Council hears long-range visioning for Midtown Centennial; plan work will continue with outreach and studies

City planning staff and consultants presented a long-range visioning framework for “Midtown Centennial,” a roughly 800-acre area along the I‑25 corridor, and described steps the city will take this year to study fiscal impacts, utilities capacity and detailed subarea planning.

David King, planner for the city, said Midtown extends roughly from South Yosemite Street to South Havana Street and includes anchor points such as the Dry Creek light‑rail station and Centennial Promenade. “Centennial is a city of neighborhoods,” King said, and Midtown presents an opportunity to knit a large employment corridor into a more mixed‑use, walkable place that fits the city’s Centennial Next comprehensive plan.

Chris Perrizo, principal at Denver urban design firm Civitas, described an approach that emphasizes public‑realm frameworks (parks, greenways, pedestrian connections and multimodal streets) and “stitching” multiple property owners and development timelines together rather than prescribing specific parcel‑level land uses. Perrizo said the work is intended to be a long‑range, flexible vision: “We are looking at a 50‑year project at 800 acres,” he told the council.

Key findings and market context - Recent market data and corridor studies show shifting demand: staff cited a 24% vacancy rate for Midtown office product in 2024 (higher than the broader Denver South corridor figure) while newer office buildings in the South I‑25 market had lower vacancy (~4.6%). City staff also cited Denver South’s estimate that about 2,000 jobs were added in the corridor between 2013 and 2022 and that the larger corridor has added roughly 17,000 housing units since 2001. - Staff and the consultant described pandemic‑accelerated trends — hybrid work, a “flight to quality” for office product and growing demand for amenitized, mixed‑use places — as the primary market drivers motivating the visioning work.

City tasks, constraints and next steps Staff outlined immediate and near‑term work: an EPS (Economic & Planning Systems) analysis of fiscal impacts under multiple redevelopment scenarios; a DRCOG‑funded small‑area planning grant focused on the East side of Midtown (no city match required, staff said); utility/capacity modeling with Southgate Water and Sanitation District; and an outreach program that includes a Midtown project web page, an interactive GIS comment map and presentations to neighborhood groups and district meetings.

Several council members asked how the Midtown plan would relate to existing regulating plans and the city’s I‑25 subarea plan. Staff said existing regulating plans (for example, the OC‑4 regulating plan) remain in effect; the Midtown subarea plan would be an additional, higher‑level framework that stitches existing plans together and guides future regulating plans and rezoning requests.

Public engagement and timing Staff said engagement will emphasize interactive, visual tools and will run through 2025; staff demonstrated an engagement approach that includes an interactive web map where users can place comments and tag ideas (parks, placemaking, mobility). The East side small‑area planning grant will start this year; staff said the subarea plan will ultimately be adopted by the Planning & Zoning Commission and ratified by the city council after additional check‑ins.

No formal actions or zoning changes were approved. Staff described the Midtown effort as a long‑range, iterative process intended to set a flexible public‑realm framework and give private developers clearer expectations as properties come forward for redevelopment.