Annual Community Forum: Wednesday May 13, hosted virtually at 6:30pm

A link will be posted on SUN’s website (link below) and at https://www.facebook.com/StapletonUnitedNeighbors

SUN has determined that a virtual meeting is not only in agreement with public health, but also allowable under our governing documents. SUN’s Annual Community Forum will begin with opening comments and business from SUN. Remarks will include updates on work in the previous year, goals for the upcoming year, and annual elections. The community will be asked to vote on a slate of 7 candidates to begin 2-year terms on the SUN board. Names and biographies for each candidate are available on SUN’s web site.

After SUN business, Denver police and the Stapleton MCA will provide community updates. In the next 30-minutes, city-level topics will be covered with Councilman Christopher Herndon and other representatives from the City of Denver. The latter portion of the evening will include updates from area developers. Brookfield (the company that acquired Forest City), and Evergreen (the developer responsible for several retail projects within the community), and updates on the transit oriented development projects at the Central Park train station.

The evening will conclude with closing remarks from SUN. For details on the slate of SUN board candidates and a final agenda, visit www.StapletonUnitedNeighbors.org.

Follow up from SUN’s April 21 Monthly Meeting

Denver Parks and Rec (DPR) has asked that cyclists avoid “social trails” along the south bank of Sand Creek between Westerly Creek Greenway and Havana Street. Also, off-trail cycling use near Florence Way and Fulton Street however has been disruptive to the ecosystem and should cease.

Representatives from DPR addressed a memo issued by a park ranger that contained statements about exposures to toxins in our environment that the department says are false. The memo’s statement of environmental risk did not reflect testing and remediation that occurred on the Stapleton land after it was decommissioned as an airport. Based on remediation and results from testing, regulatory agencies have deemed land safe for residential use, including the land near Sand Creek.

After the meeting, DPR followed up with responses to questions raised at the meeting: 1) The timeline for playground renovations for the Central Park Playground Renovation project—This project is under design; construction is scheduled to be complete in early 2021. 2) The sports complex planned for the undeveloped green space surrounding the Wicker Park neighborhood (east of Central Park Blvd between 53rd Ave. and Northfield High School, to Dallas St). This sports complex is currently not prioritized for funding and could cost up to $20M.

Sand Creek Greenway Mural

SUN has partnered with the Sand Creek Greenway to identify funding sources for a large mural project depicting native wildlife on cement retaining walls beside the trail. The proposed location is adjacent to the Central Park North neighborhood between the Smith road trail head and the Central Park Blvd overpass. The amount needed for the project is $20,000.

This photo of the supermoon was taken on April 7 at 7:37pm in Greenway Park in Stapleton. On Tuesday and Wednesday, April 7 and 8, the moon’s orbit brought it the closest to Earth it will be in 2020, making it the largest supermoon of the year. According to the Denver Post, the moon was “221,918 miles from Earth on Tuesday. The average lunar distance, according to NASA, is 238,855 miles. On March 24, the moon was 252,700 miles away, the farthest it will be in 2020.” Front Porch photo by Christie Gosch