16th Street Mall — Attraction in Denver

Being from Denver, I have watched the 16th St Mall change throughout the years. I remember being a little kid in the 80's & seeing the punk rockers downtown with green mohawks! Recently, I lived in a renovated loft above the mall at 16th & Stout, from 2014 to 2016. Now I live a mile and a half away. Ive never seen the mall in worse shape than its in right now. Sanitation, cleaning & lack of public restrooms being the worst problem, followed by lack of authority, police presence & security. The alley next to TJ Maxx has wreaked of human urine since 2014, yet I see city employees spraying & hosing down the middle of the mall shuttle street regularly.. You're cleaning the wrong area! Thats the same problem not being addressed correctly for 8 years. Its disgusting, you can smell it 40 feet away while walking down the mall. Has the Mayor or the Governor ever had to wait for the light rail train at the 16th and Stout St platform? Probably not.The doorways 20 feet away from the light rail kiosks are human toilets.. Its filthy week after week, year after year. The lack of authority creates an unpleasant, unsafe & unsanitary environment. Today I saw a man screaming profanities & threatening someone in his mind, out loud. People were giving him a wide berth, needless to say. There needs to be security and police enforcing rules and guidelines, otherwise people take advantage. The mall shouldn't be a day shelter for the mentally ill. The people who work and commute downtown deserve better than these conditions. People spend alot of money to come to the 16th St Mall from out of town, out of state & even out of the country. This is what they see, and Denver is developing a horrible reputation because of it. Now the 16th St Mall is about to go thru a multi million dollar renovation? You can't even clean the sidewalk correctly! I wish Hickenlooper was stilll around, he'd snap the place into shape.. The 16th St Mall is the heart of the city, and it hurts me to see it in such disarray and despair.. Shame on the people in charge for letting it get so out of hand. I recommend hiring a professional cleaning service to scrub, hose down, deep clean, disinfect & sanitize the sidewalks, alleyways and walls between Welton St & Arapahoe. Bring back the daytime yellow shirt mall employees, and hire off duty police officers in the evening to give a feeling of authority to stop the lawless vibe of the mall currently.. On a positive note, the Pavilions is always in good shape, the restaurants downtown have lots of business and I still love the ground vents with funny sound effects on the sidewalk East of the Money Museum, between 16th & 15th. Im curious about seeing the mall renovation completed.. Im hoping for the best, even though I don't like seeing over one hundred trees being cut down to do it.. That was the only shade...

We always hear all this talk about conservation & recycling all these efforts or rules imposed on us as citizens but the 16th street mall is a perfect example of exactly how hypocritical our local government actually is. As a Native, I have memories of beauty and the grandeur of the original mall when it was 1st built. The materials used like granite pavers were designed to out last all of us. I was told that they would be “reused’ and just flipped over” and reset because of their strength & durability. These stones were perfect & quarried here in Colorado. A testament to the state and positive improvement to our community and culture and mark in history. It was designed to last for centuries. Unfortunately this has all been replaced by cheap sub standard materials that has now lowered the bar of civic standards. The clay pavers utilized in this “facelift” has done nothing in terms of improvements. This is a massive down grade in both aesthetics and integrity. Some pavers are already showing signs of erosion. This is not designed to last at all. We are now on the hook to go through this, “remodel “ (that shutterd many a business) in a quarter of the time it took to do this un-nessary remodel. Not to mention that the benches and planters were also budgeted to reflect the over all lack of for site that these planners neglected to understand. That is that they don’t retain the water used to hydrate the plants. So now we have, what looks like urine stains all over the newly paved mall. It’s so bad that it’s difficult to distinguish the real urine from the run off. (Yes that’s still a thing & the main reason for the civic decline). This, I guess is the perfect example of treating the symptoms by throwing money like an expensive bandage to remedy a massive wound.. our society is sick and we need an answer. But this is not it. I do remember them constantly power washing the mall. That would’ve saved millions. It still does but because of these cheap materials , I fear it will only make it worse. The concrete formed planters are, at least half way decent but they used so much steel for other planters. It’s gone be leaking stained run off every where. When it starts to rust It’s going to be exciting to see what that does to these pavers & what rust staining design will spill out onto the walk way. Cleaning and maintaining what we had originally, would’ve been a much cheaper alternative to this cheapening of our, once Great City. I wonder what exactly happened to the old pave stones that lined the 16th street mall. Pressuring us to reduce recycle and reuse while taking our money and squandering it on this cheapening of overhaul is embarrassing and a straight up waste to the tax payers. The gov and mayor once...

My rating for my self-guided walking tour of the 16th Street Mall area on the afternoon of Sunday, July 30 is between two- and three-stars. Ultimately, I'm rating this area as two stars. The main reason is that public restrooms are hard to find. I had to ask five store employees located in three different stores to finally get specific directions as to where the public restroom is located. It was an unnecessary and profoundly frustrating saga. Denver: If you consider your downtown/16th Street Mall area a tourist draw where you want out-of-towners/out-of-staters to spend money, DO BETTER to provide public restrooms and directions to them. This was a MAJOR SNAFU that was beyond frustrating for this tourist.

As many other raters have mentioned, the ongoing construction is an eyesore and very much detracted from my enjoyment of the area.

I had two poor experiences with food purchases. The slice of pizza I ate at Slice Works was terrible. The scoop of ice cream I bought at the over-priced Van Leeuwen was not worth the money.

I mostly felt safe as a middle-aged woman walking alone in this area, but there were some areas in which there were no other people but homeless people and me. Those areas felt more sketchy and scary, although to be fair I was never approached by anyone.

On the positive side, I was easily able to locate secure underground parking for $8.00 for a few hours which I thought was reasonable.

There is great architecture and public art to see.

I was blessed with agreeable weather -- overcast and moderate summer temperatures in the 80s.

I had enjoyable shopping experiences at the I Heart Denver and 5 Green Boxes (in Union Station) stores.

I don't consider my few hours spent on the 16th Mall a waste, but the experience was VERY mixed. My frustration with seeking out a public restroom at the mercy of 20-something-year-old clerks in various stores was a let-down from a big city that should put MUCH MORE thought and effort into being welcoming to its tourists, including prominent signage directing tourists to public accommodations' location(s). That was a HUGE letdown.

Shout-out to the clerk at H & M who was the most helpful about describing where the public restroom is located and providing me...