If you don't live, work or frequent downtown, you just might want to turn the page.

I've worked downtown for 24 years now, with a front-row seat to watch it evolve from an employment district with few residents and few places to eat or drink. Now it's a thriving urban playground sporting 300 restaurants, 11,000 residents and 110,000 workers.

Not so long ago, Larimer and Market streets were awash in winos. Now, wine and martini bars serve baseball fans as well as businesspeople on expense accounts.

It's been fun to watch, and there's more to come. That's why I found myself Thursday in the office of Tami Door, president and CEO of the Downtown Denver Partnership, the uber advocate for the city's inner core. At the group's 52nd annual meeting last week, Door delivered her state-of-downtown speech,which contained some tidbits I wanted her to embellish:

• Video surveillance cameras. Safety and security still show up near the top of surveys of conventioneers. Door is working with the city and police to acquire corporate funding for monitored security cameras in the nine-block area downtown that is the focus of her "Revitalizing the Core" task force. "We want to send the message that we are monitoring criminal behavior, and that this is one area where it is not acceptable," she said. "We want the police to lead us, but there are opportunities out there - partnerships and grants - to make these things happen. We want to be able to fund these cameras and make sure they are monitored."

Door also mentioned the six Denver cops who began foot-patrolling the city center in April. "They're like beat cops, getting to know the business owners and their concerns," she said.

• "Green" parking lots. The lots are among projects Door hopes to have completed by August 2008, not coincidentally when the Democratic National Convention comes to town. If she succeeds, expect to see a few of the downtown lots sprout landscaping features fed by captured rainwater. Expect to see different types of new surface materials that "help absorb heat and take pollutants out of the air while helping to cool the environment," she said. I can't wait.

• 16th Street Mall. The mall is 25 years old next year. Door's group is in talks with RTD and the city about what might be changed. Don't be surprised if the medians are removed and the buses drive down the middle of the street, as they do on the west end of the mall. The sidewalks on either side would be widened correspondingly. Cart vendors would move from the median to the sidewalk, and restaurants would have bigger patios. And, of course, "undesirable elements" that congregate in the medians would be displaced. "We're not trying to push people off the mall, just make the best use of it," Door said.

The dozens of trees that would seemingly be displaced? "Trees can be moved," she said.

• Recalcitrant landlords. They are the scourge of downtown, John Huggins used to tell me before he stepped down a few months ago as the mayor's economic development director. That's why Door and so many others still crow about developer Evan Makosky's recent acquisition of the so-called "Fontius block," the long-vacant mall eyesore between Welton and California streets.

"In my first week here I heard it referenced in every conversation, every answer to the question, 'What hasn't happened downtown yet that you'd like to see?' " Door said. "We never gave up on it, and it's finally happened. Once it's redeveloped, it will entirely change the way people use the mall" because the block connects 16th Street with the Colorado Convention Center.

In the past, retailers have chosen not to locate downtown because of the Fontius, Door said.

"This acquisition sends the message that we are a significant urban environment in this country, and that creates expectations for landowners. There will be no more tolerance for poorly maintained buildings.

"Everything else looks worse when something nearby looks better."

If you want to read more about all this, check downtowndenver.com. Business editor Rob Reuteman can be reached at 303-954-5177 or reutemanr@RockyMountainNews.com.