by Mark Smiley | Jul 22, 2016 | Travel
by Megan Carthel
Happening every Wednesday night from June 8 to August 17, the Shady Grove Picnic Series is a delightful night of local and national music talent. A crowd gathers together with picnics, friends and family, fresh air and good music. The Four Mile Historic Park adds the perfect backdrop to this almost two-decade musical tradition. So far this year, the Shady Grove Picnic Series goers have had the pleasure of hearing the musical talents of Wendy Woo and Friends, Perpetual Motion and Sweet B and Her Moonshine.
Harry Tuft and his friends played a magical set on July 13. The folksy-country sound was a perfect match for the evening’s warm breeze and shady trees. Marti Friednash, Mag Hayden, Ron Jones and Jack Stanesco joined Tuft on stage, adding not only a mix into the music, but bits of comedy. It was truly an enjoyable show for every age.
The Shady Grove Picnic Series is the perfect family night, date night or evening out of the house, and with the Em’s Ice Cream truck at every show doling out fresh and cold organic scoops of delicious home-made ice cream, it’s a great way to cool off and relax after a long, hot summer day.
These relaxing Wednesday evenings are put on by Swallow Hill Music, a non-profit organization for musicians and music lovers. Barry Osborne, mar
keting manager for Swallow Hill Music, said the Shady Grove Picnic Series is a more low-key concert that allows friends to come together, listen to music, chat, enjoy each other’s company. It’s safe to say music fans are transported to a summer oasis within the city limits. The family-friendly and laid back environment gives younger music fans the chance to experience live music. Swallow Hill Music works with Four Mile Historic Park to put together these summer staple Wednesday nights and to find emerging talent.
“The Shady Grove Picnic Series is a great way to introduce music fans to bands they might not be aware of,” Osborne said.
For the bands, it’s a chance to get in front of a larger crowd than they’re used to — with about 100 or so people gathering around the tent stage.
While the Shady Grove Picnic Series generally showcases folk music, other genres are making an appearance this year. Color, a funk, soul band driven around a guitar lending to a modern-soul sound, and The Scones, with an Americana-Ro
ck-and-Roll sound, are sure to shake up the Shady Grove scene with new and exciting sounds.
“Even though we’re known as a folk organization and present a lot of folk we feel the American music experience is broad enough we can push that,” Osborne said.
For Osborne, when everything from the audience to an energetic live band comes together, putting on these shows is amazing. “[The Shady Grove Picnic Series] feels like a hallmark of summer in Denver,” said Osborne.
Swallow Hill Music does more than put on concerts. The non-profit has a music school that employs experienced and talented musicians. Students learn a song by the end of their first class. But teaching isn’t all Swallow Hill Music does; the non-profit hosts “exceptional musical experiences” throughout the year in the Denver community. Their concerts feature up-and-coming artists, local talent and national talents who “enrich the local arts scene.”
This year, tickets are available online or at the door. An evening of great music and picnics is a steal at $12 for adults, $8 for Swallow Hill Music and Four Mile Historic Park members and kids under 12 can enjoy the music for only $2 — kids under two are free. For more information, visit Swallow Hill Music’s website swallowhillmusic.org.
by Mark Smiley | Jul 22, 2016 | Main Articles
New Hotel Adding Fuel To Fire Of Beltway Boom
by Glen Richardson
South Colorado Boulevard is heading into summer with explosive momentum: Three new retail redevelopments are getting underway plus two towers along the thoroughfare have sold to a Middle East investment firm for $62 million. Furthermore, at the Colorado Center — the southernmost dense pocket on the corridor — where Lincoln Properties currently has a 15-story office-retail building and 189-unit apartment complex under construction the developer is also planning to build a hotel.
Once the business backwater to flashier projects in Cherry Creek and downtown, a potent mix of fierce market demand, older properties ripe for redevelopment, plus high traffic volume is fueling a race to rebuild. The muscle behind the boulevard’s new driving power is Glendale’s $175 million entertainment and retail venue planned between Colorado Boulevard and Cherry Street, and Virginia Avenue and Cherry Creek Drive North. Creating added horsepower and torque to the business breakaway are the two $50 million Sonic Automotive car dealerships (Mercedes-Benz and BMW) under construction on the east side of Colorado Boulevard in Glendale.
