An Ugly Twist for Lakeside, a Town Inspired by the City Beautiful Movement

Things got ugly this past summer in Lakeside, a tiny town that got its inspiration — and an amusement park — from the City Beautiful movement more than a century ago.

The police chief of Lakeside as well as its town clerk were both fired in July. Police Chief Robert Gordanier, who'd also served as the tiny town's mayor until last spring, and Town Clerk Brenda Hamilton, who happens to be Gordanier's daughter, had been indicted by a grand jury on ten counts, including embezzlement of public property, theft and official misconduct.

According to the indictment, over the past few years the Town of Lakeside purchased multiple police vehicles for less than fair-market prices because they were intended for use by the Lakeside Police Department; instead, in a car-flipping scheme approved by her father, Hamilton sold them for far more than the town had paid and kept the cash.

Hamilton's charges also included impersonating an officer. She was allegedly driving a police vehicle (the town apparently kept some) when she attempted to stop a suspected car robbery; when she failed to do so, she also failed to notify actual officers of the crime.

The scandal is an ugly twist for a town whose founders took a cue from the Chicago World's Fair in 1893.

“The ideas of both the City Beautiful and the amusement park owed their existence to Chicago’s Columbian Exposition, which an estimated 27 million people from around the world visited between May 1 and October 30, 1893,” David Forsyth wrote in his 2016 book, Denver’s Lakeside Amusement Park…From the White City Beautiful to a Century of Fun. “Nearly everyone involved in the Exposition, from planners to visitors, viewed the Great White City of the Exposition as heavenly, clean, orderly and safe — essentially, everything American cities were supposed to be striving to become.”

Robert Speer, who was elected mayor of Denver in 1904, was certainly inspired by the Columbian Exposition when he adopted the City Beautiful movement as a way to turn the dusty Queen City of the Plains into what he envisioned as "Paris on the Platte." While planning Civic Center Park in the heart of the city, he and brewer Adolph Zang also decided to create an amusement park at the edge of Lake Sylvan, at West 46th Avenue and Sheridan Boulevard.

As part of Zang’s master plan — and to avoid Denver’s blue laws that prohibited the sale of liquor on Sundays — the home of the future amusement park was incorporated as the Town of Lakeside on November 12, 1907, which would allow the brewer-owned facility to serve liquor daily when it opened the next year as the White City.

Lakeside was truly a company town, and the majority of its 44 initial residents either worked at the amusement park or played a role in its future. Although Zang envisioned the land surrounding the park becoming an upscale housing development, that idea never took hold. The park did, however.

In the ’30s, the park was sold to Ben Krasner, who renamed it Lakeside. He also renamed the lake — which takes up approximately 25 percent of the total acreage of the 0.25-square-mile town — after his daughter Rhoda, who today runs the amusement park, along with her daughter, Brenda Fishman.

Census data shows that as many as 103 people lived in Lakeside in 1910, but that number has waned over the last century. In 2010, Lakeside registered its lowest population ever, at eight residents. Currently, it's the state's smallest official municipality.

Lakeside has an unusually large police department for a town with just seventeen residents: sixteen full- and part-time officers. But then, it's also home to the Lakeside Shopping Center, which includes a Walmart, in addition to Lakeside Amusement Park.

Actually, make that fifteen officers, since Gordanier, who'd worked for the city since 1967, was fired at a special meeting of the town trustees on July 30.

On January 7, he pleaded guilty to two charges: embezzlement of public property and first-degree official misconduct. He must pay $26,088 in restitution to the town of Lakeside and serve four years' supervised probation. As a term of his probation, he cannot hold any office, elected or otherwise.

In court, Chief Deputy District Attorney Darren Kafka emphasized that Gordanier's actions represented “a significant breach of public trust, undermining confidence in both our government institutions and law enforcement everywhere.”

Gordanier's daughter and co-defendant, Brenda Hamilton, faces ten counts and has pleaded not guilty. Her next hearing is set for January 29.

This story has been updated from the original published on August 2. Thanks to intern Jack Spiegel for his research on the latest at Lakeside; see his story and photos of Lakeside Amusement Park.