Ben Kelly of the non-profit group that represents downtown interests, says it's an "apples to oranges" comparison. "Typically, I think the land area used to identify the southeast corridor is about 36 square miles, but ... and this is what I'm driving at, the area used to identify the Downtown Denver market only about a one-mile radius from 16th & California (streets)," Kelly told GlobeSt.com. "This makes a big difference in employee density." He says the downtown offices 110,000 employees in that square mile while the southeast corridor holds only about 3,000 to 4,000 workers per square mile. Applying a five-mile radius to both markets would result in about 140,000 workers in the southeast corridor and nearly 370,000 in central Denver, according to Kelly's calculations.

Saying the southeast market has more than downtown is "akin to saying that the state of Wyoming (at 480,000 residents) is approaching the size of the city and county of Denver (at 497,000 population)," assesses Kelly.