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6PM The Library has an interesting program scheduled this evening: Composers in Love. It’s not just pop stars who pen loves songs for their loved ones – composers did it, too! Sample a selection of musical valentines from Bach, Schuman, Grieg, Wagner, Mozart and more. Then, learn about the muses who stirred such powerful emotions in these great composers. This should appeal to music-lovers, romantics, and historians alike! This program is part of Heart and Soul of Golden month–a series of fun events put on by members of the Golden Cultural Alliance.


New development at 21st and Ford – see the meeting packet for details.

6:30PM The Planning Commission meets tonight in City Council Chambers. They will be asked to approve the site plan for five new townhomes and a commercial building at 21st and Ford.

Arapahoe Street Changes from the West Downtown Plan Click to enlarge

They will also be asked to approve the West Downtown plan. This plan calls for putting more events in the Miners Alley to Arapahoe Street corridor and for making the streets more bicycle and pedestrian friendly. Complicating those goals is the popular determination not to relinquish the available parking. A conceptual drawing included in the plan shows Arapahoe Street with much nicer sidewalks but considerably less parking. If it works well on the 1200 block of Arapahoe, they’ll do the same thing on the 1100 block, followed by 12th and 13th Streets.

The City Planners suggests we approach the parking problem by setting up a shuttle service so that downtown visitors can park remotely. They also suggest including a transportation hub in the area for bike racks, bike shares, scooter shares, etc.

There are changes coming to this area, and residents and business owners alike are anxious to see how they play out. Calvary Church will open their new plaza soon, on Arapahoe between 13th and 14th. We’ll have to see what kind of traffic that attracts and what kind of events they host there. Mines will be opening a new parking garage just west of the residential neighborhood, and people are concerned that it will bring more traffic through the residential blocks. Residents are also worried about Mines’ significant long-range growth plans and how those may affect this small group of houses. Business owners are worried about strains on the shared infrastructure–will there be enough parking for their customers? If the alley becomes a fun public space, where will they put their dumpsters and how will their delivery vans get through?

You can review the plan by checking tonight’s meeting packet. The Planning Commission will hold a public hearing before voting on the plan, so if you have comments or concerns, be at City Hall at 6:30 tonight!

More Wednesday Events:
9AM
Golden Walks: Wednesday Morning Celebrating Life
9:15AM Toddler Time at the Library
10AM Cutting Day at Golden Quilt Company
10AM TriceraTOTs at Dinosaur Ridge
10:15AM Toddler Time at the Library
11:15AM Discovery Play at the Library
11:30AM Golden Chamber’s Community Development Council
2:30PM Advanced Microsoft Excel: Charts and Graphs at the Library
5PM Mines Entrepreneurship & Innovation Social at the Buffalo Rose
5:30PM Golden Orators Toastmasters
6:30PM West Denver Chapter Trout Unlimited Monthly Program
6:30PM Avalanche Awareness Clinic
6:30PM Planning Commission Meeting
7:30PM SCRIPTprov at Miners Alley

Wednesday Music:
5PM
Dave Frisk at Rock Rest Lodge
6PM Bill McKay at Buffalo Rose
6PM Jay Ryder at Miners Saloon
6PM Jam Night at Mountain Toad Brewing
6:30PM Open Mic Night at Smiley’s


A Century of Parking – Part 4

For the past few days I’ve been musing about how automobiles have changed the shape of our built-before-cars downtown. On Sunday, I talked about the 1920s through the early ’50’s and our quest to provide ever-more parking spots on our streets. On Monday, I covered the rise of parking lots, 1950-1970. Yesterday‘s post reviewed some of the buildings we lost in the quest to build parking lots.

After more than half a century of scrambling to provide enough parking for their customers, downtown business owners got some unwanted relief in the 1980s. Shoppers’ tastes were changing. They didn’t want to shop in a traditional downtown anymore–they wanted to go to shopping malls. One by one, our downtown stores closed. By some counts, half of our storefronts were empty by 1990. Our downtown hotel–the Holland House–closed and stood empty. There were few restaurants, few stores, and few reasons to visit downtown. This was happening to small towns all over the country.

Golden fought back. We voted to form a Golden Urban Renewal Authority, which was able to use tax credits to finance visual and infrastructure upgrades. The Golden Civic Foundation bought some of the empty buildings and carefully selected developers to refurbish and reopen them as viable businesses. The Golden Chamber began hosting downtown events almost every weekend. The merchants funded a tourism program, administered by the city. Community leaders raised funds to build a Visitors Center. The City developed the Creek and built a golf course to help attract tourists. And many, many citizens undertook all sorts of volunteer efforts aimed at making Golden a vibrant, viable city again.

It all worked: Golden is as viable as all get-out. Our downtown has never been as crowded as it is today. Our population is climbing steadily and Mines is growing rapidly and we attract thousands of tourists every month. Most of them arrive in cars and most of them need places to park. GURA built not one but two parking garages. To discourage Mines students from parking downtown all day, the City finally installed the parking meters that we’ve been discussing since the 1930s (only now we call them kiosks).

But there is an interesting undercurrent at work. In response to environmental concern, there is rising social pressure to ride bikes, walk, or take public transit instead of driving everywhere. Urban planners are convinced that people will change their ways and our need for parking will diminish. For that reason, they’re starting to build less parking into their plans. Compare today’s parking with the West Downtown Plan for Arapahoe Street.

Google satellite image on the left | West Downtown Plan on the right

Will better bike lanes and bigger sidewalks entice more people to leave their cars at home? Maybe. Can we start to give up our hard-won parking spaces? I have my doubts, but we’ll see. Even after a century, we haven’t fully solved the parking conundrum.


Many thanks to the Golden History Museum for providing the online cache of historic Transcripts, and many thanks to the Golden Transcript for documenting our history since 1866!


Preview of Thursday Events:
10:15AM
Preschool Nature Nuts at the Lookout Mountain Nature Center: Fascinating Foxes
9AM Public Art Commission Meeting
9:15AM Baby Time at the Library
10:15AM Toddler Time at the Library
11:15AM Family Yoga at the Library
11:15AM Preschool Nature Nuts at the Lookout Mountain Nature Center: Fascinating Foxes
6PM Lecture at the Golden History Museum – A Campers’ Republic: How Camping Became a National Ritual
6:15PM Cooking Class: 5 Ingredient Meals at Earthsweet Botanicals
6:15PM Overeaters Anonymous at Natural Grocers (map)
6:30PM Overeaters Anonymous at the Methodist Church (map)
7PM Golden High School One Act Plays
7:30PM Miners Alley Playhouse – Frankie and Johnny in the Claire de Lune

Highlights