Michael Huttner is back in Denver as the CEO of Powerplant Strategies, a national cannabis communications and public affairs firm that he helped found last fall, which provides strategic advice to investors in the cannabis space.
Lakewood has been attracting creative businesses priced out of Denver. Ii’s most recent score? Reed Photo, the fine-art printing enterprise that lost all twenty parking places outside its office at 888 Federal Boulevard and will take over a Harley-Davidson dealership on West Colfax, a building that was once a theater.
Denver is planning a major renovation of the Denver Performing Arts Complex , a project known as the Next Stage. It might want to start with some more helpful signage….especially if it wants to keep those dollars coming in from philanthropists.
At the fourth and final “sharing session” to discuss the Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge that occupies most of the site that was once home to the Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant, there was on sharing. So two weeks later, opponents shared something else: a motion to stop construction of the refuge.
The National Western Center is galloping ahead with plans to become a year-round destination and regional asset, and recently sent a survey to stakeholders, geared toward creating a unified brand for the billion-dollar project.
Meow Wolf is notifying the Denver recipients for a total of $54,000 in arts grants for DIY venues and organizations: $20,000 from the City of Denver, and $34,000 from Meow Wolf’s own fund.
This year’s annual 420 Rally left behind everything from trash to complaints about long lines. Four days after the gathering in Civic Center Park, Mayor Michael Hancock called for a review of the annual event. The results were just announced: an almost $12,000 fine for the organizer, who’s banned from applying for event permits for three years.
Ratio Beerworks, which opened at 2920 Larimer Street in February 2015, earned two Best of Denver awards this year, including top honors for Best Brewery Entertainment. And thanks to some fast work by the RiNo Art District, the City of Denver, the State of Colorado and Ratio itself, the shows will go on this weekend, despite a liquor license snafu that had the taproom at the brewery closed for ten days.
Opening chef Nicholas Petrilli is back at Gozo, the Italian/Spanish-inspired restaurant that opened in March 2014 at 30 South Broadway. He’s back, but he has a new boss: Curt Sims and his wife, Pam Savage Sims, familiar faces in Denver’s restaurant/club world for the past thirty years, took over the place a month ago, bringing lots of local connections to the concept.
Westword staff writer Alan Prendergast’s “How Renick Stevenson Survived the Wild Beat Scene and Helped Transform Denver,” our November 10, 2016 cover story, just won first place for Arts and Entertainment reporting in the Best of the West contest.
How many friends can consume cannabis on a front porch? Some Colorado lawmakers wanted to limit it to five.
Michael Singer created “Interior Garden” 22 years ago. Now Denver International Airport wants to get rid of it, a request he discusses in this Q&A.
Michael Singer’s “Interior Garden,” which Denver International Airport wants to deaccession so it an save money and gain space, got a reprieve from the Denver Commission on Cultural Affairs.
The week after the 4/20 Rally was held below the State Capitol — and the office of the Colorado governor —John Hickenlooper met with Attorney General Jeff Sessions, urging him to keep the feds out of the state’s business, and pointing out how none of the ominous predictions made in the wake of the passage of Amendment 64 have panned out.
At the April 4 meeting of the Denver Commission on Cultural Affairs, commissioners received a Request for Deaccession report from Denver International Airport that proposed removing three of DIA’s original pieces, part of a $15 million-plus art collection made possible by Denver’s policy that sets 1 percent of every major construction budget aside for art. “SkyDance” never really worked, and the floor in the Great Hall is apparently doomed by big expansion plans. But why get rid of Michael Singer’s “Hidden Garden”?
Denver was barely a century old in the go-go ’60s, when eager developers began wiping this city’s past off the map, demolishing old buildings downtown and replacing them with surface parking lots, all in the name of urban renewal. But much of that stopped when Denver City Council approved the Denver Landmark Preservation Ordinance in March 1967, a year after the National Historic Preservation Act was enacted and two years after Dana Crawford began creating Larimer Square.
History repeats itself. So does “famous artist” Phil Bender’s art. Denver’s artists are getting priced out of the city, again. And when Pirate: Contemporary Art goes to Lakewood, Bender and his multiplying art will go, too.
Denver is suddenly stuck on nicknames. Developers are smacking hip labels on once-dowdy parts of town; the Colorado-born creators of South Park are smacking those developers with SoDoSoPa mockeries. So far, though, only three neighborhood nicknames have passed any test of time. One of them is RiNo, and the area is holding its annual meeting April 13.
On April 3 governors of the four states that were first to legalize recreational marijuana — John Hickenlooper in Colorado, Jay Inslee in Washington, Kate Brown in Oregon and Bill Walker in Alaska— sent a letter to Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, urging them to respect the rights of the states to pass such measures.
If you’re new to the Mile High City, memorize these 100 Colorado classics before you move on to the Best of Denver 2017.
LoHi is one of Denver’s hottest neighborhoods. That wasn’t the case when it was just known as the lower edge of Highland.
There was action inside My Brother’s Bar on Sunday, March 26. Under the watch of Jim and Angelo Karagas, My Brother’s Bar had never been open on Sunday; did this signify big changes ahead under the new owners? No way. The event was a gathering to honor Jim Karagas, who bought the bar at 2376 Fifteenth Street with his late brother, Angelo, back in 1970.
