Civic Center has for decades welcomed Denver’s biggest public festivals, packing hundreds of thousands of visitors into its two dozen acres of grass, concrete paths, flower beds, and neo-classical architecture.

But with construction taking over most of the park this year, its biggest events will have to move, shrink or split into pieces. That’s due to the lack of regular space for beer tents, music stages, vendors and the public. The first phase, which includes reorienting the iconic Greek Theater on the south side of the park, is set to be completed by summer 2027.

“We are working with permit holders to continue to have limited activations in the park,” said Jenna Harris, downtown parks program manager for the city. “We’re doing our best to accommodate events as they come up, but it is a major, $50 million construction project. The more we delay it for big events that are about to happen around the perimeter, the harder it is to meet those milestones.”

The renovation project, which officials say will refresh Civic Center for another 100 years, includes glowing up the Greek Theater with a better stage and seating. “A new canopy arched over the stage will support contemporary theatrical equipment and provide shade and rain protection,” city officials wrote in a statement. “The design also improves accessibility and circulation through interconnected paths that better connect the park’s various outdoor spaces, including a new plaza commemorating the Gang of 19 protest and disability rights movement.”

The changes will close much of the park, including the Greek Theater, Central Promenade, and South Plaza of Civic Center, where big festivals often set up stages and vendors line the curving sidewalks. To continue at Civic Center this year, events must adapt.

Here’s what we know so far:

Mile High 420 Fest, which celebrates cannabis culture every year on April 20, is still scheduled to take place in Civic Center, according to city records. Event producers couldn’t be reached for comment, but general admission will cost $28.52 this year. Expect live entertainment and food vendors, although performers had not yet been announced at the time of this writing.

Cinco de Mayo, May 2-3, draws about 400,000 total visitors each year. In 2026, the vibrant celebration of Mexican independence and culture will still take over parts of Civic Center, while shutting down Broadway just east of the park.

“The overall footprint is remaining almost the exact same, and we are reorganizing a few festival components that are impacted by construction,” said Austin Tafoya, special events manager for NEWSED Community Development Corp., which produces Cinco de Mayo. “Other than that, we will utilize the surrounding streets as we have in the years past.”

Outside Days, the entertainment portion of Outside Magazine’s industry event in Denver, held its second successful gathering at Civic Center May 31-June 1 last year. This year, it’s moving to the Auraria Campus due to space constraints. Taking place May 29-31, producers changed the name from Outside Festival to Outside Days, added an extra day, and booked top live acts such as Death Cab for Cutie, My Morning Jacket and Cage the Elephant.

Denver PrideFest, which typically takes place in late June and draws more than 500,000 total visitors, rivals Cinco de Mayo in size and footprint. This year they’ll reimagine the event from the ground up, said organizers at the nonprofit LGBTQ organization The Center on Colfax, CEO Kim Salvaggio said.

The Denver Pride Parade will move to 17th Street on Sunday, June 28 (from East Colfax Avenue), while the Denver Pride Festival will be held the same day on 16th Street. The annual Denver Pride 5K will take place at 8:30 a.m. on Saturday, June 27, starting at Cheesman Park Pavilion. A route is still being finalized, according to Salvaggio.

Independence Eve, a free, popular program that taps live orchestral music and a drone show to celebrate Independence Day, will not take place this year on July 3, said Eric Lazzari, executive director of the Civic Center Conservancy, which works with the city to program and maintain the park.

However, there will still be smaller events in the park throughout the year, he said, such as the return of the food truck gathering Civic Center Eats, a Dia de Los Muertos celebration, and a local-vendor Night Market, among many others.

“We haven’t seen many public announcements yet about the bigger festivals, but we’ll have about 60 to 80 events over the course of the next year produced by Civic Center Conservancy and partners in the park, including some new events we’re working on.”

The long-running A Taste of Colorado festival, the food event that typically runs on Labor Day weekend, has not used Civic Center for a large-scale festival since 2022, so don’t expect that to jump to another large location. And by the time it’s fall, start looking for the wildly popular Christkindlmarket and Mile High Tree attraction to stay put at the Auraria Campus, where they moved for their 2025 event to make way for Civic Center’s November groundbreaking.

“The reality of an urban park in the 21st century is that it has to work for groups of 5,000 or 20,000,” Lazzari said. “On the other side of this construction, we’ll see a blend of what it’s traditionally been, but also how it is gathering people in smaller sizes for new events.”

Denver is considering throwing a lifeline to 23,000 planned apartments and residences at risk of never getting built.

Currently, developers have 30 months from the time their project’s site development plan is approved to obtain building permits to begin construction. Otherwise, their SDP expires, and they must resubmit it if they hope to build.

But with an increasing supply of apartments and the costs to build new ones rising, groundbreakings have fallen off a cliff. That means a lot of SDPs are languishing — approved, but with a developer unable or unwilling to break ground. 

“The oversupply our city is experiencing right now is short-lived, and so it’s really important that we keep these shovel-ready projects alive so that we don’t see an undersupply,” said Brad Buchanan, executive director of Denver’s Community Planning and Development department.

Brad Buchanan

Buchanan’s department is pushing the Denver City Council to approve a measure for all projects that had an SDP approved before 2026 to extend the deadline to get their permits by an additional three years.

