Editorial —
Denver Mayor Mike Johnston
This Editorial Board has scant opportunity to support or praise Denver Mayor Mike Johnston since his swearing in as Denver’s 46th mayor on July 23, 2023, other than to say at least he is not Michael Hancock. This difficulty is in large part due to Mayor Johnston spending all of his time his first 19 months in office on the homeless and the “newcomers” and little else.
That leaves the needs of 99% of Denver’s residents unattended to. A mere walk downtown demonstrates a city badly in decay. Mayor Johnston is a self-described “progressive” and like many other big city progressive mayors, like Karen Bass of Los Angeles and Brandon Johnson of Chicago, he is pretty good at theoretical constructs but lousy at governing.
That is why this Board and most of the city was in shock when he announced that the City and County had swapped 144 acres of industrially-zoned land for the 155-acre former Park Hill Golf Course which will now be a regional park to open this summer.
The swap took some doing. Denver took $12.7 million from a voter approved park fund and acquired from the Denver International Airport 144 acres of industrial zoned land located in Adams County. It then swapped it for the 155-acre old Park Hill Golf Course property located by Colorado Boulevard in the Northeast Park Hill neighborhood. The transaction still needs to be approved by Adams County but that is not expected to be a problem.
On the surface this looks like a bad deal for Westside Investment who paid $24 million for the property from the Early Learning Center and is now receiving property worth half that much from Denver.
But don’t worry. The driving force behind the swap was not Mayor Johnston and Denver but Westside Investments who will, behind the scenes, be making out like a bandit as developers usually do.
But we don’t care. Johnston got the deal done for the benefit of all of Denver, and particularly the residents of Park Hill. All his predecessor ever did was destroy every piece of open space he could hand over to developers.
Now what to call the new park? If there has ever been a “Peoples Park” it is this one. The people of Denver fought against their own government and a favored developer hell bent on turning green land into a pavement covered development.
At the front of the park there should be a very impressive statue of Wellington Webb flanked by Penfield Tate and Woody Garnsey. No one in Denver should ever forget what they accomplished for the people of the City and County of Denver.
— Editorial Board