Colorado Blvd. real estate market watchers remind the Chronicle that North Carolina-based Sonic originally swapped its Cadillac dealership in Lone Tree to John Elway Automotive Group for the Colorado Blvd. Chevy site. Initially Sonic planned to continue running the Chevy dealership but later came to the conclusion, “the real estate was more valuable than the Chevy business.” Moreover, both the BMW and Mercedes dealerships now under construction will have two-story showrooms. Insiders note the property has to be very valuable to go vertical because it’s very expensive.
Buying Binge
Directly across Colorado Blvd. from the Mercedes-Benz dealership under construction, Florida real estate investor and car dealer Ira Lang has purchased the site that once housed language-learning center BridgeEnglish. The two buildings on the site at 915-925 S. Colorado Blvd. will be redeveloped into 7,020 square feet of new retail space. The Miami Beach investor who already owns more than a half dozen properties on Colorado Blvd., paid $3.275 million for the prime property on the corner of Colorado
Blvd. and Kentucky. Longtime Lang associate Gary Glusman — who manages all of Lang’s Denver properties — says, “we simply ran out of buildings to buy as investments along Colorado Blvd. so we are buying older properties that can be redeveloped.”
Lang Development has also purchased a parcel of land at Colorado Blvd. and Arizona for $3.2 million. A three-story, 17,706-square-foot office building sits on the three-quarters of an acre site. The 52-year-old building will be partially demolish
ed and remodeled. The building is being redeveloped with 70 off-street parking spaces.
Further south at 2865 S. Colorado Blvd. Lang is redeveloping a 15,000-square-foot, three-story office building near one of Denver’s busiest thoroughfares. Located just north of Hampden Ave. with easy access to I-25, Lang paid $825,000 for the property in an area that already has several office and retail new construction and redevelopment projects. G3 Architecture is designing all three of Lang’s retail redevelopments.
Greenbacks Buy
Investcor, an active investor in U.S. real estate based in the Middle East island country of Bahrain on the western shores of the Persian Gulf, has purchased the two Centerpoint Towers on Colorado Blvd. for $62 million. Built in the early 1980s, the Centerpoint 
complex is comprised of two office towers located at 3900 E. Mexico Ave. and 1777 S. Harrison St.
Seattle-based Unico — owner of a cluster of Cherry Creek North buildings — was the seller. Back in 2006 and 2012 Unico paid a total of just more than $38 million for the two buildings.
Centerpoint II made up the majority of the sale price at $32.7 million. The tower is a 17 story building with 205,000 rentable square feet. At 14 stories Centerpoi
nt I is the smaller tower and has 168,000 rentable square feet, accounting for $29 million of the sale price.
Full Tilt Ahead
The Colorado Center — where new residential and retail components are under construction near Colorado Blvd. and Evans — has been ripe for growth since the light rail station opened. With 35 stations across five lines, the existing light rail system allows for fast and easy metro area travel.
More than one million square feet of development is currently underway on the 13-acre office, retail and entertainment complex. Tower III construction began in August of 2015. The Main Street and the Residential Tower construction got underway this June.
Buildings featuring 269 apartment units and 40,000 square feet of retail space are being built closest to the transit station. Already featuring three Class-A 
office buildings, a Dave & Busters plus United Artists Colorado Center Stadium 9 and IMAX, a hotel is the logical next addition to the Center’s portfolio. Although shown in Denver’s Tryba Architects master plan, the firm has yet to release a rendering of the proposed hotel.
by Mark Smiley | Jul 22, 2016 | Glendale City News
by Brent New
Writer for and on behalf of the City of Glendale
Infinity Park at Glendale, Colorado
Glendale is throwing a beer festival alongside a prestigious rugby tournament at Infinity Park.
How the two will ultimately mix? Where better to find that answer than inside one of Colorado’s flavorful craft breweries.
“I think rugby and beer are perfect together because beer actually has all eight amino acids,” Post Brewing Co. Director of Sales AJ Boglioli weighed in. “Perfect for a postgame sip.”
Hmm. Well, all right then.
The event on August 27, dubbed “Glendale’s Bruises and Brews Beerfest,” will give attendees the chance to sample from breweries and distilleries while taking in the second day of the three-day Serevi RugbyTown 7s Tournament (August 26-28).
More than 20 breweries will showcase their top beers, liquors and hard ciders. Admittance — and unabashed acceptance — is $35.
“It seems like two passionate groups of people coming together — people who are passionate about rugby and people who are passionate about beer,” said Boglioli, whose brewery will make its first appearance at the event.
