GPHC

Going vertical at Dahlia Square

By Joan Wallach

Thirteen months ago, an article about Dahlia Square, a two block section between Dahlia and Elm Streets and 33rd and 35th Avenues, and the ribbon cutting for the new Park Hill Family Health Center, located in the southeastern quadrant, appeared in this paper. It concluded with, “Creating a safe and vital living environment for our community elders and creating jobs within the community at Dahlia Square is a visionary idea. Only time will tell whether the resources can be amassed to make it happen.”

According to Arthur McDermott, President of McDermott Properties LLC, whose proposal for senior housing at Dahlia Square was unveiled at a Northeast Park Hill Coalition meeting on February 11, the time is now. McDermott, along with Cameron Bertron of the Denver Urban Renewal Authority, and Bruce Rau, representing the current landowner, Oakwood Homes, described current efforts to “go vertical” on the fallow (and most importantly, environmentally remediated) fields that once served as the heart of a thriving commercial area.

By Arthur Rosenblum

For more than a year neighbors concerned about the future of City Park have seen a number of complicated issues raised that have provoked strong reactions and often conflict with parks officials. The imminent adoption of a policy to allow private companies to organize events for which they charge admission, the recent passage of an ordinance to allow a private company to show films in Civic Center and City Parks for a hefty fee and close a portion of the park for fifty days, and now a proposal to create an unfenced area in City Park where dogs will be allowed to run without leashes have filled countless evenings for park activists and other neighbors of the park.

One such evening, hosted by the City Park Alliance, recently brought out more than eighty neighbors to tell parks officials that they strongly object to the idea of the one year pilot project for the dog area in City Park.

The Department of Parks and Recreation has been working on a parks master plan for several years and in April of last year conducted a non-scientific study to learn what city residents think about how city-run dog parks can be improved and expanded. Gordon Robertson, the head of planning for the parks department, told the crowd at the Museum of Nature & Science that the city learned that residents want more and better dog parks and that they also want more enforcement where dogs are off-leash illegally and pose a danger to park users. Robertson described his department’s role as trying to mediate a solution between the dog lovers who want their dogs to run free and others concerned with the danger and unhealthy conditions that poses.