by Valley Gadfly | Jun 25, 2015 | Valley Gadfly
Aaah, summer — that long anticipated stretch of lazy, lingering days, free of responsibility and rife with possibility. It’s our permission slip to be lazy. Summer — the season when we take the time to do nothing and have it count for something. It is our opportunity to lie in the grass and count the stars or study cloud formations.
This is the season when we’re held in a hypnotic spell. The sheer force of summer’s presence mesmerizes us with splashes of serenity and solitude.
Here are our playful, carefree choices for shopping, dining and entertainment offering peace and tranquility to ensure you’ll have it made in the shade:
3 Enjoy the pleasant sounds of summer at Four Mile Historic Park on Wednesday evenings during the Shady Grove Picnic Series July 1-Aug. 19, 6:30 p.m. It’s melodic musical bliss. Information: 303-777-1003.
3 Hit the farmers’ market in Cherry Creek (Sat. and Wed.), City Park (Sun.) to fill your pantry with fresh produce. Information: 303-442-1837.
3 Step into summer by revolutionizing your home with imported tile and stone from CAPCO Tile & Stone. The largest locally based distributor is your stepping-stone to home beautification. Information: 303-759-1919.
3 Spend a day ambling among plants and pyramids during Elements Day at Denver Botanic Gardens July 16, 6-9 p.m. Information: 720-865-3501.
3 Enjoy harmonies by the Denver Municipal Band and Summit Brass Soloists at Gates Concert Hall, July 16, 7:30 p.m. Information: 303-871-7720.
3 Spend a day with friends trying on glamorous and crazy outfits at Cherry Creek North’s Sidewalk Sale, July 16-19. Information: 303-394-2904.
3 Warm up to the dog days of summer at the juried art show depicting dogs in the Niza Knoll Gallery, July 17-Aug.22. Information: 303-953-1789.
3 Settle back and unwind on the Inn at Cherry Creek’s Terrace during Summer Bluegrass & Grub, July 31, 5-9 p.m. Information: 303-377-8577.
3 Be spontaneous and travel to Paris for a summer night during the Alliance Française Soirée d’Été Benefit July 11, 7-11 p.m. The proceeds from the event in the Space Gallery on Santa Fe Drive support the organization’s cultural events and scholarships. Let loose, go dancing and bring back auction souvenirs or a Dream Trip to Paris. Information: 303-831-0304.
This summer began a little late; the weather was unsure whether it would install summer at all. Most days began in stops and starts of intermittent rain showers followed by a cloudburst. With summer in limbo for a while, everyone is hoping the mosquitoes got confused and forgot to be born, albeit unlikely with all of the rain.
Soaking up in the Valley’s natural summertime amphitheater invokes a sense of connection to the environment that is a one-of-a-kind experience.
There’s something about sunshine, long days and breezy nights that make us feel like anything is possible. Now’s the time to take chances, try new things and live life to the fullest. Take an evening walk without checking your smartphone. You’ll know summer is here when you no longer get wet feet but the asphalt is getting sticky.
— Glen Richardson
The Valley Gadfly can be reached at newspaper@glendalecherrycreek.com.
by Mark Smiley | Jun 25, 2015 | Feature Story Bottom Left
Whatever your opinion is of Bruce Jenner taking on his new identity, Caitlyn Jenner, you have to respect the courage it took her to be and act in a way that completes her and gives her personal ease. Personal ease is a very elusive notion that spans way beyond being “able to sleep at night,” taking it much further.
Having the ability to share what moves you on the inside without being affected by judgement from the outside world is a very liberating way to live. Is it easy to do? No. Of course it’s not easy. Unfortunately, the day and age we live in promotes a social norm standard that insists people think and live a certain way, and when you don’t, you are opening yourself up to ridicule, scrutiny and abandonment. You’ve heard the saying, “what will the neighbors think?”
I get how scary it is to open your life up. There is much you can lose by expressing yourself in a way that’s true to your own beliefs, wants, needs and desires. But what are you gaining by being such a suffocated soul? How well do the people you associate with really know YOU? That’s a serious question…
How well do people actually know you? Moreover, how well do you actually know them? Are you truly able to develop true intimate relationships with people who project who they want you to believe they are? Or worse, with people who hide or tell nothing of substance about themselves to you? Are these strawman relationships worth having?
