Business

Once upon a time, ratings were pretty much the only way of judging commercial success for local television news. But that’s no longer the case. Witness a new report by TV Spy, a broadcasting-industry website, which grades Denver TV outlets and personalities by social-media engagement. Using that measure, 9News is the clear number one, while Kyle Clark, anchor of Newt With Kyle Clark, tops the talent chart in part because of the ways he uses Facebook, Twitter and Instagram beyond simply establishing and extending his brand, as he explains to us in the following Q&A.

I feel the commercialization of Christmas is currently way more out of hand than when Linus van Pelt first dropped Biblical verses on the American public, and you, Walmart, are making things worse. As exhibit A, I offer my visit this past weekend to one of your branches in Northglenn, where I discovered that a huge portion of the store is already devoted to Christmas.

What’s in a name? Plenty, according to the RiNo Art District, which was created more than a dozen years ago to celebrate the gritty warehouse area along the Platte River that has since become the hottest neighborhood in Denver.

Around the country, Boulder has a reputation as a youthful, wealthy, lily-white, politically progressive utopia. But the truth turns out to be considerably more complicated. According to “Boulder County Trends,” a fascinating new report from the Community Foundation Boulder County that’s accessible below, the population in the area is growing older and more diverse in ways that are complicating the interactions of the well-off and their less financially secure neighbors. Moreover, the county’s ideology doesn’t always translate into fairness or charity in quite the ways most locals likely imagine.

The Colorado Department of Transportation has announced it is partnering with a nonprofit focused on traffic mitigation on ways to lessen single-occupancy commuter traffic during the Interstate 70 expansion project in northeast Denver.

Last month, as we’ve reported, rent prices in Denver finally started heading down after years of increases that contributed to the difficult many had making a living in Denver despite the strong economy. As a result, there are finally some good rent deals in the metro area, as exemplified by the available spaces below.

Denver International Airport is trying to put more local flavor in its concessions. But shouldn’t the airport ask the locals before they lift neighborhood names?

If the bond issue passes in November 2017, Mayor Michael Hancock’s transportation team will be able to take their plans for Denver traffic mitigation and prodding people out of their cars to the next level.

As we’ve reported, metro Denver rent prices have been moderating of late, but as recently as August, rents were up on a month-to-month basis almost everywhere in the area. However, that’s finally changed. In September, rent prices were either unchanged or down from the previous month in ten different communities in and around the Mile High City.

After Hyperloop One announced that the Rocky Mountain Hyperloop project was among the winners of the Elon Musk-affiliated transportation company’s Global Challenge to “identify the strongest new Hyperloop routes in the world,” and revealed a new public-private partnership with the Colorado Department of Transportation to launch a feasibility study, questions arose about how quickly this dream could become a reality in these parts. CDOT’s Amy Ford says four years is a goal, albeit one that can only be achieved if a lot of things go right.

Today, September 29, Denver mayor Michael Hancock formally unveiled a draft document of Denver’s new proposed five-year housing plan. “Housing an Inclusive Denver,” accessible below, aims to address the have-nots as well as the haves in the go-go economy of today’s Mile High City. Despite the apparent good times, Hancock acknowledged that “people are being squeezed out.”

A new study ranking the most expensive Zip Codes in Colorado shows that the vast majority of them are in the vicinity of Denver and Boulder. Only three Zip Codes out of the top fifty fall outside that area, and all of them can be found along the Interstate 25 urban corridor.

Thanks to Denver’s red-hot housing market, Mile High City home values are currently higher than they were at their pre-recession peak, although perhaps not by as much as some frustrated home buyers might have expected. But while Colorado as a whole has experienced a similar boom, there are plenty of places in the state where homes are worth considerably less than they were a decade and a half ago.

Housing and workers rights activists with the organization 9to5 Colorado disrupted a law firm self-described as “Colorado’s #1 Evictor” on Thursday, September 20 with mock eviction notices of their own.

Today, The Green Solution is one of Colorado’s largest marijuana dispensary chains, and it’s expanded into four other states so far, with big plans for future growth. But co-founder and CEO Kyle Speidell, who recently spoke to us about the launch of Blazin’ Hit Radio, the ambitious new online home of former KS 107.5 favorites Larry and Kathie J, who are hosting a welcome-back party for listeners on Friday, September 22 (details below), notes that TGS is, at its heart, a family affair. Indeed, he and his three brothers have helped develop the operation over the past seven years into what seems poised to become a signature cannabis business from coast to coast.

Given the horrific damage wreaked upon Texas, Florida and Puerto Rico by recent hurricanes, those of us who reside in Colorado may think we’re relatively safe from Mother Nature at her most extreme compared to most places in the country. But a new study suggests that we’re living in a dream world. The figures show that five counties in Colorado, mostly along the urban corridor, are at very high risk of housing damage from natural hazards, with Denver listed as the sixth most imperiled major city in the country by this standard.

Neighbors of the newly completed Country Club Towers may be cursing the Denver developer who pushed through the gigantic project, but they have nothing on the residents of Churchill, Manitoba, who can thank Pat Broe for their being cut off from the rest of Canada.

Moments ago, after months of anticipation, Hyperloop One, whose high-tech tube transportation concept is central to a firm affiliated with billionaire Elon Musk, of Tesla Motors and SolarCity fame, has named the ten winners of its Hyperloop One Global Challenge, a contest intended to “identify the strongest new Hyperloop routes in the world.” And not only did the Rocky Mountain Hyperloop proposal make the grade, but Hyperloop One has announced that it will enter into a public-private partnership with the Colorado Department of Transportation to launch a feasibility study here.

As we’ve reported, rent prices in many metro Denver communities are falling on a month-to-month basis even as they continue to show a substantial increase over the same period in 2016. This same phenomenon can be seen in Zumper’s September report for the metro area, with the cost of renting a two-bedroom apartment varying by nearly $500 from community to community.

This year would have marked the fourth time in nearly twenty years that Aurora voters would have decided whether to allow the city to spend money on a motor speedway. In 1999, voters banned the city government from doing so; in the ensuing years, city officials have had one tool — a ballot initiative — to remove that ban from the city’s charter.

We know plenty of you haven’t called the Mile High City home for long. That’s why in October of last year we started our Tips for Transplants series, in which we broke down our best advice for newbies by month (because November in Denver is very different from November in…

In September 2016, we told you about attempts to convince a national grocery chain to build in Montbello, a diverse Denver neighborhood that qualifies as a food desert because it doesn’t have a single full-service supermarket. A year later, every major retailer approached by the community has declined to launch such an effort, even though Montbello was named America’s fastest growing “suburb” in a survey released earlier this year.