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Tag: West Colfax

  • Pedestrian safety improvements are coming to West Colfax

    Pedestrian safety improvements are coming to West Colfax

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    Groundbreaking on new pedestrian safety improvements at West Colfax Avenue and Winona Court. June 6, 2024.

    Rebecca Tauber/Denverite

    West Colfax is getting a slew of transportation safety improvements as part of a $15.5 million infrastructure project after years of community organizing.

    The city broke ground on the project Thursday and is expected to finish in the summer of 2025.

    The project will add medians and signal crosswalks for pedestrians at intersections along Colfax Avenue between Irving Street and Sheridan Boulevard. The medians will prevent left-hand turns at non-signal intersections, adding another level of pedestrian safety.

    The corridor will also get sidewalk build-outs for RTD buses, making it easier for buses to pick up passengers more quickly.

    West Colfax Avenue at Irving Street, July 12, 2023.
    Kevin J. Beaty/Denverite

    The plan also includes greenery across the new medians along Colfax Avenue to combat heat islands and improve West Colfax’s tree canopy.

    The greenery almost didn’t happen after inflation raised the cost of the project. At first, the landscaping was cut, but a mix of city and bond funding brought it back.

    “It’s on Colfax where people from all different backgrounds come together to go to school or the library, to drink a toast at a dive bar, to eat tacos or barbecue, or to hop on the bus to get wherever they need to go that day,” said Jill Locantore, executive director of Denver Streets Partnership, a group that advocates for pedestrian mobility in the city. “Colfax carries the lifeblood of our community, and too often, Colfax has broken our hearts, because it is not designed to be safe for the people whose lives depend on it.”

    The pedestrian improvements are a long time coming for West Colfax residents.

    Nearly a decade ago, residents came together to imagine what a more pedestrian-friendly throughway might look like. 

    “I’ve lived here for more than 30 years, this is the part of town that I’ve grown up in, that my parents and my grandparents raised their families in, and we can testify to the incredible impacts of traffic deaths along Colfax, along Federal,” said City Council President Jamie Torres, who represents the area. “That can only be improved because we build a different street, because we build a different environment, and that’s exactly what’s happening here.”

    Torres specifically mentioned the benefit to kids who have to cross West Colfax Avenue to get to school, members of West Colfax’s Jewish community who cross to get to synagogue and pedestrians trying to reach the many local businesses that line Colfax Avenue.

    West Colfax Avenue at Irving Street, July 12, 2023.
    Kevin J. Beaty/Denverite

    Initial upgrades began a few years ago, when the city altered traffic light timing and reduced speeds in an effort to make the corridor safer in 2020. Amy Ford, executive director of the Department of Transportation and Infrastructure, said that those changes decreased fatalities by 71 percent and serious injuries by 50 percent along the corridor.

    “What you’ve seen us do is change and evolve and continue to grow about how we think about a complete street, how we create safety and elements for everyone as they enjoy the street, as they enjoy the community that it binds together and the businesses that long run alongside it,” Ford said. 

    Now, more improvements are coming to fruition thanks to funding from the voter-approved Elevate Denver Bond, which funds infrastructure projects across the city. Another portion of the funding is coming from the Colorado Department of Transportation.

    “This all together is going to be a major win for the west side of the city, major improvement of safety, major improvement on accessibility and major permanent bus access and transit,” Mayor Mike Johnston said.

    Making the notorious car corridor more pedestrian-friendly

    City Council rezoned a number of properties on the east side of Colfax Avenue to promote pedestrian-facing businesses. That’s in anticipation of the Bus Rapid Transit project, which will bring big upgrades to RTD’s bus service on that side of Colfax Avenue.

    But Locantore said there is still much more to be done to make Denver a safe city for pedestrians.

    West Colfax Avenue at Irving Street, July 12, 2023.
    Kevin J. Beaty/Denverite

    She hopes similar infrastructure upgrades will come to Denver’s other fast, busy and dangerous streets, including Federal Boulevard, Colorado Boulevard, Alameda Avenue and University Boulevard.

    She said those streets in particular would benefit from upgrades, because they are streets that “feel like a highway,” with few crosswalks but a lot of local businesses frequented by pedestrians.

