A multimillion-dollar transfer agreement has been reached for one of Central Florida’s most historic properties in Eatonville.Following several years of legal disputes regarding potential private development on the historic Hungerford property, an agreement has been reached to transfer ownership from Orange County Public Schools to Dr. Phillips Charities. Dr. Phillips Charities plans to pay $1 million of the negotiated amount upfront to the Orange County School Board. The OCPS School Board is expected to vote on Sept. 30. If the vote passes, the land will be transferred to Dr. Phillips Charities, which will collaborate with the Town of Eatonville to develop the site for the community’s benefit.The plan includes the creation of green spaces, an early learning center and a community hub.The property covers roughly 117 acres and is located at the intersection of Hungerford and Keller Road.
A multimillion-dollar transfer agreement has been reached for one of Central Florida’s most historic properties in Eatonville.
Following several years of legal disputes regarding potential private development on the historic Hungerford property, an agreement has been reached to transfer ownership from Orange County Public Schools to Dr. Phillips Charities.
Dr. Phillips Charities plans to pay $1 million of the negotiated amount upfront to the Orange County School Board.
The OCPS School Board is expected to vote on Sept. 30.
If the vote passes, the land will be transferred to Dr. Phillips Charities, which will collaborate with the Town of Eatonville to develop the site for the community’s benefit.
The plan includes the creation of green spaces, an early learning center and a community hub.
The property covers roughly 117 acres and is located at the intersection of Hungerford and Keller Road.
Two schools of thought flitter through the streets just behind the Denver Broncos’ planned future home, separated by just one block but standing an entire world apart.
On a sunny Tuesday morning, 35-year-old Rita Guerrero stepped out from her door on North Mariposa Avenue, lively pup Olive barely contained by her leash. Guerrero bought her home in the La Alma Lincoln Park neighborhood five years ago, and smiled when she thinks of the wealth of possibilities that now exist a quarter mile away at the defunct Burnham Yard.
“This is very exciting,” Guerrero beamed. “I’m very happy. It’ll be great for the team, great for the neighborhood. I really see that there’s, probably — I mean, there really can only be upside.”
On a cloudy Tuesday afternoon, a few hundred feet away, 46-year-old Nicole Jones and 51-year-old Desiree Maestas crossed onto North Lipan Street, discussing the change to come. Jones has lived all her life a few houses up the block, and frowned when she thinks of the wealth of possibilities that now exist with the Broncos’ professed plan to develop at Burnham Yard.
It could mean more traffic. And more construction. And increased property values.
“I think it’s going to change everything,” Jones said. “Because everything’s going to go up. Especially in this neighborhood, everything’s going to go up. And a lot of us ain’t even going to be able to afford to live here anymore. Because the stadium is going to be right in our neighborhood. Right in our backyard.”
“So, yeah,” she repeated, somber. “We’re not going to be able to afford to live here no more.”
Residents of La Alma Lincoln Park who spoke to The Denver Post on Tuesday were split on the complicated reality that now awaits, after the Broncos officially announced that they’ve zeroed in on Burnham Yard as the planned site of a privately-financed mixed-use stadium district.
Some residents lamented the change that continues to rattle the historic Denver neighborhood, one that has already experienced generations of displacement. Some residents championed the city’s efforts to keep the team local: they are the Denver Broncos, 39-year-old Barbara Ott emphasized from her porch, not the Lone Tree Broncos.
The general median is a sort of cautious optimism, as community leader Simon Tafoya put it.
“Maybe a little bit more than optimism,” Tafoya said. “But I think from what they’ve said… that they were working to and developing a community benefits agreement, that’s ultimately the goal for the community — to ensure that the benefits match what the community wants to see.”
That community benefits agreement, or CBA, will be the most important piece to ensuring satisfaction in La Alma Lincoln Park and the surrounding neighborhoods. Broncos owner Greg Penner told The Post the organization will start working on a CBA “right away” and said he wants to have a “really positive relationship” in the area. Team spokesperson Patrick Smyth said fellow owner Carrie Walton Penner spoke with multiple neighborhood leaders prior to Tuesday’s announcement.
“The community has always been part of the solution for (Denver) affordable housing,” Tafoya said. “I think the challenge is, as we move forward, making sure it continues in that commitment without falling into the trap of concentrated poverty.”
Some residents are excited, too, for the Broncos’ plans to bring a mix of housing, retail and entertainment venues to the surrounding stadium district. Look at Coors Field’s effect on the Lower Downtown neighborhood and the walkability of the stadium, Guerrero said.
Neighborhood leaders, though, emphasize the need for specific community-facing uses so it doesn’t become a “ghostland,” as Tafoya previously told The Post. Perhaps that’s basic residential services. Perhaps that’s open green space, as planned at Ball Arena. Perhaps that’s public art.
