Denver firefighters responded to a house on Thursday night that was “fully involved” in a fire, extinguishing the blaze in the Globeville neighborhood in less than 15 minutes.
Division Chief of Operations Robert Murphy said the house, at 43rd Avenue and Cherokee Street, was vacant and no one was injured in the fire.
Denver Fire crews arrived on scene to find a fully involved house fire in the area of I-25 and I-70. Crews initiated a defensive fire attack on the vacant structure. No injuries. Fire investigators on scene to determine cause. pic.twitter.com/WD5Q8n8hRp
The Denver Fire Department got the call on a one-alarm blaze around 8:40 p.m. Christmas night, Murphy said, and seven trucks and emergency vehicles responded to the scene.
“There was nobody there when we got there,” he said. “We started attacking from the outside. There are still parts of the house standing, but it’s going to have to come down.”
An empty lot at 3901 Elati Street in Fox Island, Dec. 24, 2025.
Kyle Harris / Denverite
The developer Fox Street Investments spent millions of dollars buying 3901 North Elati Street and designing a 20-story building with 400 apartments in Globeville.
A few years later, the dusty lot sits empty in that slice of Globeville known as Fox Island. The promise of housing has yet to be fulfilled. And the company is suing the city of Denver.
A complaint the company filed in U.S. District Court on Tuesday argues the city is preventing the developer from building much-needed housing on the three-quarters of an acre lot with “arbitrary” rules and mandates.
“For decades, the City has failed to invest in sufficient public traffic infrastructure in the Globeville neighborhood, one of Denver’s most economically disadvantaged neighborhoods,” the complaint states. “Instead, the City adopted development rules within Fox Island … that attempt to completely and unlawfully shift this burden to the last-in-time developers trying to build housing in the neighborhood.”
Denver Community Planning and Development and the City Attorney’s Office declined to answer Denverite’s questions about the complaint since it’s pending litigation.
The requirements for the developer to improve traffic infrastructure are beyond the scope of the project and address needs far beyond what the new development will create, the complaint argues.
“The Rules are unconstitutionally vague and provide unidentified City bureaucrats with apparently unlimited discretion to condition development of the Property on FSI’s agreement to construct public traffic infrastructure improvements that are not directly linked to any resulting impacts from the development of the Property and that are completely disproportionate to such impacts,” the complaint states.
The company estimates that without the rules, the land would be worth $20 million. As is, with current rules, it’s “essentially worthless.”
The city has long negotiated with developers to add amenities that will benefit the public good to their projects: affordable housing, landscaping and more.
But the developer argues the city has gone too far and is interfering with the city’s own goals of increasing housing stock.
The company is asking the court to declare the rules unlawful and for the city to financially compensate the company so it can build the project it has set out to complete.
DENVER — Denver’s Globeville neighborhood is set for a major transformation as the city breaks ground on a multimillion-dollar reconstruction of Washington Street.
Drive through Washington Street in Denver’s Globeville neighborhood and you’ll find yourself on a very bumpy ride.
“This area is very old. They haven’t fixed our streets. There are holes everywhere,” said Globeville resident Cristina Dominguez Espinoza.
Espinoza’s brother owns Taqueria El Valle, located directly on Washington Street.
“We get a lot of traffic here, and it’s hard. We don’t have many [traffic] lights,” she said.
More often than not, said Espinoza, restaurant patrons will see a crash happen outside their windows.
“The sidewalks are not that good for walking. There are a lot of people walking through here, and it’s not a good thing,” she said.
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A crumbling sidewalk on Washington Street.
Those days will soon be over as the busy corridor prepares to get a major facelift.
“This street is about to be transformed, truly transformed,” said Denver Department of Transportation and Infrastructure Executive Director Amy Ford.
On Friday, the City of Denver broke ground on a multimillion-dollar project to transform Washington Street over the next three years by fully reconstructing the roadway from E. 47th Avenue to Denver’s northern boundary at E. 52nd Avenue.
The reconstruction will introduce modern pedestrian and bicycle facilities, safer intersections, expanded right-of-way, and new utilities designed to keep pace with Denver’s growth.
It will also improve connectivity from the neighborhood to nearby areas such as the River North District, Interstate 70, and the National Western Center.
“This is more than simply breaking ground on the street. This is actually providing the outcomes of the ask of this community. It’s ensuring that we as a city deliver on the promises that we have made,” said District 9 Denver City Councilmember Darrell Watson.
Discussions to improve Globeville have been ongoing for over a decade.
In a proposed neighborhood plan from 2014, residents shared their ideas on what would make the neighborhood better.
More connectivity, more investments, and cleaner streets — are just some of those needs.
