As for Denver

I think it is also a great model for Oklahoma City. Quite a bit less developed than the Great Vancouver BC but still is experiencing a renaissance and have totally cleaned up their skid row and created LoDo.

In past years, there have been lots of adaptive reuse of existing buildings - converting them into lofts and restaurants. Today, there arent many left, so the city is letting developers build UP. new highrises are planned and a couple are under construction, as I think there are two or so Tower Cranes in the NW downtown area north of LoDo.

LoDo itself is similar to Bricktown but it is a bit more built up. However, Bricktown has more in it than lodo, as there are many lodo buildings with adaptive office and loft uses. Bricktown is also a much larger area but I think we can learn a lot from our most "kin" of neighbours. Oklahoma City compares very closely and favourably to Denver. In fact, Denver touts that they are the largest city for 600 miles. Guess who is 600 miles away? Yep, OKC.

Look at the layout and demographics of the two cities and metro areas and its very similar and conclusive. Both have large hispanic communities but OKC also has a large asian and black community (denver doesnt, it just has a very very very large hispanic). both have pretty successful commercial districts and entertainment districts. Both have historic inner city with sprawling suburbs. Both have university presence inner and outer. Both are state capitals and have large Federal governance and regional hq. Denver has more high tech and telecom and OKC has more biotech and energy.

the major difference, Denver has the Rocky Mountain chain less than 40 miles west and Denver got started with urban development 10 years ahead of OKC. denver also saw the promise of light rail 10 years ago (when I lived there) and currently they are expanding it.

Denver also recognized the importance of a downtown pedestrian mall (also see downtown Vancouver's Granville Mall district). the 16 street pedestrian mall is a great experience and I wish we could do something similar with Main Street, opening it up between Hudson and Robinson and bringing in the storefront retail!!!

Of course, we know Denver has changed the look of their presence in commercial aviation. They razed (and rebuilding) the old Stapleton Airport - a great american airport in its own right with 95 airline gates but too close to the inner city, and created the mother of all airports in DIA. Something else for OKC to look at, as the City of Denver paid for that airport and built it way ahead of the airlines in the hopes that "they will come." Even though Continental did scale back their hub that the originally had at Stapleton, other airlines have come in and made Denver the 5th busiest in the nation. With additional international flights, Denver should overtake #4 and has the capacity for well over 150 million pax per year (currently ATL has 88 mil pax).

So, I think we can learn from Denver, they have surely gathered much momentum on urban development in their Downtown and definitely have some great urban districts. They are much closer in their development age to us than the more established city of Vancouver and offer us a different perspective. (however, I think we should also look to Vancouver overall for the big picture/benchmark). Both cities provide us benchmarks for what to do, how to do it, and what to avoid/change, just different perspectives - established international coastal big city (Vancouver) or pretty established regional and national powerhouse (Denver).