Auraria

Auraria is the triangle of land just west of downtown, with Colfax Avenue along the south side, Cherry Creek to the northeast and the South Platte River to the northwest. Most of it is the Auraria Campus. North of the campus you'll find Ball Arena, Elitch Gardens and acres of event parking.

The town that came before Denver

Prospectors from Georgia led by Green Russell laid out a townsite south of Cherry Creek on October 3, 1858, and called it Auraria. Denver City sat across the creek. The first issue of the Rocky Mountain News came off a press here on April 23, 1859, and by April 1860 the two towns had merged into Denver.

For the next century, mills, breweries and warehouses sat right next to houses here. A flood in May 1864 wiped out a lot of businesses, and in 1956 the city rezoned the area so no new homes could be built. In June 1965 the South Platte overflowed and put much of Auraria underwater. Voters approved a bond issue for a college campus in 1969, 249 businesses and hundreds of residents were relocated, and the campus opened in 1976. The University of Colorado Denver, Metropolitan State University of Denver and the Community College of Denver share it today.

Ninth Street and the old brewery

A 1970 grassroots push saved one block from the bulldozers. Ninth Street Historic Park holds 14 homes built between 1872 and 1906, and it's the oldest restored residential block in Denver. It's a Denver Landmark and on the National Register, and the houses now hold university offices, restaurants and other businesses.

The Tivoli brewery building on Tenth Street dates to the 1860s, and beer came out of it until April 1969. The brick building went on the National Register in 1973 and is now the campus student union. The Emmanuel Shearith Israel Chapel, Denver's oldest church building, and St. Elizabeth's, the only active church on campus, are both a short walk away.

Where homes are, and where they're coming

There's very little permanent housing today. What exists is mostly campus-affiliated apartment buildings like Campus Village Apartments and Auraria Student Lofts. If you want a Victorian like the ones on Ninth Street, you'll be shopping in other neighborhoods.

The parking lots are where that changes. On October 21, 2024, City Council approved Kroenke Sports & Entertainment's plan to turn the lots around Ball Arena into a neighborhood over roughly twenty years. Of the units, 18 percent will be affordable, and a 3.5-acre park will go to Denver Parks & Recreation. Metro districts will pay for the roads, parking structures and drainage, so expect those taxes and fees on top of a mortgage. Next door, the River Mile plan for the Elitch site was approved in 2018 for about 15,000 residents, and Kroenke bought out its partner in June 2025, though construction hadn't started. Much of this land has had floodplain concerns, and the River Mile plan includes reworking the South Platte to fix that, so ask for a building's flood status before you write an offer.

Game nights, rides and Meow Wolf

Ball Arena is home to the Nuggets, the Avalanche and the Mammoth, and the 2024 agreement keeps all three in Denver until 2050. Elitch Gardens has been on its riverside site since 1995 and opened its 2026 season on April 18. Meow Wolf's Convergence Station, an immersive art exhibit across four levels and 90,000 square feet, opened in 2021 on a triangle of land beside the I-25 and Colfax viaducts. There's no on-site parking there during Broncos home games.

Getting around

Four light rail stations sit inside Auraria: Colfax at Auraria, Auraria West, Empower Field at Mile High and Ball Arena-Elitch Gardens. Auraria West, on Fifth Street, is served by the C, E and W lines and often closes on Broncos game days. Colfax at Auraria, on the east side of campus, lost D Line service in June 2026, and the L Line is planned to stop there once downtown rail reconstruction ends in 2027. Speer and Auraria Parkway are the main drives, and Confluence Park sits where Cherry Creek meets the Platte.