Denver in Decline

By Tom Anthony | Guest Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice

My great grandpa excavated Federal Blvd and Colfax with mules and a scraper, his dad having been on the third wagon train into Denver in 1858. For many years I owned and developed Denver property out of the commitment: “Sustainable Cities People Love,” my company motto.  

On that purpose line I also took on the fight to remove the Shattuck Radioactive Site from south Bannock Street and get I-70 buried through the Elyria neighborhood, next to Swansea Elementary School. These were multi-year volunteer projects seen by many as impossible, and I made enemies. The City took targeted zoning actions against me that bankrupted my company and took my home. 

Since I left Denver, a city that consistently votes about 80 percent Democrat, a decline commenced.

COVID 19 protocols and authoritarian means by which they were deployed acted like a can of valve grinding fluid dumped into the American engine. 

If Americans think they just have to change the oil, it’s time to wake up to reality. 

Briefly, we’re now used to: 

A) the government dictating our behaviors (vis a vis, “essential business,” mask and vaccine mandates and the like) 

B) the government backfilling its own bad decisions with our tax money (vis a vis, PPP, ERTC, EIDL ARPA, SVO, RRF etc.) 

C) remote white collar work (learned through blocking social interaction which might result in germ transfer,) being offshored or AI’d and 

D) lemming-like planning.

Originally, remote working allowed white collar employees to dodge pandemic germs by resting on their MBA from the banks of a fishing stream.  

Then Corporate realized that English speaking foreigners would work for 1/4th of the pay, and that AI could be trained to work without overtime or medical.  

Meld this phenomenon to gradually expiring severance packages and eroding home equity positions, and the new realization that government programs abound, but only for the low income:  you have the movement to Medicaid.  

Toss in the notion that single moms move to the top of the list, and the “head of the family” takes to the back porch door.  

The new American Dream is a disability finding and a sudden availability of a nice Section 8 option.

https://www.denverpost.com/2026/02/02/colorado-labor-force-shrinking/

And we thought Social Security was in trouble with the Boomers retiring at the rate of 12,000 a day.  63 percent of Gen Z is on prescription anti-depressants or pot.  

https://www.harmonyhit.com/state-of-gen-z-mental-health/

And if you thought COVID was bad, germophobia is now officially an anti-social disease. You may go out of your way to avoid situations that expose you to germs. The phobia and steps you take to avoid it worsen over time. You may find yourself stuck in a cycle of repetitive behaviors that affect your quality of life. This has caused a lifestyle revolution for Millennials.  

Now 27-42 aged millennials have emerged as a driving force in suburban homebuying. According to Freddie Mac, millennials accounted for 43 percent of homebuyers in 2023, with a significant proportion of these purchases occurring in suburban and exurban areas. 

https://propertyonion.com/education/from-urban-exodus-to-suburban-surge-real-estate-demographic-shift-in-2025/

This shift, in turn, is driving up gasoline use. Gasoline consumption peaked in June of 2008 at 9.491 million barrels per day (bpd), declining to 8.582 million barrels in March 2012, grew back to 9.834 million per day in August of 2019, fell 40 percent to 5.866 million bpd in April of 2020.  

Last year gas consumption climbed to 9.226 million bpd, still below the 2008 high but, factoring in electric vehicle sales and higher mpg ratings, it’s on track for a new trend.

The carbon footprint of households living in the center of large, population-dense urban cities is about 50 percent below average, while households in distant suburbs are up to twice the average.   

To further highlight the depth of the shift, the multi-jurisdictional St. Vrain School District floated a billion dollar capital improvement bond in 2024. The vast majority of the money is allocated for new schools in the suburbs of Erie, Firestone and Mead—projects that urban dwellers in Longmont, where schools are closing and the student population is declining by about 4 percent per year, will be paying off for 30 years.

Although well over 70 percent of the current study body hearkens from Longmont, the new schools anchor new shopping malls in Weld County cornfields, whose sales taxes are 2.2 percent lower, highlighting a national trend back to the commuting lifestyle.

The “non-essential businesses” put on government life support during the pandemic have not recovered. Taking Denver as an example, in 2023 (well after years of pandemic depletion) there were 4,130 restaurant licenses.

And in 2025 that number was 1,780. 

Do the math and Denver restaurants have closed at the rate of 57 percent in two years after a previous precipitous drop.  

Meanwhile you have the propaganda spinners who translate the increased sales tax rates and new remote purchasing taxes into “industry growth:” 

Sales tax revenue in the City and County of Denver experienced a significant, sharp increase from 2019 to 2021, driven by both rapid rate increases and online sales tax collections, but actual taxable sales (adjusted for population and inflation) in Denver County fell by 2.5 percent from 2023 to 2024.

Denver increased its sales tax rate by 1.31 percent to a total of 4.81 percent to fund projects like mental health services, homelessness initiatives, and climate solutions. 

Growth has been primarily driven by online/non-store retail, while in-person retail and food services have lagged, translating to vacant storefronts and non-performing loans.

Residential Denver real estate dropped an average of –9.2 percent (reported by Redfin) year over year, a troubling moment to a population daily eyeing its equity position.

As for commercial real estate, we’ve probably all heard of the “standout,” two downtown Denver office towers at 621 and 633 17th St., which sold for $3.2 million in April 2025, a 97 percent drop from their previous $112 million valuation. Actually, other reports had the 2019 value of those towers at over $200 million, but let’s go deeper.  

The 29-story Johns Manville Plaza building and the office portion of the adjacent 42-story structure — it also includes a Hilton hotel under separate ownership — were purchased in January 2020, just before COVID swept in.

The price then: $400 million.

Last November, the 1.28 million square feet of office space sold again — for just $57.4 million.

That $342.6 million seemingly evaporated as companies reconsidered their office approach and downtown vacancy skyrocketed.

Los Angeles-based Gemini Rosemont and its lender JPMorgan Chase lost $170 million with the Denver Energy Center, which sold for just $5.25 million last year. 

LBA Realty and its lender lost $152 million on the Denver Place, which traded at a 75 percent discount in January. 

These are but samples of an unmistakable trend.

https://businessden.com/2026/03/09/downtown-denver-office-losses-top-a-billion-with-more-to-come/

Commercial real estate undergoes re-evaluation every two years. This year’s “runoff” may mimic the drought-like snowpack for the civic leaders searching about for wonderful new ideas on which to spend their endless stream of revenue while spouting their welcomes to illegal immigrants and “United Against Trump” slogans.  

Without the huge number of retired government workers who live in Denver and Boulder flying to Cozumel and Tuscany, even DIA would start to resemble Downtown.

Tom Anthony was President of the Elyria Neighborhood Association during most of its 15 year fight to get I-70 buried. He incorporated CLEAN-IT, (Citizens Loving their Environment And Neighborhood Invincible Together) the organization which successfully sued the EPA to get the 6 acre radioactive concrete monolith removed from 1805 South Bannock Street in Denver, the only time in its history the EPA has reversed a completed Record of Decision. The City of Denver removed him from his home of 18 years in 2017 after falsely accusing him of breaking a zoning law, to wit, storing building materials out of doors in the Industrial Mixed Use zone.

Editor’s note: Opinions expressed in commentary pieces are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the management of the Rocky Mountain Voice, but even so we support the constitutional right of the author to express those opinions.