support those great storess. They're they're excited. They know
this new bus rapid transit will eventually provide a lot
more customers to them. But we've got to make it
through the construction window, and so this holiday season, I
really encourage folks to go to Cool Facts, whether it's
the shop to eat, to go to your favorite bar.

(04:06):
We had loved those long term locally owned businesses there,
but we've got to keep them going when misconstruction completes.

Speaker 1 (04:13):
Mister Mayor.

Speaker 4 (04:14):
Also for those heading downtown this weekend, a lot of
people usually come from outside of the city for the
Parade of Lights. It's an awesome event every year, highly recommend.
But when it comes to just the overall congestion that
we see around the city, what's the safety and security
measures that you consider and keep in place when it
comes to Parade of Lights, but just any holiday and
busy events around the city.

Speaker 3 (04:34):
Yeah, we are really excited for the Parade of Lights.
I'll be there tomorrow night. Encourage everybody to come. We
also have the Chris Kremdal Market on a area campus.
We have drone shows every night. It's a fantastic holiday
time to be downtown, so it encourage everyone to come.
We have ramped up safety dramatically on downtown. I actually
love this stat. You know, you've probably seen the Joker
stats everywhere where. You know, he is the first player

(04:57):
to lead the league from the decade and both assists, rebounds,
points and steals. We were looking at our crime data
for the first time in Denver ever. We're more than
fifty percent reduction year over year in homicide, more than
fifty percent reduction in auto theft, more than forty percent
reduction in robberies, all of the same time, all of
the same year. So the city is getting so much safer.

Speaker 1 (05:18):
And we've created our.

Speaker 3 (05:19):
Own dedicated downtown police unit just to downtown, so when
you're downtown you'll see lots of friendly officers.

Speaker 1 (05:24):
Feel free to say hi.

Speaker 3 (05:25):
They're delighted to see you.

Speaker 1 (05:26):
You know, let me follow up on this.

Speaker 2 (05:27):
I was going to do something else, but what are
you seeing in terms of any data so far? In
whether the new sixteenth Street, I guess you don't call
it them all anymore. In the new sixteenth Street, is
there is there retail traction there, you know, and to
the extent that that Denver has had a budget problem
because of flat sales tax revenue. Are you seeing stuff

(05:52):
perking up on sixteenth Street and maybe related are you
seeing any perking up in office occupancy around there?

Speaker 1 (05:59):
Because those two things may be related.

Speaker 3 (06:02):
You got it. Those are exactly the metrics we're tracking.
So the great news is, yeah, we are seeing we
do track foot traffic. We're down to almost ninety three
percent of the foot traffic we had before COVID on sixteenth.
So that's where I mean, that's the that's the gold
standard for city that's going to get back to pre
COVID downtown activation. That's a great sign. And in terms
of commercial leasing, you're right. We now have had you know,

(06:23):
three times more leasing requests on sixteenth three for people
who want to occupy in new spaces, three times more
requests in the last three months than we had in
the last three years combined. So we're both seeing and
then when you talk to businesses down there, some of
them will tell me, they're up thirty percent, they're up
to fifty percent, somewhere, up one hundred percent. So they
are seeing more foot traffic, which is driving more revenue,
which will drive more sales tax. So we think it's

(06:44):
all heading in the great direction. But we just got
to keep more and more folks coming back. But I
love aboutbrade of lights. Do you know, those folks who
might not have been downtown in a while, come down,
and I think what they'll see is a very different
Denver than they've seen before. And so the more we
get people to come back downtown and see it, the
more they say, Wow, this place looks great. I'd love
to spend more time here.

Speaker 2 (07:01):
Michael got about just over a minute left here. I
think maybe two times ago when you visited us, we
talked about what the Denver Summit Football Club people making
some noises about looking for a stadium somewhere else, and
you said, over my dead body, and we had we
had talked about how this is really kind of an
urgent thing because shockingly they need a stadium built like

(07:22):
in less than three years. I mean, it's taken me
two years, and I don't even have my home remodel done.

Speaker 1 (07:27):
So what's the what's the latest on that.

Speaker 2 (07:31):
Yeah, you know we are.

Speaker 3 (07:32):
We are working hard. It'll be up for a voute
the fifteenth, which will be a week from Monday. And
we've been talking to all the council members trying to
answer all their questions. Talked to the commissioner of the
league this year, told me we're all in this week
and told her that we're all in to move forward.
Have been staying in touch with the ownership prove we're
really optimistic this is going to get moving. We know
people had questions, we think we've answered those. We know
everyone wants to see this happen. I mean, one exciting

(07:53):
thing is you may know, you know, the opening game
for this team, the Summit, is going to be held
at Mile High. Actually, we've already sold on almost thirty
thousand seats for that game. The commissioner says she thinks
we're on path to sell more than forty five thousand
tickets that would make it the largest women's soccer sporting
event in league history ever in America for the first
game in Denver. So there is so much excitement about

(08:14):
this team and about this league that I know that
we're going to get this done, and we'll figure out
how to get all the problems and questions answered to
get there. But I think we're very aptimstic. We're going
to be in good shape to get this done and
get the shovels in the ground.

Speaker 2 (08:26):
Denver me Or, Mike Johnson, thanks for your time, as always,
have a wonderful weekend.

Speaker 3 (08:29):
Great to see ya.

Speaker 1 (08:30):
I'll have a great Friday, all right, You too, You too.