News

Senator Hank Brown’s selection of Greeley attorney Walker Miller to fill a federal judgeship in Denver won’t surprise those who know that the men’s personal relationship extends back to their college days in 1957. But the senator may well owe Miller more than just a debt of friendship. Miller was…

Last week Jet Aspen, the start-up airline that was to ferry powder-hungry passengers from Los Angeles and other cities to Aspen, Telluride and Montrose, filed for protection from its creditors under Chapter 11 federal bankruptcy laws. Despite publicity and millions of dollars it raised, the Virginia-based company never got off…

A few weeks ago, about three hundred Denverites lined up to attend the world premiere of a new movie at the refurbished Oriental Theatre in northwest Denver. It was a gala event for the 650-seat theater: Limousines pulled up and unloaded gents in tuxedos and ladies in gowns. “I’ve been…

A wing and a prayer: Guess we can forgive Denver airport officials if they felt a chill run down their spines after the May 11 crash of a ValuJet DC-9 in the Florida Everglades. It wasn’t so long ago, after all, that DIA honchos were falling all over themselves trying…

The most bitter newspaper war in Denver right now is between two papers most people have never heard of. The dispute pits the publisher against the former editor of the Women’s Business News, a biweekly paper that has offered profiles of local businesswomen and articles on workplace issues for the…

Bland Hotel While I appreciate that Patricia Calhoun’s reference to my essay “The Loss of Zeckendorf Plaza” (“Razin’ in the Sun,” May 16) allows that even bureaucrats may have hearts, I do take issue with her charge that neither DURA nor the planning director put up much resistance to the…

The Lone Tree Golf Club describes itself as “a public country club,” and the oxymoron seems entirely fitting. The gabled roof of the 50,000-square-foot clubhouse looms over the fairway, and the club boasts a full-service restaurant and bar, a parquet dance floor, a boardroom, and even suites for overnight visitors…

“Anything’ll set you off,” says garage-door repairman Jerry Sutliff. It was a conversation in a restaurant that set Sutliff off one day last December. Another man was talking about his mother, who’d just died. “What got me,” Sutliff remembers the man saying, “was that Mom’s house was full of rooms…

A new lending institution, which some suspect is nothing but a novel way to lure personal-injury clients to hungry attorneys, has several local lawyers crying foul. Even Franklin D. Azar, the personal-injury attorney whose shameless television commercials have made him a household word, disapproves. “Somebody’s going to be in a…

If you are sixteen-year-old child-prodigy gardener Jonah Bradley on your day off, think polite reserve. Otherwise, just as you begin loading your cart with white petunias and nicotiana–and maybe the strange lime-green nicotiana known as “Starship,” which you have been thinking about privately all winter–some old lady will come up…

LoDo lowdown: On Tuesday, Lower Downtown District Inc. released its much-blabbed-about neighborhood plan charting LoDo’s aesthetic future. The draft document, yet to be approved by the city council, calls for a 100-foot height limit on new buildings in most of LoDo and a 100-foot puke limit for restaurateurs and bar…

Is the man who attacked you on the night of April 12, 1993, in this courtroom?” Heather Smith hesitated for a moment before taking her eyes off Denver Deputy District Attorney Doug Jackson. Everything she had been through in the past three years–the pain, the nightmares, the self-doubts–hinged on this…

Child’s Pay Michelle Dally Johnston’s April 25 story, “Adopting an Attitude,” was disconcerting to read, for three reasons: 1. If not for private adoption agencies, some of which are highly ethical and caring agencies, the only options left for Coloradans would be Social Services adoptions or attorney-led private adoptions. Social…

The skeletons of two large greenhouses stand at the back of Roy Obluda’s property. “I’ve been a little slow tearing them down,” he says. “Reluctant, I guess.” When they are gone, so will be the last physical reminder of 36 years in the flower business. Thirty-six years of growing carnations…

Prologue: It all started when a group of women in the Denver city treasurer’s office began going out to lunch together. In the end, all that was left was an $80,000 check and a receipt from Hooters. Laura R. Fisher sued the city after quitting her job as a senior…

The sun refused to appear last Thursday morning at the Regional Transportation District’s light-rail station at I-25 and Broadway, but nobody seemed to mind. There were plenty of other dignitaries on hand, and this was clearly Ben Klein’s moment to shine. Klein, the chairman of RTD’s elected board of directors,…

Paramedic Rick Stolte liked practical jokes. So did his co-workers at the Platte Valley Medical Center in Brighton. During almost six years of working there, Stolte saw or participated in everything from snowball fights to cars stuffed with shredded paper to colleagues fooling around in the hospital’s computer system. Neither…

Time is about to run out on Colorado’s most irascible political entity. But the tiny Moffat Tunnel Commission is going down swinging. State legislators last week abolished the commission, an obscure state agency whose political monkey-wrenching in the past four years has drawn the wrath of some of Colorado’s most…

Unreal estate: Seems like only yesterday that Denver megadeveloper Larry A. Mizel, last week dubbed “dean” of real estate at the University of Denver’s Daniels College of Business, was just another rich kid in Tulsa. Eventually, of course, he became George Bush’s mightiest fundraiser (he collected $1 million for the…