Best Brave New World in Housing
Highline Crossing Common House Co-Housing Project
1660 W. Canal Ct., Littleton
Anyone who grew up during the '60s will tell you--living off the land in a commune is great. If you're a sheep. But the concept had its benefits, one of which was a profound sense of community. Now, updated co-housing communities borrow on that concept, with shared kitchens and dining areas, cozy lounges and child-care facilities. And the people who live in them can retreat to their own private spaces if they choose. Residents of the 36-home Highline Crossing have the option of helping to prepare meals for the group every few weeks or using their own kitchens for private repasts. In a hectic world where we often don't know the names of our closest neighbors, that seems in very good taste.
Best Student Center
Tivoli Student Union
Auraria Campus
Until the Auraria Student Union relocated in the old Tivoli Brewery last fall, the building was an empty, echoing shell. Today the place bustles with a coffeehouse, the campus book store, inexpensive restaurants, student lounges, meeting rooms, a Ticketmaster outlet and even a record store. Best of all, there are people at the Tivoli--coming and going, talking and eating, studying and bringing the place back to life. You can even get a beer.
Best Smell From the Sidewalk
All American Seasonings
1540 Wazee St.
All you have to do is take a walk down Wazee between 15th and 16th, and suddenly, your senses are flooded with the scent of varying combinations of fresh, dried, roasted or toasted basil, fennel, oregano, marjoram...the list goes on. Follow your nose (there's an increasingly strong, wonderful trail) straight to the door of the All American Seasonings company. But alas, the olfactory treat is all you'll get: the firm only sells its custom blends of spices to restaurants. Still, just to stand there and snort it is enough.
Best Light-Rail Destination
29th and Welton streets
Thanks to those slick new rail cars, one of RTD's goals--to revitalize the Five Points area--is actually being realized. Folks are visiting the plethora of rib joints within walking distance along Welton Street, as well as the Raven, a nightclub so underground it doesn't even have a phone number. Plus the Black American West Museum, the Five Points Community Center, and an express service branch of the Motor Vehicle Department are just a couple of blocks away. How's that for convenient one-stop culture shock?
Readers' choice: Five Points (actual)/DIA (potential)
Best Media Move
Five Points Media Center
2900 Welton St.
The Five Points Media Center opened last fall, right along with the light-rail line. Its mission: to provide spread-out new digs for the formerly cramped and nomadic KBDI-TV/Channel 12, public-radio station KUVO 89.3 FM and Denver Community Television. Already, the awards are pouring in--the center won a special regional Emmy in September and a Downtown Denver Award followed this spring honoring it for its role in bringing positive changes to the community. There's no place like home.
Best Cutting-Edge Philanthropy
Tommy Lazio
When Tommy Lazio took a gander at students in Grand County using printed mats to learn their way around a computer keyboard, he was appalled, to say the least. The education professor at Metropolitan State College of Denver was able to strike a deal with a firm that was upgrading and managed to have more than forty used computers sent to the county's modest school district. He's also rounded up software and other equipment and encourages volunteer Metro State students to help teach real computer skills to the Kremmling greenhorns. Enthusiasm apparently feeds the fire--Lazio now has his eye on schools in the San Luis Valley.
Best Charitable Slam Dunk
Walter Tharp
A recent Regis University graduate in communications, Walter Tharp had a dream. Several, to be exact. So he took the nest egg he'd been saving for a trip to Europe and instead hit the road, hoping to attend basketball games in every NBA arena in the country--all while interviewing players for a book and raising money for Boys and Girls Clubs in each city visited. If that sounds like a lot to juggle, it was. Tharp says he was met with varying degrees of enthusiasm, but he did manage--at great expense--to hit all the B-ball cities. And he did get to talk with players. He even managed to raise $3,000 for his chosen cause. Now he's back home in Louisiana, working on that book...and paying his bills.
Best Animal Philanthropist
Cajun the Cat
The Cat Care Society
Cajun, a handsome long-haired orange tabby, somehow manages to look perfectly dignified at all times, even if he's caught wearing a pirate hat or an artist's beret on the Cat Care Society's fundraising greeting cards and calendars. A gentle, leash-trained trooper who originally made his name in local schools and day-care centers as the star of the society's traveling Humane Education program, Cajun has helped thousands of people get in touch with their felines.
end of part 1
