What Was LoDo Like The Last Time Denver Hosted The MLB All-Star Game More Than 20 Years Ago?
Our rent was one dollar per square foot per year, and thats a reflection of how abandoned all of lower downtown was, Hickenlooper said in a recent interview. There was a giant parking lot out in front of Union Station and there was never anybody in that parking lot.  There were just two Amtrak trains a day, according to Hickenlooper. It was all broken glass and rubble and acres of abandoned freight yards, but we kind of loved it because we were ... building a brewpub and nobody had ever seen that in Colorado before.  Hart Van Denburg/CPR News The McGregor Square complex under construction on Wazee Street across 20th Street from Coors Field in Denver, Tuesday, April 6, 2021. Of course, thats all changed now. Theres plenty of brewpubs in Colorado. Union Station is a bustling transit hub. There are new bars and restaurants. On top of all that, theres a shiny new mega-development with a high-end hotel, office tower and multi-million dollar condos on what used to be a parking lot next to Coors Field. Even Hickenlooper, who was instrumental in bringing commuter rail to Denver during his tenure as Mayor, didnt foresee a construction project of that scale rising on an old surface lot. I thought that would stay an open space for a long time. Theres hardly a single parking lot left in that whole 23 blocks of lower downtown .... We built on almost everything, he said.