Members of the Arvada city team and contracted landscape architects Dig Studio held a public open house at Denver Beer Co. on Sept. 21 to gauge feedback for several proposals and ideas about the future of Olde Town Arvada.  

Olde Town’s streets initially closed in June 2020 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. In March 2021, Arvada’s city council approved a five-year plan to keep the street closures in place on a semi-permanent basis, during which time the city team would survey public feedback and create a plan for the long-term future of the historic district.

The open house featured renderings and concepts put together by the city team and Dig Studio and invited the public to provide feedback through an online survey which can be found at speakup.arvada.org.

Arvada’s Director of Growth and Economic Development Ryan Stachelski said the city team has completed one survey which culled about 1,800 responses. That survey informed the first set of design proposals showcased at the open house.

Stachelski added that the public can give feedback on these designs until October 17. Then, the city team will go to council for a workshop on Oct. 24, followed by a similar presentation at the Olde Town Business Improvement District meeting on Oct 25. The city team will complete a preliminary design before the end of 2022.

“Beginning in January, we’ll come back out to the public and show them where we’re going with this,” Stachelski said. “And then, once we get that feedback, we’ll start design phases, and part of this work is also identifying funding sources for how this could be implemented over the next 20 years.

“Street closures were semi-permanent for 5 years; this is the culmination of that,” Stachelski continued. “To say ‘Ok, what do we want to do going forward?’ and get more feedback.”

Stachelski said the city team is currently in the “iterative process of collecting information,” pertaining to the street closures.

He added that accessibility has been a key concern voiced in community feedback so far.

“One of the main things we heard is access to the transit hub, for example,” Stachelski said. “But there’s also, ‘Should we do more street closures?’ ‘Should we have a one-way street in certain areas?’ All that is being explored, and now we have gotten a lot of that input and we wanted to bring the information that we gathered so far to the community today and get more input.”

The full set of renderings and design concepts presented on Sept. 21 can be found on the city’s website.