“It just makes sense,” he added. People are working up a sweat and watching a sport that they love, and then they get to sit back and chug some delicious beer that they like to drink.”
And hey, the whole rugby part should be pretty good, too.
The Rugby 7s tournament — called 7s because of two seven-minute halves and seven players on each side — will feature teams from five nations, including teams from each branch of the United States Armed Services.
It comes on the heels of the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio, where 7s will make its fast-paced, hard-hitting debut.
The tournament purse is $10,000.
“In my opinion it’s an all-around really good event for everybody,” said Annette Gilman, the owner of Scrum Enterprises, the liquor concessionaire for Infinity Park. “People like it. They come, they sample beer, they go down and watch some rugby, they come back. … It’s great.”
Gilman said she expects between 22 and 24 breweries and four distilleries.
Expected beverage providers include 3 Freaks Brewery, Boggy Draw Brewery, Blank & Booth Distillery, Bull and Bush, C Squared Ciders, Colorado Cider Co., Comrade Brewing, Copper Kettle, Dad and Dudes Breweria, Denver Beer Co., Epic Brewing Company, Goldspot Brewing Company, Golden Moon Distillery, Hogshead Brewing, Joyride Brewing, Lariat Lodge Brewing, Mile High Spirits, Odell Brewing, Platt Park Brewing, Post Brewing, Sanitas Brewing, State 38 Distillery, Station 26 Brewing, Strange Brewing, WestFax Brewing and Westminster Brewing Co.
The high (large amount) turnout? It’s no secret as to why, said Kelissa Hieber, a brewer at Goldspot Brewing Company.
In a time where beerfests can sometimes blur together, Glendale is making sure it stands apart.
“A lot of breweries have been really pulling back with how many festivals they are doing,” said Hieber, a lover of beer and rugby. “We always before considered it as free marketing but now there are so many festivals and so many of them are the same. There’s no other entertainment festivals like this, just a bunch of beer.
And the wider demographic makes this beerfest all the more exciting.
“This festival is unique in that is does have that entertainment factor and you’re bringing people to your booth that wouldn’t go to your standard festival,” she adds. “We were really eager to come back this year.”
The beer will be served under a giant tent at the park’s Festival Plaza from 12-4 p.m.
Admission for the two-in-one event includes a ticket and a commemorative tasting mug. Only 1,500 tickets will be sold.
“I think people have really enjoyed it,” said Kieran Nelson, the Director of Stadium Operations at Infinity Park. “I think that a lot of people think it’s a cool mix — it’s a cool marriage if you will.”
The beerfest in its current form has been going on since 2014 and the Serevi RugbyTown 7s is in its fifth year.
A donation from the event will go to the Glendale Raptors Rugby Youth Foundation.
Tickets for Glendale’s Bruises and Brews Beerfest can be found online. It includes unlimited beer pours and three distillery tastings. Must be 21 or older.
Tickets for day two of the Serevi RugbyTown 7s Tournament ONLY are $10. Children under the age of 12 are free.
Free parking is available at the corner of Kentucky and Cherry Street or at the corner of Ohio and S. Birch Street. First come, first served.
by Mark Smiley | Jul 22, 2016 | General Featured
Cirque du Soleil’s New Show Entertained Crowds At The Pepsi Center
by Megan Carthel
From Montreal to America, July 20 marked the one-year anniversary of the new Cirque du Soleil show TORUK — The First Flight, which is based on James Cameron’s 2009 movie Avatar. Avatar grossed $2.7 billion worldwide making it the 
largest grossing movie of all time.
TORUK is a multimedia spectacle that takes place thousands of years before the events of Avatar and before any humans visited Pandora. Led by a storyteller character, the show follows three young adults — Ralu, Entu, and Tsyal — and tells the story of the first flight of the Toruk (the dragons they rode in the movie).
One of the puppeteers who controls Toruk during the show is Nick Barlow, from Australia, who just finished his first year as a Cirque performer.
“It’s very exciting,” Barlow said, “It’s definitely the biggest thing I’ve ever been a part of. It’s so amazing to go out every night with thousands of people there just really excited to see the show.”
While Barlow certainly loves his job and puppeteering, it wasn’t always his intention to become a puppeteer. While in school in Australia, he studied theater and “fell” into puppetry — the rest has been history ever since. Before Cirque, he was a puppeteer on the Australian tour of War Horse and worked as a physical performer with Polyglot Theatre.
