Business

Inspired by Bernie Sanders, Brandon Rietheimer, who daylights as the manager of a Red Robin restaurant, pushed Denver’s Green-Roof Initiative to a surprising victory.

We recently posted about the most expensive Zip Codes in Colorado as judged by average rent prices. Now, there’s a new list of the fifty most expensive Colorado Zip Codes for home buyers, and the numbers are even more eye-popping.

In July, Denver Police and Animal Protection officers found 47 dogs at 2151 South Irving Street, 35 alive and 12 dead, stored in the freezer. Marleen Puzak, the home’s owner, was charged with 35 counts of cruelty to animals and twelve counts of felony aggravated cruelty to animals.

Outside magazine compiles an annual list of the 100 best places to work in these United States, and each roster seems to feature more Colorado businesses. The 2017 edition is no exception. An impressive 41 firms from the state are highlighted. Learn more about all of them here.

Jenn Superka is used to getting letters from realtors asking if she’d consider listing her home. But a letter she got in October had a different tone, she says. She calls the tone offensive.

On a recent edition of KWGN’s morning program Daybreak, co-host Natalie Tysdal was joined by Jason Granger, founder and CEO of Infinity Marketing Group, for a segment in which he showed off three phone apps that allow users to track the whereabouts of family or friends. But neither viewers nor staffers at the station knew at the time that Granger was arrested, convicted and served time in jail last year for stalking a former family member.

Twenty-five years ago this week, Colorado voters approved Amendment 2, whose backers portrayed it as outlawing “special rights” for gays, lesbians and bisexuals. The measure’s passage on November 3, 1992 provoked outrage nationwide, with Colorado’s branding as the “hate state” resulting in boycott calls from singer Barbra Streisand and other members of the national entertainment community. But while Amendment 2 was deemed unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court in a landmark 1996 ruling, a University of Denver professor sees its legacy in the current Masterpiece Cakeshop controversy and other cases she considers to be problematic on every level.

Monday, November 6, marks exactly five years since Colorado voters approved Amendment 64, which legalized limited recreational marijuana sales in the state. To mark the occasion, Brian Vicente, an attorney who co-authored the measure, will join other key figures in the campaign at a reception, dinner and fireside chat about the march to victory and the way the industry has developed during the half-decade since then. In advance of the celebration, whose details are featured below, Vicente offers reflections on the past and a look ahead to the future of legal marijuana in Colorado and beyond.

Our recent post about the most expensive neighborhoods for rent in Denver this fall included ten areas in which the average cost for a one-bedroom apartment ranged from just under $1,500 to $2,000 per month. In contrast, the ten least expensive Denver neighborhoods in terms of rent prices right now all boast an average rent price of less than $1,000.

As predicted in our previous coverage, on view below, the Denver City Council approved a smoking and vaping ban on the 16th Street Malls at its October 30 meeting. The vote wasn’t exactly a squeaker, with members favoring the measure by a 9-0 margin thanks largely to an amendment offered by Councilman Paul Kashmann that followed the outlines of policies shared with us by his colleague, Albus Brooks, who sponsored the original bill.

As we’ve reported, rents in Denver are finally coming down after a long period of sky-high costs that added immeasurably to the difficulty of making a living in Denver despite the booming economy. But the prices aren’t exactly a bargain for pet owners. Even the complexes with the best deals for lovers of dogs, cats and other critters typically require hefty, non-refundable deposits that range up to $500 and significant monthly fees.

In August, our Alan Prendergast wrote, “It’s not easy to prove that Mayor Michael Hancock and his minions are violating the Denver City Charter in their pursuit of a $300 million stormwater diversion project” that would involve closing City Park Golf Course for two year and bulldozing hundreds of trees. And he was right. Denver District Court Judge David Goldberg has ruled against the plaintiffs in a 2016 lawsuit that tied the project to Interstate 70 expansion, which opponents deride via the phrase “Ditch the ditch.”

History Colorado’s 29th Annual Cemetery Crawl will take place tomorrow, Saturday, October 28, at Fairmount Cemetery in Denver, and while it’s officially sold out, there may still be a chance to attend. Get details below. But former Denver auditor Dennis Gallagher, who’ll accompany historian and host Tom Noel, also known as Dr. Colorado, during the event, notes that threats against two historic cemeteries in the city may be scarier than any pre-Halloween meander through the tombstones.

Once again, there’s good news and bad news in Zumper’s latest report about rent prices in Denver, this one focusing on the fall of 2017. The good news is that the average cost of renting a one-bedroom apartment in the ten most expensive Denver neighborhoods right now is typically down from the levels we documented in our spring and summer roundups. The bad news is median rent for a one-bedroom in the most sought-after location is up by more than $100, bringing the cost to a jaw-slackening $2,000 per month.

Each year around this time, Forbes magazine reveals the identities of the wealthiest Americans — and since 2014, we’ve highlighed the five richest Coloradans according to their position on what’s popularly known as the Forbes 400. But while the same quintet appears on this year’s roster as was the case three years ago, there’s been a notable shift in position that’s lifted Fort Collins’s Pat Stryker into a tie with President Donald Trump. As of today, October 24, though, Stryker is worth more.

Though many questions remain, we know this: States have engaged in nothing short of an arms race to get the new Amazon headquarters, and Colorado is no exception. But our readers have mixed feelings about the behemoth online retailer possibly coming to Colorado (and Denver), especially after an ApartmentList.com study…

Initiative 300 would require that buildings in Denver larger than 25,000 square feet install “green roofs,” which incorporate vegetation or solar panels to mitigate climate change and pollution.

Today, October 19, marks the deadline for cities to submit proposals to Amazon focusing on why they should be home to the company’s second headquarters, shorthanded as HQ2, and the presentation from Denver, which is considered one of the favorites, is in. Plenty of locals have been worried about the impact on traffic, infrastructure and more should the Mile High City win the race, which is predicted to result in more than 100,000 new jobs between Amazon employees and ancillary workers, and a new study that predicts significantly higher rent and housing costs here in the wake of HQ2 adds more reasons for concern.

At least two advertisers have asked that their commercials no longer run during KOA’s radio broadcasts of Denver Broncos games because they’re upset by National Anthem-related demonstrations prior to the kickoff of NFL games.

One of the most powerful figures in Denver radio has fallen. Amy Griesheimer is out as vice president and general manager for KS-107.5, Alice and three other stations owned by the national media conglomerate Entercom, with observers speculating that the move was made because of ratings and revenue shortfalls in an industry that continues to struggle with the fallout from technological changes and shifting listener habits.

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.