Carman: Want to fix downtown Denver? Start by investing in people — and tackling noise.

I’ll freely admit that the financing concept for the mayor’s plan to reverse the spiraling doom loop for downtown Denver is beyond me. 

It involves using the Downtown Development Authority to generate revenue to back bonds worth something like $500 million to build stuff to make downtown more appealing. It’s how the Union Station project was financed, which seemed to work, right?

But while I’ll leave it to the wheelers and dealers (and the mayor) to find the money, I’ve got some ideas about how to spend it to make the downtown neighborhood more, well, neighborly. 

It’s my neighborhood, after all, so I have some significant skin in the game.

Everyone is invited to weigh in with ideas. The city is eager to hear from all of us and has created a site for sharing ideas. I’ll go first.

For starters, the experts all say we have to focus on people. 

I know that seems obvious, but it’s clear for decades downtown developers have focused single-mindedly on making money and have ignored what it’s like to be a human being trying to find a little joy in the urban landscape.

Now the commercial real estate magnates are getting their comeuppance with office workers — who for eons were forced to come downtown — abandoning the area to work from home. 

Apparently, if you can’t require people to come downtown no matter how lifeless it is, you need to seduce them with attractions that will make sitting at home in your pajamas staring at a computer screen all day seem as pathetic as it really is.

The good news is urban design is not rocket science.

People like open spaces, parks, flowers, trees, benches. 

In Seattle, they have “pocket parks” — tiny green spaces where people gather even in the rain to sip a cup of coffee or whatever. In Portland, they’re the “park blocks.” New York City has Central Park and the High Line. You get the idea.

Not every square inch of downtown real estate has to be monetized. 

Jan Gehl, the rock-star urban architect from Copenhagen, has helped leaders rethink the way cities are developed. One of his projects, the Built to Play program, has created urban playgrounds and skateparks in Michigan, New York and cities around the world. 

His mantra: “People and life first, always.”

Who can argue with that? 

It turns out a city that’s good for children is good for everyone, and in Denver you shouldn’t have to pay admission fees for kids to play on slides, kick a soccer ball around or hang out in cool play spaces.

The squealing crowds wading in the water at Confluence Park and running through the fountains at Union Station every summer prove that kids don’t have to have electronic devices or high-dollar entertainment centers to have fun. But they do need space.

Next, moving around the city has to be a lot less awful.

Strategically located parking complexes on the edges of the Central Business District with free, convenient transit service would go a long way toward addressing the problems created by traffic backups, endless stoplights and bloodthirsty competition for parking spaces.

And maybe we should do something about the transit station at Civic Center to make it less like a post-apocalyptic crater on the landscape and more like a convenient meeting place that doesn’t involve drug-dealing.

Oh, and another thing, we could use some retail downtown.

I know, I know. When the Cherry Creek Shopping Center happened, the downtown retail economy crashed. But if the urban core is going to be a vibrant space, we need a few more places to spend our money on something besides cocktails.

In Denver, the mountain views are great. I never get enough of them. But face it, downtown also needs more beauty. 

Urban art and architecture do a lot to humanize a city and define its public persona. We need more of that beyond the campus of the Denver Art Museum.

The refurbished transit mall (Oh, please, tell me someday it will be finished.) would be a good place to showcase interesting urban art and inviting gathering places. The planning for repopulating that vital space should be happening now.

I’m thinking it should have street performers, play spaces, galleries, ice cream, music.

It can be a destination in itself.

Which brings me to my No. 1 gripe about Denver: the noise.

The city’s noise ordinance is a laughingstock.

The major offenders in this organized criminal activity are the motorcycle gangs that arrive downtown at night (and in the daytime on weekend afternoons) to torment visitors and residents. 

They modify their bikes to produce punishingly loud noise levels. (My smart watch has even warned me of unsafe decibel levels when the bikers are in the area.)

They race through the streets in gangs of 30 or 40 or more, gunning their engines, running red lights, doing wheelies on and off the sidewalks, cutting off motorists and pedestrians, and forcing people to flee sidewalk cafes and open-air restaurants to escape the harassment.

When I called my city councilman about it, I was told that everyone is aware of it, but there’s nothing to be done. The motorcyclists simply remove the license plates from their bikes and cops can’t figure out how to arrest them, so they are absolutely free to continue breaking the laws with impunity.

The whole renegade motorcycle scene contributes to the wildly inaccurate impression that downtown is a dangerous, crime-ridden place to be avoided at all costs.

It’s not. It’s a dynamic, diverse, exciting place to live and play. It already has a lot to offer. 

And it can be so much more.

But if the city can’t figure out how to address the out-of-control bikers, even half a billion dollars-worth of civic improvements won’t make people want to be here.

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