There is a lot packed into the new pocket park that opened on the corner of Ninth Avenue and Albion Street in East Denver.
The site has just 1.7 acres, but planners managed to weave into the landscape playground equipment and picnic tables, hammocks and walking paths. There are lounge chairs positioned under shady umbrellas, and benches made of giant logs, split down the middle.
There is even a notable piece of public art installed in the form of artist Ana Maria Hernando’s “To Let the Sky Know,” a tall trio of cloud-like bouquets made of lilac and yellow tulle that flutter in the wind. That piece fits neatly with the open space’s official name: Cloud 9 Park.
The attraction, designed by the landscape architecture firm Dig Studio, opened at the end of June, but it’s already popular. Visitors hang out all day and into the early evening, working on laptops, jogging across gravel trails, facing off at ping pong, corn hole and foosball. There’s a steady flow of people showing up to play on Denver’s first padel court. (The sport is a cross between pickleball, tennis, and squash, and players can reserve a time by using an app or downloading a QR code.)
Nearly everything is free.
If it sounds too good to be true, well, in a sense it is — or at least it is only true for a year or two, or maybe three. Then Cloud 9 will likely disappear.
The park occupies a space in the middle of 9+CO, the burgeoning development that is turning the former University of Colorado medical learning campus into a planned community. The 26-acre parcel is already home to apartment buildings, retail shops, offices, a movie theater and a number of restaurants, such as Blanco, Culinary Dropout and newcomer Le French. Construction continues at a steady pace and will eventually consume the new park.
A project from Denver’s Continuum Partners (recently joined by investment concerns M Development and Carlton Associates), 9+CO is about as urban-positive as a money-making development can be. It’s pedestrian-friendly and restores the traditional street grid that the old university facilities displaced. The buildings are low-rise and design-forward. The spacing is dense, but breathable. There’s not much for anti-infill critics to complain about.
Considering the site was once designated for a new Walmart — until locals rose up against that idea — the development is a nice gift to a neighborhood that needed a lift.
But 9+CO, which has been in progress since 2015, lacked a few things that a perfect planned community needs, and the developers clearly knew it, and so their motives for investing in a park are both pro-community and pro-commercial success.
The area is not exactly affordable. Denver rents are high, in general, and the buildings here fall in line with that. There are affordability options built-in, but it would not be described as a cheap place to live. The restaurants, bars and take-out spots are not high-end, but they have price points that would make it difficult for a typical family to enjoy on more than special occasions.
In a way, 9+CO also lacked a soul, a center where people could congregate and get to know each other, connect casually like neighbors. People zipped into the parking garages and up elevators. They took in meals or ice cream cones, but that was as much a transactional experience as it was a communal moment.
The new park is a clever remedy, and a generous move on the part of the developers who could just as easily have upped their marketing budget instead of creating an amenity that offers to make the lives of people for miles around a little bit better, even if it is temporary. People can gather meaningfully, leisurely, for free, and outdoors. It’s a very Colorado move.
Dig Studios took that as a cue, designing the park in a way that honors the state’s natural landscape. The existing space, in the center of a decade of construction, already had stockpiles of dirt on site. Instead of removing them, they were reshaped into mounds and planted, giving the space the feel of rolling hills.
Working with Keene Landscape Management, they seeded native grasses and flowering plants that are both environmentally smart and attractive to pollinating insects. They installed Bermuda grass instead of water-hungry Kentucky blue grass.
They included elements that are functional while giving off deep Colorado vibes, like lining the perimeter of the park with post-and-rail style fencing commonly seen on the ranches across the plains. They dotted the grounds with small bronze sculptures of bears, mirroring the giant mural depicting a bear balancing on a precarious high wire that artist Kevin Sloan painted on one of the development’s garages that faces Colorado Boulevard.
The park is surrounded on two sides by buildings that rise about eight stories tall, so they created a view from above. Gaze down at the space from one of the nearby apartments and you can make out a “CO” formed by paths and the playground space.
Dig — the firm behind the new Nature Play outdoor space at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science and also Paco Sánchez Park in West Denver — kept the paths wide, which will allow food trucks to set up on-site, or for tents that might accommodate an art fair or maybe a stage for an afternoon concert.
Continuum plans to take advantage of all those possibilities. It envisions programming for families, and maybe some evenings of music. So far, there has been a “community game night,” a block party and a kid-welcoming “inflatables in the park” day. More events are coming to activate the space.
Though for how long is undetermined. The park is located in a key spot for 9+CO, and Continuum has designs on the space. The company is being up front about that, acknowledging that it will eventually fill it in like the rest of the development. It will likely integrate the park’s amenities into the surrounding areas, though the plan for that is not yet clear.
But in the short-term, the park is something of an oasis, and an example of how a city works best when the interests of developers overlap with the needs of a neighborhood, and everyone works together to make positive things happen.
Cloud 9 Park might not be here for a long time, but it’s here for a good time. That makes it novel, and very inviting.