Erik Osborn wanted to be a big-time developer, but his plans almost landed him in the big house. In 2009, a group of high-profile investors — including Dealin’ Doug Moreland — accused Osborn of stealing $255,000 intended for the pricey One Lincoln Park condominium complex downtown and another project in…
More than two decades ago, Curt Fentress got Denver International Airport off the ground, designing the iconic tent-roofed terminal after the Perez Group’s plans crashed and burned. But when the city decided to expand DIA, it snubbed Denver-based Fentress, going with starchitect Santiago Calatrava…
If city officials find a hundred members of a gay men’s chorus picnicking in front of City Hall today, they have only themselves to blame. The cast of Von Trapped, a coffee concert at the Buell this morning, were to have lunch at El Diablo — but that was before…
Gaylord Entertainment dumped its plans for a giant hotel/convention center/resort in Aurora, and GE has postponed its big new plant in Aurora — if not ditched it entirely. But at least Aurora had control over one business deal: It had no problem selling its water to an oil and gas…
Dear Mexican: Magdalena has worked for me many years — fifteen, to be exact. She came over as a mojada with her two little girls when they were four and six. The girls went to school, but only until middle school, because they are undocumented; they can’t get a job…
“Who wants to fight government, especially over $10?” That’s what David Scherer asked himself when he thought the U.S. Forest Service was incorrectly charging a $10 fee to everyone who drove up Mount Evans — even drivers who did not stop as they took in the view. But as he…
Katie Reinisch managed to keep her cool through four years at the Colorado Legislature, when she was communications director for the Senate Democrats, so it’s not surprising that she’s having a blast running her own frozen-yogurt spot. “It’s so fun, and I’m learning so much,” she says. “I’m actually creating…
Mrs. J. J. Brown was never known as Molly. She cared much more about helping the poor in turn-of-the-last-century Denver than she did with crashing what passed for high society. She did not strip to her corset while rowing lifeboat #6 after the sinking of the Titanic, although she kept…
The hottest summer on record could also be one of the driest. At the end of June, Governor John Hickenlooper requested that much of this dry, dry state be declared a federal disaster area because of “drought, low snow pack, excessive heat, and high winds” that had started on January…
Colorado’s urge to do something, anything, to help those affected by the wildfires has spread like, well, wildfire. Caravans of cars have descended on Colorado Springs, heading right past that IKEA sign on I-25, with piles of donated goods for victims of the Waldo Canyon fire. If the state were…
Dear Mexican: Suppose the United States government and the American public were as progressive and conscious of our country’s true self-interest as are, for example, many European countries, and suppose this had been true in the decades immediately following World War II, when Northern and Western Europe subsidized the development…
On July 1, Metropolitan State College officially became Metropolitan State University of Denver, ending a process that had dragged on for four years, through research, debate and, finally, the approval of the Colorado Legislature. But the school in the heart of the city really made its name last month, when…
This has been one hot summer — and it’s bound to get even hotter. Tempers are flaring over the handling of the wildfires, and rumors are heating up over their possible cause: terrorists are setting the fires. And President Barack Obama’s visit to the Waldo Canyon fire today is fanning…
A week ago, the state’s tourism office announced that 2011 had been a record-breaking year. And 2012 will break all kinds of records, too — but not the ones boosters like to shatter. Most disappointing ski season. Rafting industry drying up. And the rest of the summer tourism season going…
Voters “like having someone with a proven record,” Representative Doug Lamborn said after winning yesterday’s primary. And what a record! Hell would have to freeze over in El Paso County — which doesn’t look likely, given the Waldo Canyon fire raging there — before voters would skip sending this serial…
Plutonium lasts forever, and so do the legal actions emanating from Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant, which operated sixteen miles upwind from Denver for close to forty years. Yesterday, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to reinstate the $926 million judgment that 12,000 property owners near the plant thought they’d won…
Dear Mexican: Barack Hussein Obama, how you dare deprive Mexico of its young, educated people. These illegal aliens in the U.S. are the only hope for Mexico, and you want to keep them here in the U.S.. They could start businesses, create jobs and improve the standard of living for…
In January 2009, Alex Landau landed in the hospital after Denver cops pulled over the black teen for making an illegal left turn. He’s still waiting for the Denver Police Department to determine the fate of the officers involved — but another verdict came in this weekend, when Joel Warner’s…
It was a year ago today that Denver woke up to discover that upstart Aurora had rustled a major deal in the metro area: a massive, $800 million hotel/spa/convention complex that Gaylord Entertainment would build near Denver International Airport…
Jeff Peckman thinks outside the box — in this case, the “tinder box.” Two years ago, he asked voters to approve a UFO welcoming committee, an idea he pushed further as a 2011 candidate for mayor of Denver. And now he wants to help end the High Park Fire…
Special shout-out to: Metropolitan State College of Denver (soon to be Metropolitan State University of Denver), which lowered tuition rates for undocumented students who have lived in Colorado for much of their lives after the Colorado Legislature refused to pass a bill that would’ve done the same. I had the…
Colorado has dozens of museums devoted to unusual items — bells, washing machines. Some are temporary, some permanent. But no museum promises to have the half-life of the Rocky Flats Cold War Museum, devoted to the plant that manufactured plutonium triggers for nuclear bombs just sixteen miles northwest — upwind…