    “This project is proof that if a community can imagine a street that prioritizes people over cars, the city can make that happen,” Locantore said. “I hope this project becomes inspiration for transformations of other streets throughout the city, and that we learn from this process so that we can streamline it and we don’t have to wait 10 years for the next transformation to happen.”

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  • The last radical change is coming to the 1700 block of Julian Street in Denver’s West Colfax neighborhood | Denverite

    The last radical change is coming to the 1700 block of Julian Street in Denver’s West Colfax neighborhood | Denverite

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    1700 N. Julian St. in West Colfax. Jan. 30, 2024.

    Kevin J. Beaty/Denverite

    Over the past half-decade, District 3 Councilmember Jamie Torres has watched the West Colfax neighborhood change as fast as any in town. 

    Three-story, flat-roof condos and apartment buildings have engulfed many of the community’s streets, leaving the few once naturally affordable single-family homes awkwardly sandwiched between cookie-cutter, rectangular buildings with all the architectural wonder of a painted slab of drywall. 

    Some of those new homes cost between $750,000 and $1 million — far higher than the median price of a Denver house — and far above the median price of a condo.  

    Many of the multigenerational families who once lived in the community have sold or were priced out, and the new residents tend to be living in two-person, adult-only households. 

    Despite greater density and wealthier residents, West Colfax has fewer kids than before, Torres said, and the local schools are struggling with enrollment and funding.     

    On a recent Tuesday afternoon, Torres drove by the 1700 block of Julian Street, once full of naturally affordable single-family homes. She hardly recognized what she saw. 

    “It is completely transformed,” Torres said. “A 180.” 

    Now condos and apartment buildings lined the street, with units far out of reach for most Denverites, including Torres herself.

    She wasn’t surprised, though. Change here has been swift and obvious.

    Since she took office in 2019, towering apartment buildings have risen along Colfax Avenue, and nearby blocks have seen a rise in multi-family housing replacing single-family and row homes from the 1950s. 

    The neighborhood’s flexible zoning rules and proximity to bus lines on Colfax have made it a popular spot for developers to build.

    The laws of supply and demand suggest that with more homes prices would drop. The possibility that more new housing could eventually stabilize the housing market and working people could eventually afford to live in West Colfax again is cold comfort for the longtime working-class families who once lived in the naturally affordable single-family homes that were demolished and who can no longer afford their community.

    Instead, as newer, wealthier residents have moved into the neighborhood, old-timers who owned, in many cases, have sold. Those who rented were priced out and pushed elsewhere, often further south and west in Denver or out of the city altogether.

    These new buildings, Torres said, are what gentrification looks like.

    Empty lots in West Colfax are rare — and that makes a fenced-off patch of grass at the 1700 block of Julian Street particularly intriguing.

    Back in 2011, the 1700 block was full of yellow-brick rowhomes where working-class families lived. But over the next decade, the homes were painted blue, the landscaping was spruced up, and while those changes looked radical, they were nothing compared to what was to come. 

    Sometime after 2019, the homes were demolished and the land was sold. Most of the block has already been developed into trendy, flat-roof townhomes that dominate so much of the West Colfax neighborhood. Now more of that will likely be coming to the last swaths of grass on the block. 

    Community Planning and Development, the city’s planning department, has completed its review of plans for the next round of townhomes being planned by a company registered as 1700 Julian Venture Inc.

    If those plans go through, 30 townhomes, in five buildings, will be coming to the nearly one-acre section of the block. There will also be what the developers describe as an “attached private shared amenity.” 

    The proposed building will rise 35 feet high and include three stories, along with 45 parking spaces — looking largely like everything else on the block. 

    Torres says she’s been hearing complaints from the neighbors who recently moved to the West Colfax neighborhood. 

    Those who moved in during the pandemic are surprised by how noisy the area is and how much crime occurs along Colfax. 

    While they like their homes, they don’t love all the new construction. 

    She’s heard from people on the west side of the 1700 block of Julian concerned the new building proposed for the patch of grass could block their views. Wouldn’t a single-family home, the sort that was demolished, be a better fit? 

    The irony of not-in-my-backyard grievances from newcomers in multifamily buildings isn’t lost on Torres. 

    “I have to remind them: One — your views aren’t protected. And two — the same zoning that allowed their home to be built over a single-family home or a duplex is the same zoning that allows this guy to build.” 

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