In attendance at the meeting from left: Seneca Holmes, Chief Neighborhood Equity & Stabilization Officer; Shontel Lewis, Denver City Council Member, District 8; Sarah Showalter, City Planning Services Director; and Manish Kumar, Executive Director Community Planning and Development.

In a first-of-its-kind joint meeting, four northeast Denver neighborhood groups gathered Oct. 15 to talk to city leaders about their concerns and hopes at the Zion Senior Center at 5151 33rd Ave. in Denver.

The Central Park United Neighbors (CPUN), Northeast Park Hill Coalition, Montbello 2020, and the East Colfax Neighborhood Association hold meetings with and for their individual residents, but there previously hasn’t been much conversation or collaboration among all the groups because their meetings were held at the same days and times.  Liz Stalnaker, president of CPUN, says that’s where the idea for a joint meeting came from.

Liz Stalnaker, president of the Central Park United Neighbors.

At the meeting, Stalnaker talked about growth and continued development in Central Park causing issues along Central Park Boulevard.  “We have crashes. I don’t know how many crashes have been in the past week or so, at least three or four that I know of.”

CPUN’s Safe Streets committee has regular meetings with the Denver Department of Transportation and Infrastructure to find ways to mitigate the impact of growth.

Ann White from Montbello 2020 highlighted senior health and transportation challenges at the meeting. She says there has been so much growth in the community that it feels like “we’re busting at the seams…We need help bringing monies and funds into our community to help our children and our young adults and our seniors. We have a lot of seniors that don’t have health equity. Transportation is an issue.”

East Colfax neighbors say they face issues with involuntary displacement and gentrification. Tim Roberts, president of the East Colfax Neighborhood Association, touted a food bank started in 2019 where more than $2-millon worth of food has been distributed in the neighborhood. “The idea there is not that we’re solving gentrification in any way, and the idea is that it’s not like some utopia, but we’re at least concretely taking a little bit off of people’s grocery bill,” Roberts says.

Conversations in Park Hill center around the golf course and a development at 38th and Holly. The Northeast Park Hill Coalition is trying to “mitigate displacement,” and Roger Cobb, a board member, says: “We no longer really have a Black neighborhood. It’s not about Black, it’s about people. And I like to say working class versus BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and people of color), because that’s all of us.”

Residents at the meeting also asked questions about crime, a lack of grocery stores, and funds to help businesses along East Colfax during construction.

Joey Perez, a resident of the East Colfax neighborhood, asks a question at the meeting.

Joey Perez lives in the East Colfax neighborhood. He wants to know what steps are being taken to reduce, or even eliminate the “drug, prostitution, and gun violence problems in the East Colfax community. It’s a daily occurrence. I know the residents are growing tired of it. Business owners are growing tired of it.”

Perez says there’s a lot of conversation about affordable housing and affordability for businesses, but with “that much crime going on in a community, affordability does not matter. No one’s going to want to live there or do business there.”

Denver City Councilwoman Shontel Lewis addressed Perez’s concerns. Lewis says there are initiatives happening on East Colfax including the Place Network Investigation (PNI) where investigators work to identify locations and groups connected to violence in the highest crime neighborhoods.

She says her office has been working closely with the Denver Police Department, and adds “we need to go a bit deeper to figure out where strategies, where we might be able to invest in the people in our communities…who are the other partners that can come into our communities, nonprofit partners and even departments to come in and to provide some support and some resources.”

Lewis, along with City representatives from Community Planning and Development and Neighborhood Equity and Stabilization (NEST), promised to address the issues and questions from residents.