Just the 'Fax

In October, the C-BID board decided to send the maintenance contract out for bid to see if it could get a better deal. The new proposal called for significantly less service than had been required previously: sweeping Colfax from Grant to Columbine without doing any portion of the side streets, and without graffiti removal or ongoing maintenance of the flowerpots, trees, lights or benches. Instead, the contractor would simply alert the C-BID board of any problems; from that point on, they were the board's responsibility.

Four providers returned bids; all but one were for $80,000 or more. Front Range came in at $40,000, so the board re-upped with its longstanding maintenance team. But businesses are already complaining that the side streets look much trashier.

That's something Walstrom can no longer control, but he'll still be walking Colfax. After C-BID put him on administrative leave, Colfax on the Hill snatched Walstrom up as its full-time executive director. COTH was the area's original booster group; leaders concerned with shoring up the rapidly deteriorating street founded it in 1983, then set up a business improvement district six years later. For thirteen years, Walstrom did double duty as director of both COTH and C-BID. In the late '90s, Hannifin took the organizations to court, demanding that they be separated from each other; a judge disagreed, determining that the two efforts were complementary and should continue to collaborate on all but finances.

But at the C-BID board's January 16 meeting, Hannifin finally got his way. He kicked COTH out of the C-BID offices at the same time Walstrom was put on administrative leave.

"We see Dave being free as a huge opportunity for our organization," says Andy Baldyga, COTH president. "We hope that will allow us to do more along Colfax, to improve Colfax. We're going to build on the Happy on the Hill happy hours as an opportunity for residents and business owners and city officials to meet in a friendly forum, which we feel will help to create resolution in the future when there are conflicts. More ambitiously, we are going to be reinforcing our relationships with the Downtown Denver Partnership and FAX Partnership to the east, and we've been helping to create the Bluebird District business improvement district. Ideally, we'd love to see how far we can go so that when we say Colfax, people know it's all of Colfax."

And that's just the 'Fax.