The general improvement district (GID) designation for the Ballpark District started as an idea for filling a doughnut hole in downtown that was surrounded by improvement districts but void of the kind of tax-funded services those districts offer. The Ballpark District's jagged boundaries go from Wewatta and Blake streets in the north to an alley behind Welton Street to the south, and from 20th Street to Broadway (though the eastern boundary also juts to 26th Street or stops at Park Avenue West).
Residential and commercial property owners within those boundaries voted to create the Ballpark GID in November, with nearly 500 voters in favor compared to 74 against.
"The primary goal for the neighborhood when they formed the GID was cleaning, improving safety and addressing challenges around unhoused," says Jamie Giellis, an improvement district specialist who helped with the Ballpark GID project. "We've heard a lot from the community that it looks and feels cleaner because we've been taking care of the neighborhood, but the second thing is we've been working really closely with the city on safety and outreach to the homeless."
Residential and commercial property owners within those boundaries voted to create the Ballpark GID in November, with nearly 500 voters in favor compared to 74 against.
"The primary goal for the neighborhood when they formed the GID was cleaning, improving safety and addressing challenges around unhoused," says Jamie Giellis, an improvement district specialist who helped with the Ballpark GID project. "We've heard a lot from the community that it looks and feels cleaner because we've been taking care of the neighborhood, but the second thing is we've been working really closely with the city on safety and outreach to the homeless."
The district's advisory board will hire an executive director in the coming weeks, but the GID has been up and running since March 10, collecting special property tax fees from owners in the GID boundaries. Giellis says the district has already collected close to $900,000 in tax revenue and will have a budget of $1.5 million for the year, around $200,000 more than expected.
The most visible parts of the GID are its "ambassadors" who walk the streets of the district — cleaning, patrolling and working with the city on homelessness and crime in the area. The ambassadors were brought on through a contract with Block by Block, a Kentucky-based company that also provided workers for improvement districts in downtown Boulder and along Colfax Avenue. Block by Blocks' contract with the Colfax Avenue Business Improvement District expired, but it still has ambassadors working with the Boulder Downtown Partnership.
Ballpark District ambassadors operate out of offices set up at 1415 Park Avenue West. Luke McCarthy, the operations manager for the Ballpark District, runs the new team of fifteen ambassadors, including some members who used to be homeless and former employees of Allied Universal security. McCarthy is hiring for another five spots to get to full strength, he says.
And what can that strength do on city streets?
Ballpark Ambassadors Aren't Police, but They Work With DPD
A former United States Marine captain, McCarthy deploys his ambassadors within the 43-block district. He tasks them with moving poorly parked scooters out of people's way (their most common task), cleaning bodily fluids like vomit and feces off the street, scrubbing graffiti off the walls and signs, replacing trash bags in public bins, picking up litter, walking around the area at night, and stepping into businesses throughout the day to ask how they're doing.He also makes sure his ambassadors follow a Block by Block dress code, which includes keeping coats zipped three-quarters of the way on their burgundy windbreakers and always wearing bright orange beanies or ballcaps to be easily identified. Block by Block ambassadors can't wear any dangling jewelry or lanyards, either.
The ambassadors respond to reports of "socially unacceptable behavior" in the area, according to McCarthy. At times, they're the first responders to a scene where they may need to de-escalate a fight or stay with someone until an ambulance or police arrive. The ambassadors put themselves at risk, McCarthy notes, and some have already been attacked.
Luke McCarthy, a former captain in the Marines, runs a team of "ambassadors" that aren't a police force but work closely with the Denver Police Department.
Bennito L. Kelty
"We're not a police force. We're not here to cite anyone. We're not here to forcibly remove anyone," McCarthy says. "We can't force anybody to move...we walk by and remind them, 'Hey, that business is about to open. They may call [the Denver Police Department], and you may get a fine."
If people call to report a suspicious gathering, the ambassadors can only show up, hang out by the group and call the police if they see any laws broken, McCarthy says.
For over a year, residents in the Ballpark area have been complaining to the city about an open-air drug market near 21st and Larimer streets. This issue has now fallen onto the ambassadors' plate too, but all they can do for police is "observe, assess and witness," McCarthy says.
"We work in partnership with DPD to make sure we can report anything we're witnessing in terms of criminal action or drug use," McCarthy says. "And then they have more data points as to why they need more DPD assistance at that corner and validate that."
Whenever the ambassadors get the name of a homeless resident, DPD shares any criminal history that person may have. In turn, the information that ambassadors give DPD on homeless residents can be used to build a case for issuing an area-restriction order, an opaque legal tool that the City Attorney's Office uses to ban individuals from specific locations.
In addition to being ready for tense situations, ambassadors have to know the score and inning of any ongoing Rockies games in case anyone walks up and asks.
"We just can't help them win," McCarthy jokes.
Lack of Coordination, Not Resources
The Ballpark District has dealt with a high concentration of homelessness in recent years. Homeless shelters and health clinics run by the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless, the Salvation Army and the St. Francis Center, among others, are located in the area, and "people don't move far from that," Giellis says.In 2023, when Mayor Mike Johnston was trying to house 1,000 people in six months for an effort now known as All In Mile High, his office said that the largest homeless encampment in Denver was located in the district near 20th and Curtis streets. The city estimated that in late 2023, upwards of 300 people lived in the encampment, which wrapped around the Post Office at 951 20th Street.
When Johnston toured Denver neighborhoods in early 2024 to hear local safety concerns, business owners in the Ballpark District complained about homeless residents being violent, using the alleys behind their stores as bathrooms and scaring away customers.
The city cleared the large encampments in the Ballpark District in late 2023. Now city officials are tuned in closely to what Ballpark ambassadors are doing. McCarthy says he talks to city liaisons about three times a day, including every morning, when he updates DPD, the Mayor's Office, the Department of Housing Stability and the Denver Department of Public Health & Environment, among other offices, about what his ambassadors are seeing.
One of the challenges the Ballpark District faces every day is clearing the sidewalk outside the Samaritan House, a forty-bed shelter for women. In the morning, the shelter's guests have to leave, but because most of them don't have jobs, they loiter outside of the Samaritan House hoping to secure a bed for the next night before the shelter fills.
"We're always going to have a large amount of homeless people moving through the neighborhood," Giellis says. "Our goal is to try to work with service providers in the city to not just have them in this state of perpetual sitting."
The challenge with the Samaritan House led Giellis to the realization that the Ballpark GID is not only filling a hole in services in the area, but also a gap in coordination between city departments and service providers helping homeless residents.
"It's not that there is a lack of resources to solve this. It appears there's a lack of coordination of those resources. There's a lot of people doing a lot of things, but they're not all necessarily rowing in the same direction," she says. "I hope we get to a spot where we have a good system, where we have clear partnerships, we have a clear understanding of who's doing what."
The response from people living and working in the area has mostly been positive, McCarthy says.
"In the first few weeks, the biggest impact we could have had was by cleaning up trash and having visual effects that people can see," McCarthy says. "But the immediate effect of that is my team coming in and saying, 'You know, I'm really seeing a difference out there. People are coming up on the sidewalk, they're patting me on the back and saying thanks for what you do. It's really making a difference.'"