I’m not saying you have to be a bleeding heart to everyone you meet and wear everything about yourself on your sleeve. What I am saying is relationships are not even worth creating on a false premise. They’re as fake as the people who are afraid to put themselves “out there” in a true manner. I know we all dance to a different beat, but at the same time we all have a need to be accepted. Here is what you’re missing out on by living your life driven by fear, fear to be yourself.
- If there are things burning inside you that you refuse to express or unearth you may be missing the solace of finding a likeminded person to share that passion.
- If you are suppressing feelings from your past because they hurt too much or you are ashamed of something you did keeping that bottled up will only push you further away from the people who want to be close to you but give up at some point because the mountain that is you is too hard to climb.
- Finding an intimate relationship with an open soul person will be next to impossible. Sooner or later they will want to know YOU and all the time you spend hiding and suppressing will catch up to you and they will eventually be drawn in a different direction, away from you.
- Living as a shell is lonely. You’re never truly fulfilled and you never will be until you liberate whoever you are and who the person is that you’re afraid to reveal. Nothing sadder than two shells that attach themselves together in a relationship. Or as I like to call it “strangers on the same couch.”
- You’re missing out on life! Life in the sense of being liberated by people having no mistake about who you are and your proclivities. It’s a weird thing… Once you put yourself out there the relationships you develop WILL have meaning. People will believe in you only as much as you believe in yourself. When that spiritual shift takes place you will be on the way to the personal ease I referred to earlier.
Again, I don’t know how you feel about Caitlyn Jenner, and truthfully I don’t care. It’s just very sad to me Bruce spent most of his existence on this earth building fake relationships when he could have been true to his own needs. Time is very precious so if there is something keeping you from opening up and singing your truth about who you are I encourage you to find a way to expose yourself. I promise you’ll be better for it and you will start really enjoying the people you choose to have relationships with because you’ll know they will like you for who you are rather than who you want them to think you are.
Enjoy yourself.
Your pal, Sheik
by Mark Smiley | Jun 25, 2015 | Editorials
In the 1957 musical The Music Man by Meredith Wilson, the protagonist Professor Harold Hill pulls a scam on a small Iowa town to sell non-existent musical instruments and lessons for a boys band he claims he will form to thwart off the purported malicious effects of a pool hall in the town. In the award-winning melody “Ya Got Trouble” Professor Hill breaks into song including the lyrics:
Well, ya got trouble my friend, right here
I say, trouble right here in River City
. . . .
Pockets that mark the diff’rence
Between a gentleman and a bum,
With a capital “B”
And that rhymes with “P” and that stands for pool!
One of the reasons that the musical became so popular is that underlying premises have some believability concerning human nature. The Institute for Justice is a Virginia-based non-profit public interest law firm that somehow managed to lose by a 5-4 margin in the Supreme Court of the United States the case of Kelo v. City of New London whereby the court perniciously authorized the use of eminent domain to seize private property for the benefit of other private citizens in the name of economic development. The Institute has been raising money off its massive legal incompetence ever since.
The Institute for Justice was formed in 1991 by Clint Bollick and University of Denver Law School graduate “Chip” Mellor with seed money from moneyman Charles Koch of the famous, or infamous depending on your political views, Republican Koch Brothers. The Institute has revenues of only $18 million and must engage in endless money raising which depends on taking on highly public fights with municipalities and other governmental entities.
That is where Glendale comes in. The city sent out an innocuous notice that it was going to reauthorize the right of eminent domain for its urban renewal authority as it had in 2004 and 2013. Except this time the Institute for Justice had come to town. The Institute convinced the owners of Authentic Persian and Oriental Rugs on Colorado Boulevard that Glendale must want to condemn their three to five acres for its “Riverwalk” project renamed “Glendale 180.” Except no one in Glendale apparently has any plan whatsoever to condemn the Kholghys’ or anyone else’s property in the city.
As reality doesn’t matter when you are ginning fake outrage, a massive publicity campaign went out to save the Kholghys’ property from a condemnation that is never going to occur. Camera crews from all major stations descended on the city as well as reporters from The Denver Post and other publications in the metropolitan area to report on and to condemn the non-existent condemnation of the Kholghys’ property.