“We’re hopeful that NFL teams have learned a lot and they aren’t just looking to plop down a stadium and surround it by parking lots,” said Nolan Hahn, president of the La Alma Lincoln Park Neighborhood Association. “We’re hopeful they turn what is currently an empty railyard into a real part of the neighborhood.”
Denver City Councilwoman Jamie Torres said the city will develop the community benefits committee to begin conversations with the Broncos. Land-use planning must begin to deal with the industrial area, she said.
Plus, she said, the city needs more information from the Broncos to share their vision.
“This is an exciting opportunity to redevelop what’s been a vacant railyard for too long and have really thoughtful ways about how it’s connecting to the neighborhood it’s in,” Torres said.
Residents interested in getting involved in the future planning can connect with Torres’ office to find out what path suits them best and attend monthly neighborhood association meetings, she said.
The La Alma Lincoln Park Neighborhood in Denver on Thursday, June 26, 2025. (Photo by Hyoung Chang/The Denver Post)
Local business owners, too, are anticipating the need to advocate for themselves in the coming years. The Santa Fe Art District, the hub of Denver’s art scene, sits on a strip just a half mile from Burnham Yard. It’s the kind of area where art-gallery owners put out a plate of homegrown peaches at the cash register.
The potential of a new football stadium and accompanying entertainment complex is an interesting fit with the “funkiness and uniqueness” of the art district, local gallery owner Michael McDowell said.
Bill Thomason, who owns the Bitfactory Gallery on Santa Fe Drive, is already concerned about pre-existing traffic nearby. Construction could come as new properties are built with the Broncos’ move, he said. That could decrease business.
“I might get forced out here,” Thomason said. “Because I can’t afford to lose the last little bit of (foot) traffic I do have.”
McDowell and wife Sharla Throckmorton-McDowell just opened their POP Gallery on Santa Fe Drive a few months ago. They pay $6,000 a month for the space; at present, they’re just scraping by, McDowell said. And the Broncos’ move is a “genuine concern,” he said, if it sends property values skyrocketing and landlords thereby increase the rent on local businesses.
McDowell, though, hopes that businesses in the district can work with the city and the Broncos in tandem.
“Everything I’ve read about them as an organization, a group, seems to me that they’re not just ones that are going to come in here and try and — ‘(expletive) everybody, we’re gonna do what we want to do because we’re billionaires,’” McDowell said of the Broncos’ Walton-Penner Ownership Group. “They seem to be really respectful and love Denver, and I think it could really work out to be a win-win situation.”
“What is it now?” he continued, speaking of Burnham Yard. “It’s a run-down trainyard that’s not active, that’s non-existent, it’s dilapidated. It’s not serving any purpose.”
This, ultimately, was the main argument from local supporters of the Broncos’ move. To some, like Jones and Maestas, there’s no possible mixed-use-district benefit that could outweigh rising property costs. But Burnham Yard and its 50-plus acres of land have sat abandoned for nearly a decade. Guerrero and others want to see that used. For something.
That something, though, comes with plenty of strings attached.
Connie Buckley, 82, has lived in the neighborhood for three decades. She might not live long enough to see this Broncos stadium come to fruition, she joked. But she — and plenty of others — are still protective over a community that’s been mistreated, as she said, for “eons.”
“This is a neighborhood with real people who live here,” Buckley said. “And I hope nobody forgets that.”
UC Berkeley spent $7.8 million to deploy its own forces to wall off and secure People’s Park, the storied 2.8-acre green space that activists seized in the ’60s to serve as open space for freethinkers.
That multimillion-dollar total is expected to grow substantially as outside police agencies submit their bills to the university.
And the cost of keeping people out of the park continues to be high: The university pays nearly $1 million a month to station private security guards outside the park, 24 hours a day.
The massive dead-of-night operation to clear the park and surround it with a double-high stack of 160 steel cargo containers was executed in early January, in anticipation of the Berkeley campus being cleared to build a new housing complex.
Litigation continues to block the construction of 1,100 units of student housing, 125 units of supportive housing for homeless people and a memorial to the park south of the Berkeley campus.
University officials hope that the state Supreme Court will hear a case about the future of the park this spring, potentially ruling by summer whether to allow construction on the property, first seized and turned into open space by activists in 1969.
In response to a public records request, Berkeley campus officials revealed Wednesday that they spent $2.85 million to build the 17-foot-high perimeter around the park. Those funds went to pay for the shipping containers (at a cost of $972,000), for gates, lighting, other equipment and supervision ($1.27 million) and for engineering and surveying ($515,000.)
