Arguments about relocating the Colorado History Museum to Civic Center continue to focus on whether the new museum would “reactivate” the dilapidated and neglected green space in downtown Denver.
At a public hearing Wednesday inside the current museum at 13th Avenue and Broadway, former City Council member Susan Barnes-Gelt said she doubted that the alternative of locating the museum in the city’s vacant permit center building at West 14th Avenue and Bannock Street would have any impact on reactivating Civic Center.
But Carolyn Etter, former manager of the city’s Parks and Recreation Department, said the Civic Center location for the museum “is not in the best interest of the city, the state or the historical society.”
“The proposal … is billed as a preservation project,” she said. “But to alter this historic landmark in such a dramatic manner is not preservation.”
Etter said the proposed schedule to get a recommendation and cost estimate to Gov. Bill Ritter by early November so he can present it to the legislature’s Joint Budget Committee in January for funding “is a very tight timeline” that would not allow for proper review of all alternative sites.
Others, like New York City transplant Efi Antypas, want the open grassy area protected by putting the museum in the permit center.
“A green island in the center of the city is what we’re talking about,” she said. “Central Park is the lungs of New York City.”