Earlier this month, Denver7 | Your Voice visited the central Denver neighborhood, where residents discussed the tight-knit community and their concerns about being displaced by new development.
Neighbors told us they want the city to hear them and developers to invest in them.
Denver7 | Your Voice
Globeville residents feel left behind by Denver leaders: Denver7 | Your Voice
Transfiguration Orthodox Cathedral has been a part of the Globeville community since 1898.
“There’s always been kind of a parallel between the prosperity of the church, this particular church, and that of the neighborhood,” said Father Seraphim Robertson.
At one point in the 1980s, the church looked at relocating, but Globeville’s spirit kept them in place.
“The phrase was ‘bloom where we’re planted’. So the church community began to improve and clean up the church property, and that spilled over into the neighborhood, and that influence grew across the neighborhood,” said Fr. Robertson.
After more than a century of ups and downs, Fr. Robertson says he’s excited to see the growth and progress ahead.
“Those parallel paths I mentioned seem to continue to be parallel. The church has begun to thrive again. And it’s encouraging to see signs that maybe the neighborhood is on the way up as well, in certain ways,” he said.
Denver breaks ground on major Washington Street overhaul in Globeville
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Denver7’s Adria Iraheta shares stories that have an impact in all of Colorado’s communities, but specializes in reporting on education and stories in Arapahoe County. If you’d like to get in touch with Adria, fill out the form below to send her an email.
On Tuesday, a City Council committee approved a $6 million. three-year contract that would fund another expansion of the program. Potential new neighborhoods include Villa Park, Barnum, Westwood and Ruby Hill.
“With the west Denver launch to begin with the execution of this agreement, the Connector Program moves out of a pilot phase and into maturity,” city staff wrote in a memo to the council committee.
The contract still needs approval of the full City Council but the city’s own website already notes the expansion is expected to happen later this year.
Residents can request free rides between 6 a.m and 8 p.m. by downloading the “Denver Connector” app or by calling (720) 905-4438.
For months, bulldozers have been digging up the ground around the old Denver Post printing plant in Globeville. That’s the massive rectangular building just west of I-25 and south of I-70 covered in graffiti.
Soon, the area will be known as Fox Park, a neighborhood in the works on a former superfund site between Sunnyside and Globeville.
While the printing plant’s been shuttered for years, the building’s become what may be local street artists’ best unsanctioned canvas. And the 41 acres around the plan, dubbed Fox Island because of how poorly connected it is to the rest of the city, have been a yawning gap in a growing city.
Developers, despite being so eager to gobble up acreage and turn it into housing elsewhere in Denver, steered clear of Fox Island for years, even as more than 500,000 drivers a day passed the site.
Why? The land’s been a toxic dump.
It was once the site of the Argo smelter from an era when Denver processed heavy metals. The land was declared a superfund site — a hazardous place — by the Environmental Protection Agency in 1999.
Over the years, neighbors in Globeville have suffered from cancer. The neighborhood is still considered one of the most polluted in the country.
While much of Denver boomed, Globeville has been a home for working-class families with deep roots in the area. The soil’s toxicity has staved off most development and served as a deadly buffer to gentrification.
On Wednesday morning, developers, federal and city politicians, architects and others gathered at the site to celebrate the end of a massive environmental cleanup that will allow the development to come.
Mayor Mike Johnston (right to left), Rep. Diana DeGette and Fox Park managing partner Jose Carredano look at plans on the Globeville development site. Aug. 28, 2024.Kevin J. Beaty/Denverite
Here are six things we learned at that celebration.
City Council has been eying the land — and its possibilities — for years.
Back in 2012, then-City Councilmember Judy Montero brought her then-aide Amanda Sandoval to the outskirts of the land and asked what she could imagine there. The two spent an hour dreaming up possibilities of what Globeville, one of the most polluted neighborhoods in the country, could enjoy on the site.
Urban forests, affordable housing, a grocery store and space for arts and culture all topped their list.
More than a decade later, Sandoval, now City Council president, is celebrating a new future on the plot of land: the creation of Fox Park. And much of what she hoped for is coming.
A World Trade Center will bring offices, retail, restaurants and more. And that’s just a taste of what the $4 billion investment will bring.
Denver needs housing, and the project will provide that: 3,469 units — including hundreds that will be designated as affordable.
The city will get a new Virgin Hotel, and Mayor Mike Johnston expects Sir. Richard Branson will fly through town to celebrate.
Anschutz Entertainment Group, the dominant live music promoter in Denver, will be opening a 2,500-seat venue on the site.
There will be a 24,000-square-foot grocery store, a much-needed institution in a food desert.
Rep. Diana DeGette speaks at a press conference at the Fox Park development site in Globeville. Aug. 28, 2024.Kevin J. Beaty/Denverite
Connections will be built between Sunnyside and Fox Park, including new bike and pedestrian trails, as well as a park built above underground parking.
