Revolutionizing · Modernizing · Simplifying
Revolutionizing · Modernizing · Simplifying
Jevon Taylor got priced out of RiNo. Now the city is paying him $4.3 million to save downtown.
That is not a joke, and honestly, it is one of the better stories in Denver right now. Taylor is the founder and CEO of Green Spaces, the market at 2590 Walnut Street in the Five Points and RiNo area. Before that he ran a clothing store called False Ego. Then the pandemic hit, rent went up, and he got pushed out. Same story a hundred other Denver small businesses could tell you. The difference is what Taylor did next.
He bet on himself. He put his money into Green Spaces. And in August 2025, at a press conference standing next to Mayor Mike Johnston, the city handed him $4.3 million to go reinvent a block of the 16th Street Mall.
Here is what the plan was supposed to be, and it was a big one.
Taylor was going to take two buildings between California and Welton streets and fill nearly 18,000 square feet of ground-floor space with local businesses. Galleries. Clothing stores. Food and beverage spots. Artist spaces. Coworking. A Green Spaces Market was going on the corner of 16th and Welton. Another Green Spaces version was planned for the McClintock Building at 1554 California Street.
The whole thing was one of 10 projects picked in the Downtown Development Authority's first
And Taylor framed it beautifully. He called his clothing brand his bachelor's degree. Green Spaces was his master's. This 16th Street project, he said, was his PhD. His dissertation. That is a guy who believes in what he is building.
BusinessDen reported on October 5, 2026 that the project is downsizing.
So the dream of lighting up an entire block? It got smaller. The resources did not stretch as far as the vision did, and Taylor had to pick where the money actually landed.
His words, not mine: "There weren't enough resources for the entire block, so I had to make a decision on where those resources actually went."
I mean, that is about as honest as it gets. And here is the thing people miss when they read a headline like this. A project getting scaled back is not the same as a project failing. Taylor did not walk away. He looked at what $4.3 million actually buys on the 16th Street Mall in 2026 and made a call. That is what operators do.
But it is also a real-time test. This is the whole question hanging over downtown Denver right now. Can public money actually fix the Mile High City's core, or does the vision always come in bigger than the budget? One of the flagship projects just told us the budget wins. Worth your attention because the next project, and the one after that, is going to run into the same math.
Quick note on the money, because the numbers are a little slippery.
BusinessDen puts the award at $4.3 million. An earlier Westword report cited a
And the DDDA is not slowing down. They are still taking proposals. They are still sitting on something like $400 million more.
They also made a move that tells you how serious this is. The authority agreed to buy the Denver Pavilions shopping center for about $37 million. Ten years ago that property was valued around
So why single out one scaled-back retail project when there are 10 of them plus a $400 million pipeline?
Because Taylor is the story the whole thing is selling. A local guy. Pushed out of RiNo by rising rent. Reinvested in Denver instead of leaving. The city picked him in part because he is exactly the kind of small operator downtown keeps losing. If public money can take a founder like that and plant him on the corner of 16th and Welton and keep him there, the program works. If it cannot even fill the block it promised, that is a data point too.
Right now it is somewhere in between. The McClintock Building is still in play. Green Spaces is still coming downtown. Just not across the full stretch that got announced on that stage next to the mayor.
I will be watching what opens and what quietly disappears from the plan. That is usually where the real story is. Not the press conference. The part six months later when somebody has to tell you the truth about the budget.
Taylor already did. Give him credit for that.