When Phillip Applebaum from the Institute came before the Glendale City Council to pontificate, it was assumed he was an attorney since he did not identify exactly what he did. But lo and behold he is, in fact, an “Activism Coordinator” who took over the publicity campaign. He wanted the Chronicle to know that the Institute was not “retained” by the Kholghys for legal work but his department is instead engaged in “grassroots activism” whose ultimate goal we assume is fund raise over a made up crisis in Riverwalk City.
Of course the Kholghys are hardly innocent dupes. They bought the land in 2006 from Jimmy O’Connor after they saw an article in The Denver Post that the city was planning an entertainment development along Cherry Creek to be called the Riverwalk. They overpaid for the property, but they assumed that the Riverwalk project would greatly increase the value of the land, as landowners along Cherry Creek helped plan the entire project. It has been indicated that they want $20 million or more for property worth half that amount. They are apparently hoping they can raise enough of a ruckus that the city can cheat its own taxpayers and pay them whatever they want.
For any redevelopment project to work the city needs tax revenues to help pay for roads and other improvements. According to state law Glendale can capture county and special district taxes for the project, provided there is so called “blight” which East Virginia Avenue clearly fits.
The Institute for Justice somehow convinced the Kholghys that a finding of blight, like the existence of a pool hall in River City, is the devil’s work and even helped organize a Saturday event to protest the assertion of “blight,” even though it would be helpful in any re-development of the Kholghys’ property by the Kholghys themselves. The Kholghys have brought at least two lawsuits against Glendale regarding the non-existent condemnation plans. The media in Denver, like the parents in River City, can however be easily conned and panicked into running to help prevent a non-existent threat.
Glendale, at its last City Council Meeting, approved a Downtown Development Authority that includes most of the southern side of East Virginia Avenue along the creek excepting the Kholghys’ property. Apparently the rest of the landowners want a project even if it doesn’t include the Kholghys.
In the end, the Kholghys will have spent a small fortune on frivolous lawsuits against the city for a non-existent threat of condemnation and their property will be worth considerably less not being part of Glendale 180. The one group that will gain will be the lawyers as well as the Institute for Justice with Phillip Applebaum as Activism Coordinator in an updated version of The Music Man crooning:
Well, ya got trouble my friend, right here
I say, trouble right here in Riverwalk City
. . . .
Blight marks the diff’rence
Between a gentleman and a bum,
With a capital “B”
And that rhymes with “C” and that stands for condemnation!
The Kholghys will be free to develop their property in any way they see fit except having to obey the zoning laws of the city just like every other landowner in the city. In the past the Kholghys seem to believe they are above the laws that apply to everyone else including providing parking and open space for any redevelopment. As with The Music Man one cannot help but admire the con the Kholghys and the Institute for Justice have pulled off on the media. But in the end most of the residents and businesses of Glendale hope that the Kholghys get what they justly deserve and that the laws are fairly and honestly applied to them as they would be applied to anyone else. The Institute in turn, will leave Glendale to go on raising money off of other made up River City crises, all the while losing legal cases that should never have been lost in the first place.
— Editorial Board
by Mark Smiley | Jun 24, 2015 | Main Articles
Parks Head Dannemiller Dumped By Hancock
Kevin Flynn
by Charles C. Bonniwell
Neighborhood activist Wayne New will be sworn in as a Denver City Councilman on July 20, 2015, after a battle royale runoff against Mayor Michael Hancock’s handpicked candidate Anna Jones, a former member of the Denver Planning Commission, in a close vote 52% to 48%. The mayor and his real estate developer and lobbyist backers pulled out all stops to defeat New even going as far as bringing in the State Democratic Party to weigh in on the election. The party faithful canvassed neighborhoods to assert that New had at one time been a Republican and had given U.S. Senator Cory Gardner $250 in his election race.
The tactic may have backfired as some local Democrats resented the mayor trying to turn a nonpartisan municipal race into a partisan one. Numerous leading Democrats across the city began endorsing New. The fact that Jones was the mayor’s pick and had been a member of the ethically challenged Denver Planning Commission hurt her with some voters. The Denver Planning Commission all of whose members are appointed by the mayor, has in re
cent years been seen as little more than a rubber stamp for real estate developers’ plans to massively increase density throughout the city. Jones, in turn, attacked New claiming he did not give enough attention to developing more affordable housing in the 10th District which covers Cherry Creek North, the Golden Triangle and Congress Park.
