Mayor Names Design Selection Committee

DENVER-Mayor Wellington E. Webb has named a selection committee for the new design of the 3.2-acre Skyline Park along the 16th Street Mall in the Central Business District. The mall provides a free shuttle from one end of Downtown to the other.

The three-block Skyline Park, designed by architect Lawrence Halprin in the mid-’70s, is at the edge of Lower Downtown.

Today, the park is deteriorating and increasingly is occupied by youths on skateboards, especially in the evenings.

The committee includes Liz Orr from the mayor’s staff; city councilwoman Susan Barnes-Gelt; Downtown resident Don Hunt, who chairs the Denver Civic Ventures and the Skyline Park Revitalization Committee; Barbara Gibson, president of the Lower Downtown District Inc. and an avid historian; Gene Bressler, dean of the school of landscape architecture at the University of Colorado at Denver; Edward Barsocchi, from the Downtown Denver Partnership; Karen Whitman, manager of the Pioneer Courthouse Square in Portland; and Todd Bressi, editor of Places Magazine.

”This is an important project for the city,” Webb says. He adds the city has received interest in the project from a large number of design firms.