The Place to Be

Five Points gets jazzed for this year’s festival.

Comments (0) By Jessica Centers Thursday, May 14 2009

Claudia Jordan has always been partial to the Points. The owner of the Five Points Plaza office complex, Jordan says it’s always been a place for good food. “We’re trying to encourage restaurants to come and bring that portion of the community back to where it was and make it a vibrant place to be. It’s going to happen. It’s just a matter of time.”

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And the Five Points Jazz Festival, celebrating the neighborhood’s culture and history, is certainly a good start. “Music has always been an outlet down on the Point,” Jordan says. “The Five Points quarter is undergoing quite a bit of redevelopment, hoping to capture that bygone area and return it to its original state.”

This is the festival’s sixth year, and Jordan says it comes at an exciting time. Plans are still in the works to redevelop the famed Rossonian Hotel, Cervantes’ Masterpiece Ballroom — though it caters to a “younger crowd” — has been bringing music to the Points on a regular basis, and new restaurants are coming in all the time. “It’s going to be a place to be,” Jordan says. “Kind of like Larimer Street, but not necessarily just a bar situation.” Today, starting at 11 a.m., venues along Welton Street will be alive with free jazz, and local restaurants will sell be selling $6 boxed lunches. At 2:45, at the KUVO Outdoor Stage at 29th and Welton, special tributes will be played to neighborhood jazz legends Billy Tolles, Gloria Holliday and Purnell Steen. For more information, go to www.denvergov.org/5PointsJazz.
Sat., May 16, 11 a.m.-5 p.m., 2009