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Colorado’s voter-approved affordable housing program is popular, with dozens of cities seeking money

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:15:50 GMT

Dozens of Colorado cities and towns that are home to more than half of the state’s population have signed up to receive their share of a nearly $300 million-a-year affordable housing program approved by voters.The high interest, including from the city of Denver, comes despite concerns that some cities and towns won’t be able to satisfy the strings attached to the money.In all, 67 municipalities across Colorado, representing its largest cities and 56% of its population, have agreed to the terms of Proposition 123, the affordable housing fund that voters approved last November. The program requires participating cities to increase their stock of affordable housing by a total of 9% in three years, and participating towns and cities in the future also will have to expedite their project approval processes.With so much interest, it’s still unclear exactly much money each city will receive.The program is funded via a diversion of a tiny sliver of state income tax revenu...

Is TikTok-focused crowd work ruining stand-up comedy?

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:15:50 GMT

As the High Plains Comedy Festival returns for its 10th edition, Denver audiences can catch dozens of stand-up sets from 100 local and national comics, podcast recordings, open-mic nights, reunions, and more along the city’s South Broadway corridor.They’ll also see plenty of crowd work at the event, which began Thursday, Sept. 21, and continues through Saturday, Sept. 23. Most of us know it well: that seemingly unavoidable part of stand-up that trades practiced, written material for surface-y, sometimes contentious, audience interaction.Whether that includes shutting down a heckler or querying unsuspecting folks in the front row, it’s something comics have increasingly come to regard as either an asset or a crutch — especially following its ascension on social media in the form of viral clips on TikTok and Instagram.Trinidad-based comic Nathan Lund thinks crowd work can go both ways — and for the most part, he avoids it. (Bryce Peterson, provided by Nat...

Fall colors are beginning in the northern mountains, but peak season is still a week or two away

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:15:50 GMT

The peak of leaf-peeping season in the northern mountains most likely is a week or two away, but the onset of the great fall foliage transition has begun.“We’ve had some chilly nights, a few 34s, 35s, some light frost on the deck,” said longtime Steamboat Springs resident Cathy Wiedemer. “That maybe has helped with it. It just seems in the last few days, we’ve kind of rounded the corner and the colors are on – but just starting. (Wednesday) I was noticing some reds in some scrub oak. It definitely feels like fall. Then you look at a row of trees in town, some are yellow and some are still green. There’s this nice melding of colors.”About 25 miles north of Steamboat at the Vista Verde Guest Ranch near the town of Clark, mountainsides are mostly green but some gold is popping. The ranch’s sales and hospitality director, Roxy Kestner, said the change could be in full force next week.Related ArticlesOutdoors | Leaf-peeping preview: Here’s w...

Denver police team up with The Table Urban Farm to plant garden, “share food back to the community”

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:15:50 GMT

The Table Urban Farm is completing soil preparation for a new community garden at the Denver Police Department’s District Four Station at the corner of South Clay Street and Warren Avenue, readying the plot for use ahead of planting season in the spring.The 5,000-square-foot garden will be the largest of the 19 plots operated by the Table Urban Farm in the south Denver area, and will be maintained with the goal of growing thousands of pounds of food for community members in need, according to the Denver Police Department.There are plans to grow onions, tomatoes, peppers and squash, and community members will be able to have input on other types of food that they also want to see grown at the location.“Our model is to grow food in underutilized spaces and share food back to the community,” Table Urban Farm co-director Jeanine Kopaska Broek said in an email.Broek said the space will differ from a traditional community garden where members rent space, and will instead...

A pickleball reality show is in the works — and a Denver woman will compete

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:15:50 GMT

Pickleball has become a contentious topic in Colorado, where some towns have banned players from using tennis courts and even prohibited the sport at certain parks altogether due to noise.One way to solve this pickle of a problem is to build more indoor facilities that cater to the sport, said Denver resident Tiffany Ash. That’s why she’s competing on a new reality TV show called “Pickleball Paddle Battle” for a chance to open her own business in Denver.The show, which is hosted by former “Bachelor” contestant Clayton Echard but doesn’t yet have a rundate or a network to air it, pits 16 pickleball players from across the country against one another in matches, drills and even dance competitions, if the behind-the-scenes content posted on Instagram is to be believed.In the end, two people will win a franchise deal from Pickleball Kingdom in Arizona, which is hosting and sponsoring the competition. Two players will also earn one-year sponsorships to compete against the pros in t...