The Denver Planning Board will be the first governmental body to review the plan. It’s scheduled to weigh in Wednesday afternoon. The City Council will vote on the measure in May. Councilwoman Amanda Sandoval is also sponsoring the bill.

Many of the projects that could be extended were submitted in the months before the July 2022 implementation of the city’s Expanding Housing Affordability ordinance, which requires new residential projects to reserve between 8% and 15% of their units for people making below the median income, or to pay a large fee.

Jonathan Alpert, partner at local developer Westfield, said that requirement would make it more difficult for him to break ground. He has two site development plans approved. Both are 8-story apartment buildings, one in LoDo and one in Cap Hill.

Westfield’s projects would be subject to the EHA if the plans expire and it resubmits them.

“They certainly do not work right now with the headwinds and the market,” Alpert said of his projects. “If we’re subject to the EHA, that exacerbates the issue.

“This potential extension is huge for us.”

Alpert noted that macroeconomic factors, like high interest rates and construction costs, have complicated development nationally. 

“As a result of the oversupply, rents are not there,” he said. “It’s hard to make any of these projects pencil, and demand is down right now.”

The first projects approved before the EHA took effect had their SDPs expire in December, according to Buchanan.

“We’ve lost some others once since then, and we’re about to lose a lot more this year,” he added.

Denver’s apartment vacancy sits at 8.2%, according to the Apartment Association of Metro Denver, the highest since 2010. And concessions on new units have risen to record highs, too. The city saw 10,300 apartments break ground in 2021, far higher than the 2,300 started last year, according to data from JRES Intelica CRE.

But developers are predicting a turnaround. Sean Campbell, president of Formativ, which is constructing projects in RiNo and Littleton, said he sees rents for new apartments rising in the first quarter of next year.

“If Denver is perceived to have an oversupply … cautious institutional investors will say, ‘Hey, let’s wait six or 12 months and then we’ll [break ground],’ and that’s really what this SDP extension is all about,” he said.

But without approved projects ready to break ground, builders may not be able to construct new housing until supply gets overly constrained and rents shoot up.

“If we canceled everybody’s SDP, we wouldn’t have the ability to regenerate the pipeline,” Campbell said.

The Denver Nuggets are back at it after a heartbreaking loss over the weekend. The Nuggets once again find themselves in the spotlight with another national TV game, though I’m sure the execs over at NBC were thinking tonight’s contest was going to be more ballyhooed than it actually is. As it turns out, Denver’s opponent tonight, the Philadelphia 76ers, are still a quality team, but not the Eastern Conference juggernaut they were viewed as just a couple season ago. This is largely due to the health, or lack thereof, including that of star Joel Embiid. Philadelphia is dealing with a litany of injuries this season but unlike the Nuggets, they aren’t nearly as close to a return to health (or in one case, compliance with the league’s PED policy). All-star guard Tyrese Maxey, Paul George, Kelly Oubre…all out tonight.

The Basics

Who: Denver Nuggets (41-27) vs Philadelphia 76ers (37-31)

When: 8:00PM MDT

Where: The Can. Denver, CO.

How to watch/listen: NBC, Peacock, Altitude Sports, Altitude Radio 92.5FM

Rival blog: Liberty Ballers

The Matchup

Injury report: Peyton Watson – out (hamstring), DaRon Holmes II – out (G-League), Curtis Jones – out (G-League), KJ Simpson – out (G-League); Joel Embiid – out (oblique), Tyrese Maxey – out (finger), Paul George – out (juice), Kelly Oubre – out (elbow), Jabari Walker – out (illness), Johni Broome – out (knee).

The Three Things

The thing to watch for: bounce back game from Jamal

Jamal Murray had the worst performance of his season on Saturday vs the Los Angeles Lakers, I expect he’ll right the ship tonight. He’s also got a fairly positive matchup. While V.J. Edgecombe is certainly a talented rookie, he’s still a rookie and guarding Jamal-star is a tall task, especially when you consider Edgecombe is the only thing resembling a scorer on Philadelphia’s active roster right now and will likely be expending a large amount of energy trying to get past Christian Braun. My hope is Jamal lets the game come naturally tonight, but don’t be surprised at all to see him come out of the gate very aggressive.

The thing to remember: These guys get paid to

Yes, the Sixers are decimated. Yes, they are missing their top two players and several role players…can you say trap game? Coming off a big game that they lost in heartbreaking fashion might help the Nuggets here, they should be fully focused on getting a win. We’ve seen this story before too many times though. The Nuggets have been guilty of overlooking inferior opponents and ending up with terrible losses. There’s no room for that now in the ultra-tight 3-6 seed race in the Western Conference. They need to put this one out of reach early and make sure they don’t get caught letting the Sixers believe they can steal a victory at Ball tonight.

The thing to bet: Tim Hardaway Jr. over 2.5 threes (+132)

Look, we know Tim’s going to shoot at least three threes, and probably quite a few more. The only question is how much he will make? I don’t see a ton of reason to think he won’t hit three or more tonight so long as his shot is falling. So far in March he has averaged 2.9 makes on 6.5 attempts so recent history suggests he is very capable of hitting the over and at +132 that’s a bet to take.