Money For Jones, Volunteers For New
While Mayor Hancock and his allies such as Steve Farber of Brownstein Hyatt Farber and Schreck, LLC and Maria Garcia Berry of CRL Associates were raising unprecedented amounts of money for Jones (in excess of $135,000 according to The Denver Post election Campaign Finance Report) nei
ghborhood groups throughout the city were mobilizing on behalf of New. Rafael Espinoza the winner in the general election over incumbent Susan Shepherd in District 1 not only endorsed New but sent scores of his volunteer army to the 10th District to knock on doors and get out the vote for New. Backers of former Washington Park Profile publisher Paul Kashmann who defeated the mayor’s candidate, Liz Adams, in District 6 in the May 5 General Election also volunteered for New as well as back-
ers of upset victor Tim O’Brien who will be the new City Auditor. One of the key Kashmann and O’Brien supporters who worked the Golden Triangle neighborhood for New was popular former Denver Councilwomen Kathleen McKenzie.
Despite the victory of New, as well as other neighborhood oriented candidates, it is not clear whether things will change at City Hall. Trish Abbott declared, “We now have three people who will fight for our neighborhoods — New, Espinoza and Kashmann — and they will fight the sleaze and corruption at City Hall.” Abbott cautioned however, “In the same election the so-called ‘dirty d
uo’ of Stacie Gilmore and Kendra Black also won seats and they will do as instructed by Farber and Garcia and of course real estate developer Pat Hamill.”
It is also unclear which side the former Rocky Mountain News reporter Kevin Flynn, who won in the 2nd District, is on. Both he and his opponent John Kidd were support-
ed by the real estate developers and lobbyists. Nobody knows for sure whether he will join the three recently elected pro neighborhood councilmen or fall under the sway of the mayor. Espinoza indicated that th
e pro neighborhood group of councilmembers is also looking for allies among re-elected members and they have hopes for Councilwoman-at-Large Debbie Ortega and re-elected Councilman Paul Lopez.
Dannemiller Dumped
In a separate but perhaps related move, Mayor Hancock refused to reappoint Lauri Dannemiller as the head of Parks and Recreation. The controversial Dannemiller had destroyed her reputation with some by refusing to follow her Parks and Recreation Advisory Board vote not to sell off Hentzell Park land for a development supported by Mayor Hancock. She also helped the mayor throw independent pro-park members off the Parks Advisory Board who voted against the mayor and helped put on the Board real estate lobbyists like Marcus Pachner.
Some neighborhood activists were surprised. “Lauri Dannemiller became a loathed individual in many circles in Denver for giving away the Hentzell Park land and destroying the independence of the Parks and Recreation Advisory Board,” stated Abbott. “She did the mayor’s bidding and then he unceremoniously dumped her. She has become badly damaged goods, thanks to the mayor and now she is unemployed and perhaps unemployable.”
Other observers, however, see a greater long-term plan by the mayor. Larry Stevenson, the best man at Mayor Hancock’s wedding and the asserted godfather to Hancock’s son, held a key job at the city’s Excise and Licensing Department, but was at the end of April indicted for two counts of bribery by the Denver District Attorney. The indictment states businessmen were introduced to Stevenson as Hancock’s “right hand man” and someone Mayor Hancock would go to when “he needed something done.”
The mayor’s office has denied a recent close relationship between Mayor Hancock and Stevenson, but most observers confirm that Scott Gilmore and the mayor are close friends and has become according to some circles one of the men the mayor goes to when “he needs something done.”
Gilmore was the second in charge of Parks and Recreation behind Lauri Dannemiller. More than a few eyebrows were raised when the Mayor urged Scott Gilmore’s wife, Stacie, to run for the District 11 City Council seat in northeast Denver that Hancock once held and still remains a strong influence. Gilmore and her husband have previously been the recipient of city favoritism in the form of city contracts for over $500,000 to the corporation Environmental Learning for Kids, established by the couple in 1999.
The dismissal of Dannemiller places Gilmore as the head of Parks and Recreation at least for the interim. Whether Hancock would be brazen enough to place his personal friend Gilmore as the permanent head of the floundering Parks and Recreation Department while Gilmore’s wife sits on the City Council is unknown, but would at least provide a viable rationale for the Dannemiller dismissal.