“That wasn’t my intention, I just fell into it and found that I loved it. Especially the fact that you can play so many different things as a puppeteer,” Barlow said. “As an actor, you’re often typecast by your look and your age, so as a puppeteer you can play a whole matter of stuff.”
In the show he handles five puppets including the Viperwolves; the Direhorses; his personal favorite, the Ostripeed, a pink bird designed specifically for the show; and the main puppet, Toruk, which takes all six puppeteers to maneuver. The Toruk puppet is the largest on set weighing in at 240 pounds with an aluminum frame and a carbon fiber covering. Luckily for the puppeteers, the movement of the creature is automated, but they bring it to life. While six minds work at once, a puppet becomes an animal on Pandora.
“We all have to kind of think and breathe as one to make that creature come alive,” Barlow said. “By now, we’re just in tune with each other. We can feel when it’s going to go this way or that way or move together at the same time, which kind of creates that idea that it’s one big idea, not just six different thoughts going on.”
The puppeteers also have a crucial part of the show — playing Eywa, the spirit of the Na’vi. Dressed in black their character represents the shadow of the Na’vi clan that brings life to the planet of Pandora — a symbolic metaphor for the job of a puppeteer.
“As that spirit, we also have other jobs in the show of bringing life to other parts of the set,” Barlow said. “Or, being that spirit presence in the space, which is ki
nd of part of the story — this connection to the spirit world of Pandora.”
It takes a lot of time and energy to bring the world of Pandora to life. Each week the cast and crew travel to a new city, setting up the stage on Wednesdays. Shows run until Sunday, with double features on the weekends. Before each show, performers stretch, warm up in their traveling gym, and rehearse different parts and new moves.
“The show isn’t ever completely locked down,” Barlow said. “We’re always trying to make things better and add things here, add things there, and tighten things up.”
The performers all do their own makeup, which takes about an hour. For puppeteers, sound checks and mics are an additional preparation as they make all of the animal sounds and noises audiences hear. Then after the last show Sunday night, the crews pack up the stage and it’s immediately on the road again with Monday and Tuesday off in a new city.
“It’s hectic, but it’s interesting and you see a lot of America,” Barlow said.
This is Barlow’s second time in the U.S. after touring with another show, and his first time in Denver. During his days off, he was able to get a bike and ride along the Platte River, exploring what he could. The Mile High City’s elevation and thinner air affects the performers running around the stage and some props that have to fly in the air.
The cast and crew travel, work and live together the entire tour, creating a type of family for the performers away from home, but Barlow still misses his own family in Australia.
“It’s a really close-knit group, which makes life on the road a lot easier because it’s hard,” Barlow said. “I’ve got a real family back home in Australia. That’s the hard part of touring is being away from them.”
“The people who work for Cirque du Soleil are in general very like-minded individuals, the cast, crew, staff, everyone,” said Laura Silverman, Publicist, Cirque du Soleil, TORUK — The First Flight. “They obviously have a passion for entertainment, creativity, [and] travel. And this show specifically, everyone on the show, the cast and crew is really extraordinary. Everyone gets along really well and they all have the passion to put on the best show possible.”
To put on a great show, the venue and stage need to meet the needs of the artists. Just as the world of Pandora is large, so is the stage. Toruk — The First Flight stage is the largest ever to be used in a Cirque show. The entire arena is used as the stage, giving all the performers a huge space to work with. In all, Toruk — The First Flight is a unique Cirque show unlike any other, with a larger stage, a narrator and storyline a
nd more technological displays than acrobatic.
Cirque, which is known for acrobatics, has received mixed reviews from critics in the cities it has performed in since it debuted in December 2015. Recognizing that fans have come to expect acrobatics in cirque shows, there have been changes over the last six months.
“We do the best we can to manage expectations in advance,” said Silverman. “The show has evolved. All cirque shows are constantly evolving because we tour with an artistic director and his job is to make sure that it’s relevant and looks the best and we take what we learn from different audiences. So this show has more acrobatics in it now than it did six months ago.”
“We have 18 shows performing around the world right now,” said Silverman. “[This show] is the biggest departure from what the company was built on. But each show of those 18 is going to stand out from the others.”
TORUK — The First Flight had a successful run in Denver, adding a matinee performance on Friday, July 22. “Denver has proven to be a really great market for Cirque du Soleil and we will continue to come here,” said Silverman.
The show heads to four different cities in August: Chicago, Indianapolis, Birmingham and Nashville. For a complete listing, visit www.cirquedusoleil.com/toruk /tour-dates.