An additional $3.77 million went to pay, house and feed the police officers and sheriff’s deputies who cleared and surrounded the park in early January. Nearly $1.5 million of that money went to pay overtime to officers from the University of California Police Department.
The $7.8-million tally also includes $1.16 million that UC spent to move homeless people from the park to a Quality Inn, where they receive meals and other services.
Still remaining to be submitted and/or totaled are bills from the California Highway Patrol, sheriff’s departments for Alameda and San Francisco counties and from nine other UC and Cal State University police departments. A UC spokesman said “it could take several more months” for those IOUs to arrive. It’s expected that they will add millions of dollars to the cost of the park clearance.
In a letter accompanying the figures, UC Berkeley spokesman Kyle Gibson explained in a statement that the extraordinary operation, cloaked in secrecy, was designed to avoid the sort of conflict that had prevented the university from developing People’s Park for more than half a century.
“Our highest priorities for the closure were safety, avoidance/deterrence of conflict, and the minimization of disruption for students and neighboring residents,” the statement said.
The letter described the “vandalism, violence and other unlawful activities” that occurred when the university tried, and failed, to take control of the park in August 2022. That prior experience “necessitated extraordinary measures, precautions and expenditures” when UC moved in January to secure the park, Gibson’s letter said.
Activists who fought for years to keep the park said they were outraged but not surprised at the high cost of the university’s takeover.
“The recklessness with which UC spends the public’s money is well known to this community,” said Andrea Prichett, a member of the People’s Park Council and Berkeley Copwatch. “Think of other things that could have been done with that money. It’s a tragic waste.”
Park activists have complained, in particular, that the university disrupted a community of homeless people who were supporting one another on the property, which lies just steps to the east of Telegraph Avenue.
But university officials insist that the unhoused residents are better off in the Quality Inn, with food and services provided by community groups and removed from the crime that at times went unchecked in the park.
Although opponents call the steel barricade a “monstrosity,” university officials said it had helped keep the park clear — and ready for construction — for the first time since community members planted flowers and trees there, in 1969.
Under the cover of darkness, law enforcement officers converged on People’s Park and cleared activists from the green space early Thursday in preparation for construction of a housing complex for students.
Some resisters holed up for hours in a makeshift treehouse and on the roof of a single-story building in the park.
Police were met by protesters, chanting “Long live People’s Park” along with shouts of “Fight back!”
Activists protesting the clearing of People’s Park refused for hours to come down from a treehouse in the park but finally relented.
(Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times)
A law enforcement officer points a weapon into a kitchen where activists were holed up at People’s Park.
(Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times)
Some protesters retreated to the roof of a building in the park before later agreeing to come down.
(Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times)
Authorities made multiple arrests as they cleared People’s Park in Berkeley.
(Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times)
UC Berkeley police and other authorities clear People’s Park.
(Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times)
At one point during the operation early Thursday morning, protesters ripped down police barriers and confrontations with law enforcement intensified.
Feb. 6, 2023 – City dwellers who visited parks, community gardens, or other green spaces often were less likely to need medications for depression, high blood pressure, or asthma than those who did not, a new study from Finland shows.
The link between frequent green space visits and a lower use of these drugs did not depend on household income level or other social or economic factors, although obesity did seem to cancel the benefits of frequently being outdoors in nature.
The growing scientific evidence supporting the health benefits of exposure to nature is likely to make more high-quality green spaces available in urban environments, and promote the use of these spaces, says lead author, Anu W. Turunen, PhD, from the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare in Kuopio, Finland.
The findings were published online Jan. 16 in the journal Occupational and Environmental Medicine.
Researchers asked 7,321 randomly selected residents of three large urban centers in Finland – Helsinki, Espoo, and Vantaa – about how often they went to green spaces and blue spaces (bodies of water) within 1 kilometer of their home, and also if they could see green or blue spaces from any windows of their home.
Green areas were defined as forests, gardens, parks, castle parks, cemeteries, zoos, grasslands, moors, and wetlands. Blue areas were defined as seas, lakes, and rivers.
People surveyed were also asked if they were taking any drugs for anxiety, insomnia, depression, high blood pressure, and asthma.
Compared to the people who went to green spaces the least, those who visited the most often were about one-third less likely to need one of these medications.
Specifically, those who reported visiting a green space three to four times per week had 33% lower odds of using mental health meds, 36% lower odds of using blood pressure meds, and 26% lower odds of using asthma medications.
“These results are important because they add to the growing body of evidence showing that being close to nature is good for our patients’ health,” says Jochem Klompmaker, PhD, from Harvard Medical School in Boston, who was not involved with this research but has done work in this area.
“We should encourage our patients to take more walks, and if they live near a park, that could be a good place to start to be more physically active and reduce stress levels,” he says.
