RiNo? Never Heard of It.

I was lost before she even really got started. One minute she was talking about RiNo, the next it was LoDo. After that came Ballpark, Highlands, Golden Triangle, Five Points, Santa Fe and Wash Park, followed by Uptown, Old South Pearl, Riverfront and Platte Valley. I still couldn’t keep up with my guide’s rundown of Denver’s far-flung neighbourhoods, but at least the names were becoming progressively easier to grasp. Until, that is, she also added LoHi to the list. “It stands for Lower Highlands,” she said, “but not everyone knows it as that, yet.” 

Life in Denver’s vibrant patchwork of neighbourhoods is changing so fast even the locals are having a tough time keeping up. Fifty years ago the Beat writer Jack Kerouac arrived here to find a gritty city of rail yards and redbrick buildings, a city of colourful down-and-outers and lost souls. I arrived recently to find a sophisticated urban jewel electrified by the creative energy of a generation of dynamic, young Denverites.  

One can still hear the plaintive wail of a miles-long freight train pulling through town, but the rail yards have disappeared beneath the streets, buildings, parks and bike paths of progressive urban regeneration. Many of those redbrick buildings still stand. But don’t expect the seeds or saddles still advertised, in some cases, by the painted lettering on their industrial facades. Behind the brick you’re now more likely to find a vibrant mix of art galleries, workshops, design studios, restaurants, and of course the ubiquitous lofts of modern urban living.

Some say Denver’s resurgence began twenty years ago with a beer. Back then, LoDo, the city’s current hub of nighttime activity, was better known as Lower Downtown, a skid-row neighbourhood of empty warehouses and shady dealings. “The place was strictly off-limits,” one native told me, “and then the Wynkoop Brewing Company opened up, like a singular beacon of life in the middle of all this edgy dereliction.”