“Sophia Lawson will never forget the last conversation she had with Michael Alvarado. She’d known him for six months as an outreach worker for St. Francis Center, a homeless service agency in Denver, where Lawson spent her days walking, handing out socks and toothpaste as she built relationships and tried to help people get … [Read more…]
“Developed by the University of Richmond’s Digital Scholarship Lab and released in December 2017, Renewing Inequality is an interactive, online project that maps the demographic profiles and footprints of thousands of urban renewal projects between 1950 and 1966. Using such resources as the federal government’s Urban Renewal Project Characteristics, Renewing Inequality reveals the sweeping … [Read more…]
“A district judge in Douglas County this week declined to dismiss a lawsuit in which South Metro Fire Rescue accused Parker’s urban renewal authority of improperly collecting taxes that should have gone to the firefighting agency. South Metro Fire Rescue sued in June, claiming that it could lose out on $16 million over the next … [Read more…]
“The Wheat Ridge City Council late Monday decided not to challenge a recent court ruling that invalidated restrictions the city had placed on the use of urban renewal tactics, intensifying a debate over an issue that has proven divisive in Colorado’s economic development circles. The council voted 5-3 to not appeal last month’s Jefferson County … [Read more…]
“In June, a south suburban Denver fire district filed suit against the urban renewal authority (URA) in Parker, Colorado over the diversion of property taxes to subsidize redevelopment projects. Also in June, news broke that the URA in Arvada, Colorado in the north metro Denver area sold a 9-acre parcel of land to a … [Read more…]
“Urban-renewal projects that have ground to a halt since the Colorado Legislature passed a hastily written and confusingly worded urban-renewal reform bill in 2015 may get started again under a measure that would reform the reform plan. The 2015 bill was the result of years of fighting between cities and other local governments over … [Read more…]
“On Friday, March 31, more than a year of ongoing discussions and negotiations among urban renewal stakeholders came to fruition with the introduction by Colorado State Sens. Rachel Zenziger (D – Arvada) and Beth Martinez Humenik (R – Thornton) of SB 17-279, “Concerning Clarification of the Applicability Provision of Recent Legislation to Promote an … [Read more…]
“What do Brooklyn and Denver have in common? They are two of the hottest destinations for people looking to relocate to places that offer a high quality of life. Both are rapidly gentrifying cities and part of the allure of both is their green spaces. Green spaces in Brooklyn? Yes, Brooklyn, like most global … [Read more…]
“In a marathon meeting that stretched into the early morning hours Wednesday, Littleton City Council eviscerated its urban renewal program but stopped short of abolishing the authority that administers it. The council voted 4-3 to keep alive its authority — Littleton Invests for Tomorrow — and with it, the Columbine Square shopping center as … [Read more…]
“City leaders on Tuesday set the stage to dismantle Littleton’s urban renewal authority and the dissolution of three of four redevelopment areas in the city, conceding at some level that revitalization efforts in this southern suburb had become “increasingly divisive and political for the city and its citizens.” This January 2016 file photo shows … [Read more…]