Matthew Jay doesn’t look or act much like a ski bum. Even though his love of skiing prompted his move to Aspen three years ago, Jay seems more like a young banker than a fun-loving ski-town dude. For a visit to his lawyer’s office in downtown Denver, he wears a…
These are not good times for patients who depend on Denver Health Medical Center. Because of bad economic times, more people are without insurance, which means more people rely on Denver Health, whose primary responsibility is to provide health care to Denver’s poor and uninsured residents. But because of increased…
Jim Schwartz lives in Centennial, in a home with a sign on the front door announcing that visitors are entering “The Dog House.” When guests ring the doorbell, the refrain from the pop song “Who Let the Dogs Out” plays over a speaker, and Schwartz’s three large black poodles begin…
Jeri Aiello feels like she grew up at the phone company. She started at the Mountain States Telephone Company in 1962, when she was just sixteen. A friend of her mother’s worked there and told her the company was hiring operators. The job was part-time but had full benefits, so…
Colorado is a long way from the birthplace of Buddhism, but a part of the Buddha’s legacy will be here this week. A collection of 45 sacred relics believed to be taken from the remains of fifteen Buddhist saints — including the historical Siddhartha Gautama himself — will be exhibited…
Marcie Miller got the idea to open a coffeehouse in Golden from a friend who’d moved there from San Francisco and complained that “you can’t even get a latte in this town.” But when she started Higher Grounds Cafe in the historic downtown in 1993, she took a gamble. Businesses…
Lower downtown, where splashy multimillion-dollar lofts are common, isn’t an easy place to impress people architecturally. One LoDo couple spent a small fortune importing sandstone from India for the exterior of their home, while a bachelor who moved into a LoDo penthouse reportedly covered his bedroom walls with mink. Aware…
Colorado’s Ocean Journey made headlines this week when the aquarium revealed that it plans to close on April 2 after being unable to find a way to pay off millions of dollars in debt. A more modest announcement earlier this month barely rated a mention in the city’s news media,…
Last summer, Richard Boulware was looking through some photos that his brother, John, had purchased at an estate sale. The photos were all taken in the small Park County town of Como in the 1890s, when it was an important transfer point on the Denver, South Park & Pacific Railroad…
Denver resident Steve Bieringer knows what it’s like to suddenly lose insurance coverage that he’d previously taken for granted. A longtime diabetic, Bieringer uses an insulin pump. After changing jobs several years ago, he transferred to his wife’s insurance plan. He was under the impression that the new plan included…
A $300 million investment by Xcel Energy in a subsidiary that buys and sells power plants all over the world has led to Xcel’s being placed on a negative credit watch by a national credit agency. The subsidiary, NRG Energy Inc., was spun off from one of Xcel’s predecessor companies…
From the start, Winter Park has been sustained by an unusual combination of private interest and public subsidy. This hybrid, known as the Winter Park Recreational Association — a 22-member nonprofit board that runs Winter Park on behalf of the city — has at times been regarded with suspicion. When…
In the 1930s, skiing in Colorado was exotic. There were no real ski areas, but that didn’t stop a group of wealthy Denverites from driving up dirt roads to the top of Berthoud Pass and strapping on skis. A simple stone cairn was the only guide skiers had to the…
The most sweeping change in Denver growth policies in a generation will soon be considered by the city council. The plan that the council comes up with will determine what parts of the city will see the most intensive development over the next twenty years, as Denver struggles to accommodate…
As theater lovers lined up around the block last weekend to buy tickets to The Lion King, a musical extravaganza coming to the Denver Center for the Performing Arts this April, they may not have realized that the law of the jungle extends to the ticket counter. Since last February,…
Not long ago, Christie Donner was seen as a fringe figure in state politics, advocating unpopular changes in the stern laws that form the centerpiece of Colorado’s part in the nation’s War on Drugs. Donner, director of the Colorado Prison Moratorium Coalition, argues that Colorado’s prison-building boom has been an…
United States District Court Judge John L. Kane is informally holding court behind his desk in downtown Denver’s federal courthouse. The 64-year-old jurist puts on his reading glasses, arches his bushy gray eyebrows and begins leafing through a pile of articles he keeps in a folder. He pulls one out…
Denver City Councilwoman Susan Barnes-Gelt isn’t known for holding her tongue. She often jousts with the mayor and fellow councilmembers, pushing through proposals such as the city’s new ethics policy, which put an end to the lobbyist-supplied meals and drinks that have long added inches to the waistlines of Denver…
When Ben Covalt moved into his small home in northwest Denver in 1996, he looked forward to renovating the house and turning the large yard into an oasis, a quiet retreat from the hassles of city life. Instead, he spent the next four and a half years in an escalating…
Just south of Lincoln Avenue on I-25, the cityscape ends, and the old Colorado — the one that preceded the shopping malls, office parks and sea of suburban roofs — comes back into view. Prairie grasses, sage and yucca fill the land, which rises up into the striking bluffs that…
A Weld County landscape firm that declared bankruptcy in April has continued to hire Spanish-speaking immigrants and to pay them with worthless checks, say former employees. Applied Landscaping Solutions, which works extensively in Longmont and Broomfield, has racked up hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt. In addition, Boulder County…
The first clue was an 1880 train ticket for the Denver, South Park & Pacific Railroad. The ticket listed the railroad’s stops, beginning with Denver and ending with Buena Vista (the railroad never made it to the Pacific, but the nineteenth century wasn’t big on truth in advertising). The conductor…
