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Broadway has long been a bustling place to grab a meal, go thrifting or catch a local band. But since the pandemic, the neighborhood has seen changes and challenges — including businesses leaving in droves.
On two separate walks, two denizens of the corridor showed me the parts of Broadway they love and want to preserve.
My two guides, however, had very different ideas for saving the strip.
Luke Johnson, the owner of Luke & Company Fine Pet Supply & Outfitter, believes the solution is the proposed Broadway General Improvement District (GID), one of the biggest ideas to come to Broadway in years. He wants the area’s property owners to band together and pay for things like a private security force, a cleaning crew and events.
In contrast, Broadway regular Ash Reno believes the GID could erase what makes the neighborhood unique.
The debate will come to a head with the Nov. 4 election. More than 1,000 property owners, business owners and residents will decide whether to form the new local district, which would come with at least 10 years of higher property taxes and a slew of new amenities for the area.
The GID’s supporters say the self-taxing district will save businesses in the area, but its detractors say what’s plaguing the neighborhood — and the rest of the city — is too big for one quasi-governmental entity to tackle itself.
Here’s what we heard from Johnson, Reno and others in the area.
The case for a GID:
On a cold Thursday morning, just a handful of people were out and about along Broadway, while traffic sped down the street’s four lanes.
Johnson pointed out the small signs of neglect as he walked along the sidewalk.
“There’s no tree there where there should be a tree,” he said. “Here’s a trash can that doesn’t have a lid on it. Why doesn’t it have a lid on it? So we’ve got obviously more trip hazards. All this brick from decades ago is crumbling.”
Down the street, toward First Avenue, a cleaning crew swept up trash left behind by a man they had recently moved along from a spot near Punch Bowl Social.
Johnson argues that a GID could pay for neighborhood upkeep and security. It would have a $1.1 million budget, with plans to spend half of that on a 24/7 private security force.
The district would stretch about a mile from Sixth Avenue to Alameda Avenue, including part of Lincoln Street. It would join about a dozen improvement districts around the city; they are an increasingly popular way to establish hyper-local services and brands.
Johnson said there’s a perception that Broadway is unsafe and that Denver police have been slow to respond to emergency calls. He said that perception drives away customers and drives up insurance costs, which is putting “a dozen businesses” on the precipice of closing.
“I wouldn’t say it’s just people [who live] outside. I would say it’s crime in general,” he said. “And that doesn’t necessarily mean that’s just unhoused folks.”
This stretch of Broadway is within DPD’s District 3, where the average response time to high-priority calls is about 18 minutes — higher than the city’s average.
Broadway’s proposed private security force would resemble that of the recently created Ballpark General Improvement District. There, local organizers say a group of unarmed “ambassadors” tries to deter crime and try to connect homeless people to services.
Johnson said the focus is to connect people experiencing homelessness and other crises with services, but he’s skeptical that can happen when the city is struggling to keep up with demand.
“Somebody asked, … ‘Well, do you intend to connect people on the street with services?’ Obviously,” he said. “But that assumes they want services. If somebody doesn’t want services, I can’t force ’em to take services.”
Earlier this year, a spokesperson for the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless cautioned that private street teams can lean more towards enforcement than support over time. Private security can pressure people to move along from public spaces or use trespass laws to force them off private property.
Matthew Brown, the owner of clothing shop and event space FM Boutique, said he supports the idea of a private security force on Broadway.
“I don’t think it’s a winning strategy to leave retailers up to kind of fend for themselves,” Brown said. “We don’t have the training to deal with people who may be mentally ill or may be in late stages of drug addiction.”
Johnson and his allies hope a security force isn’t needed forever.
“You can spend the money on programming, signage, beautification of the street and put more into those kinds of things,” said Caitlin Braun, a local resident and bartender. “We’d love to get to that.”
About 5 percent of the GID’s budget would be spent on branding, marketing and programming. So far, its backers have only committed to funding Broadway’s popular Halloween parade every year, but Johnson and company hope to one day revive the Underground Music Showcase.
The case against a GID:
When Reno, a street photographer and software engineer, bought their condo just a block away from Broadway, they knew they wanted to live in the neighborhood forever. As someone without a car, they have groceries, nightlife, live music, restaurants, shopping and more all within walking distance.
They worry the GID, specifically its private security force, will push more than just unhoused people away from Broadway. Specifically, they brought up metal shows that occasionally spill out onto the sidewalk.
“It’s punk,” they said. “Does that seem like something security would like?”
Reno also doesn’t believe the narrative that Broadway is in crisis.
“You do see some crazy [expletive]. I saw two guys fighting one night. I saw a guy throw a brick at another guy,” they said. “But things like that don’t scream crisis to me. That screams like two guys are having a disagreement on the street.”
On a walk down Broadway, Reno introduced me to Cali and Jerry Rico, two men without homes who hang out at South Broadway and Bayaud Avenue. They are worried about the idea of private security.
“I’m pretty sure at nighttime I wouldn’t mind ’em doing it,” Cali said. “In the daytime, I don’t think we ain’t bothering no one.”
And there is, of course, the property tax. The district would collect an extra tax rate of 8.96 mills on the assessed value of property. For a commercial property worth $1 million, that’s about $2,400 extra per year under Colorado’s current tax rules. A $1 million residential property would see a hike of about $560.
“Some people feel like they can barely afford to live where we live anyways, so any more taxes, I would literally be afraid of losing my neighbors, particularly my older neighbors who have lived in that building since the ‘80s,” said Reno, whose condo is just outside the proposed district.
Reno agrees with the GID’s supporters on two things: It’s important to fund popular neighborhood events, and the city needs to do more to alleviate homelessness.
“It’s not a problem because of what these people who are unhoused are doing or bringing,” they said. “The problem is how they’re getting there to begin with.”
What do former Broadway businesses say?
Since Mutiny Information Cafe left Broadway last year, the iconic space at the corner of Ellsworth Avenue has sat empty.
Its co-owner, Jim Norris, said the business was priced out after two decades in Baker. Now, Mutiny is thriving in Englewood’s portion of South Broadway, but Norris is still invested in what’s going on up north.
He said he’s skeptical that the GID would have prevented their departure — and even could have priced them out faster due to higher property taxes.
“It’s just a matter of the city helping and giving small business breaks and all these things. If they’re going to do that GID tax, that’s going to be passed on to the renters. The landlords aren’t going to pay it,” he said.
He also would prefer a stronger Denver police presence to private security, he said.
Erika Righter, who used to operate Hope Tank on Broadway before being priced out in 2021, said she still loves the district, but she does so mostly at a distance, ever since one of her best friends, Alicia Cardenas, was murdered by a white supremacist along Broadway.
She’s also skeptical of the GID and worries it would represent property owners more than renters. She said she thinks the underlying issue impacting small businesses is that the city isn’t launching programs to help entrepreneurs.
“Ultimately, if we can’t address the challenge that the city has to hold the landlords accountable, then the only people who can do small business have to have a massive cash runway,” she said.
Johnson has heard those arguments and more. He often flips the question back to the critics: What should we do instead?
“The city’s not going to do it,” he said. “So are we just going to let it continue to deteriorate until there’s nobody that lives here and nobody that works here? I mean, I don’t know that that’s a good answer.”
Ballots have been mailed. Polls close Nov. 4 at 7 p.m.
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