Vision

To assess the public views and visions of the plaza, we used a SWOT Analysis to gather public input concerning the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of the existing and future plaza space at Denver Union Station. It was important to create a comfortable atmosphere for people to express their opinions and to ensure that everyone was able to voice their comments.

Rather than having general input for the whole session, attendees classified themselves as downtown residents, downtown employees, project professionals, and other attendees. This created opportunity for a deeper understanding of different groups' views of the site. The breakdown of participants for this exercise was 40% downtown residents, 8% downtown employees, 23% project professionals and 29% other attendees.

Once the initial explanation of the workshop station was complete, participants were allowed five minutes of brainstorming per category. We noticed that they were very talkative and eager to give their opinions. Twenty minutes were sufficient for gathering ideas, so we allowed them five extra minutes to place stickers on the easels at the end of the session. Group members not presenting walked around the participant group and spoke to people on the sides and in the back row. This ensured that everyone’s input was heard and written on the easel. The atmosphere was respectful and everyone appeared comfortable voicing his or her opinion.

To begin the process of compiling the exercise results, any statements that were duplicated were combined into one response.

The following graphs show the top five responses in each of the SWOT categories. The responses are shown as a percentage of the total answers given for each category. Each of the top five responses is further broken down by the percentage of each user group that chose that response.

The four graphs show several notable findings. Overall, the largest percentage of participants felt that the greatest “Strength” of the existing plaza area is its proximity to a transportation hub. A large percentage of the participants who chose this response were downtown residents. (See Figure 1)

Participants also suggested that a lack of green space was the greatest “Weakness” of the existing plaza area. The user groups were fairly evenly distributed regarding this response. Other attendees felt the greatest weakness was that the station could only be accessed from the West by the tunnel. (See Figure 2)

The top five responses in the “Opportunities” category were between 6% and 8% of the total responses. This was by far the most uniformly distributed category of the four. Residents selected a postal branch as their most favored opportunity, while project professionals noted the opportunity for the plaza to become a true Gateway to Denver. (See Figure 3)

Participants viewed funding and poor architecture and design as the biggest “Threats” to the future plaza area. Downtown residents were particularly concerned with a lack of funding for the future site. (See Figure 4)

Click here for the individual pdf report of the vision section.