The Denver Post printing plant will be preserved and reused as a cultural space.
The Denver Botanic Gardens will create a tree canopy and replace the soil with native grasses to combat the heat island effect.
And more than 14 acres of the land will become parks, open spaces and public plazas for Denverites to enjoy.
Outside developers say they’ve become insiders as they’ve built the park.
The company developing the project is Vita Fox North LP — a collaboration between the Indianapolis company Pure Development and the Mexico City company Interland.
Jose Carredano, managing partner for Fox Park, says his company has met with neighbors more than 40 times. The goal: Get locals on board. Through those meetings, neighbors and the developer have formed a community benefits agreement.
Globeville neighbors have had a chance to exercise their civic engagement skills in recent decades. They’ve pushed to have a say in changes to their community: the massive I-70 reconstruction, the redo of the National Western Center and now this.
The Fox Park development site in Globeville. Aug. 28, 2024.Kevin J. Beaty/Denverite
“We have a real community that supports us, a real community that wants to grow with us, and that’s how we understood it, and we were able to be part of that community with them,” Carredano said. “Our community benefits agreement was something that was so easy to do because all we did was sit down, talk to them, understand them, and draw a plan together.”
Councilmember Sandoval said she’s been moved by the passion Globeville residents brought to Council hearings over rezoning. Despite some City Council members raising concerns about affordable housing and the amount of density on the site, neighbors showed up. They had their voices heard. And Sandoval ultimately trusted the developers enough to lend her support to the redevelopment.
“We are totally and forever in debt with how Denver has received us,” Carredano said. “We are investors and developers that weren’t from Denver and saw Denver as a great opportunity. We understood that Denver is only going to be a better city and should grow. But it can only happen with partnerships.”
Federal and local politicians touted the speed of the environmental cleanup.
KC Becker, the administrator for the EPA’s Mountains and Plains Region, described how working with the developers sped up the process at a pace the federal and state governments could not have achieved alone.
“Today’s event marks a successful and unique public-private partnership to bring contaminated lands back to beneficial use,” she said. “They will be delivering millions of square feet in new commercial space and thousands of mixed-income residential units as well as additional community benefits and opportunities for Globeville.”
The developers dedicated $20 million to the cleanup of the site.
“Sometimes government agencies take a long time,” U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette said. “And so when we have these partnerships, it really helps speed things along.”
Mayor Mike Johnston sees the project as the meeting of the Old West with the New West.
“I think this project is a story of historic collaboration at historic speed with historic results,” Johnston said.
He views Fox Park as a bridge from the Old West to the New West.
“This was a site where, a hundred years ago, the people who came to Colorado looking for opportunity were mining things out of the ground,” he said. “Now we have a whole new generation of entrepreneurs who are looking for the things that we can build by mining things out of our heads, by finding out what the big ideas and big opportunities are that make growth possible for everybody.”
Some Globeville residents still have questions about the long-term effects of the project.
Julisa Bezjak, a 20-year-old Globeville resident who works as a barista at nearby Prodigy Coffeehouse, served coffee and croissants to the politicians and developers at the celebration.
She lives with her parents in the neighborhood and has longstanding family ties to the community.
What the bigwigs talked about excited her. But Bezjak has also seen her neighborhood change fast, and she’s skeptical.
“Denver as a city has already become way more populated,” she said. “So I’m kind of nervous to see if the housing that’s being put here is gonna be for the residents of Denver already, or if it’s gonna be targeted in bringing in people from out of the state to move to Colorado.”
Julisa Bezjak stands on the Fox Park development site in Globeville, after a press conference with developers and local officials. Aug. 28, 2024.Kyle Harris/Denverite
She has big hopes for the promise of a grocery store and alternatives to 7-11 and McDonald’s, chains. Those, she says, are the main sources of food for her community.
And having recently learned Globeville has been called the most polluted neighborhood in the country, she’s grateful for cleaner soil.
Still, she worries about an increase in car traffic through her neighborhood and rising housing costs. Will her longtime neighbors be priced out even faster than they already are?
Bezjak, who drove to the event in her Honda Civic, was shocked to see so many Teslas. The people getting out wore suits. She felt underdressed.
She’s never spent time with developers and business leaders, and she enjoyed listening in on them talking about the future of her community.
“I’m just kind of excited to see where this goes, in general,” Bezjak said. “I’m not sure if I’ll always live in Globeville, but I know my parents or my grandparents are probably going to be there for the next 20 years, so I’ll definitely be able to keep up with what’s going on here. And even if I’m not directly affected, I’ll be able to witness it.”