Denver, already facing a glut of office space, may soon find itself with too many apartments

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:15:50 GMT

Denver, like many large cities, continues to struggle with a lot of unoccupied office space. But the city may soon have to cope with a different kind of surplus  — apartments.“There will be a knife fight for tenants over the next 24 months,” predicted Andy Hellman, a senior vice president with CBRE, speaking at the Commercial Real Estate Symposium and Forecast Panels hosted Wednesday morning by the Denver Commercial Association of Realtors. About 46,000 apartments are under construction in metro Denver, while another 75,000 are in the pipeline, according to estimates this summer from Apartment Insights, which closely tracks the multifamily market.Competition to fill those new units will keep a check on rents, or even send them lower, especially if the economy slows down. But the reprieve for apartment renters isn’t expected to last long, at least compared to what office tenants face.High vacancy rates could plague the office market for years because of the sh...

“A Little Night Music” still feels modern in Denver Center’s season opener

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:15:50 GMT

If the title “A Little Night Music” sounds like a nod to old-world Europe, that may be because it is a direct translation of the title of Mozart’s Serenade No. 13. But don’t be fooled. Stephen Sondheim’s musical with a book by Hugh Wheeler made its first appearance on Broadway in 1973, and the show gently teases that roiling time period’s tensions around love, desire and sex even while setting its vexed couples’ shenanigans in a decidedly bygone era.Director Chris Coleman has found his groove in the musical’s tart grasp of the old and the new, of what endures and what continues to gnaw at us. Coleman, the artistic producing director of the Denver Center Theatre Company, appears attracted to works that deliver the elegance of yore yet nuzzle the ongoing concerns of now. In the recent past, he’s taken the reins of “Anna Karenina” and “Much Ado About Nothing” (set in 1930s Italy).In this opening production of the new season, he makes a diabolically complex musical alluring, crafting a ...

“Not welcome to stop for gas or food”: Decades later, Colorado’s history of sundown towns still lingers

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:15:50 GMT

Gary Jackson, a 77-year-old Denver native, remembers when traveling to certain parts of the U.S. as a Black man meant inhospitality – and, sometimes, danger.“Since the time of Jim Crow, (Black) travelers have always dealt with racial discrimination and incidents of violence,” he said.A junior at the University of Colorado Boulder in 1966, Jackson and his college roommate, W. Harold “Sonny” Flowers Jr., embarked on a road trip from Denver to Oakland, Calif., for spring break. Flowers drove his Oldsmobile, which broke down in Rawlins, Wyo.A repairman informed the friends that the fix would take a couple of days.The students – both young Black men – “went to one of the local hotels in Rawlins, and we were turned down,” Jackson said. Instead, “the mechanic that was repairing our car allowed Sonny and I to sleep in his trailer overnight until the car was repaired.”Their shared experience isn’t an isolated incident. Through the last ce...

Social media influencer says he was targeted in violent Hollywood Hills home invasion

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:15:50 GMT

A social media influencer visiting from Dubai said he was among three victims robbed during a violent home-invasion robbery in Hollywood Hills West Thursday night.The robbery was reported shortly after 11 p.m. in the 8100 block of Mannix Drive, a Los Angeles Police Department spokesperson confirmed. Surveillance video captured some of the incident, showing two masked suspects standing outside the front door.Ring video captures suspects looking through the door of a Hollywood Hills West home on Sept. 21, 2023. (OnScene.TV)The victims say the suspects were armed and eventually gained access by breaking a side window. The surveillance video also shows the suspects running out of the home through the front door carrying several items in their hands. One of the victims was allegedly pistol-whipped in the face during the robbery. Ishmael Khan, who described himself as a social media influencer from Dubai, was among the victims. “They knew who I was … So, they found me on Instagram. They f...

Some crossings on U.S.-Mexico border still closed as cities confront rise in migrant arrivals

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:15:50 GMT

EAGLE PASS, Texas (AP) — The week began in Eagle Pass with rumors that large crowds of migrants might show up. On Friday, the small Texas border city was scrambling: nearly 9,000 asylum-seekers and counting had crossed from Mexico, an international bridge remained closed and a 3-year-old boy had drowned in the Rio Grande. “Before we would hear rumors, nothing happened,” Maverick County Sheriff Tom Schmerber said. “But this time something happened.”The unfolding response in Eagle Pass, where the mayor declared a state of emergency, illustrates how Border Patrol agents have become overwhelmed in recent days by asylum-seekers on parts of the U.S. border with Mexico. In San Diego and El Paso, Texas, officials this week also closed border crossings so agents could help with the influx. After a dip in illegal crossings that followed new asylum restrictions in May, President Joe Biden's administration is again on its heels. Democratic mayors and governors are seeking more relief for hostin...