The project hit several hurdles, including a bid-rigging scandal, but the focus at the ribbon-cutting ceremony was on the boost in downtown spending and tax revenue the expansion is expected to deliver.

The new flexible space, dubbed the Bluebird Ballroom, comes with an outdoor terrace. It’s part of an estimated 250,000-square-foot expansion at the convention center that is , according to an online dashboard tracking its progress.

The ballroom’s coming availability already has allowed and its partners to book an additional $200 million worth of events at the convention center in the coming years, Richard Scharf, the organization’s president and CEO, told attendees.

Normally, they would have been in the perfect spot to take in a panoramic Front Range view. But dense cloud cover on a gloomy winter day blotted out the mountains.

“You know, you can plan for almost everything,” Scharf cracked about the weather.

Visit Denver is the city’s convention and visitors bureau and is tasked with attracting business groups and events to the 33-year-old city-owned convention center. Scharf and company are doing plenty of planning, working to secure bookings upwards of 10 years out.

Mayor Mike Johnston was already sold.

“This is how we elevate, quite literally, what this space can do,” Johnston said during some brief remarks before taking up the ceremonial scissors. “Who would ever want to book your convention any place else once you’ve seen this space?”

Activity in and around the convention center is likely to play a critical role in efforts to revitalize the city’s downtown core, a key plank of Johnston’s successful run for mayor this spring. His 2024 budget dedicates $58 million to that goal.

City officials estimate that the expansion, the second major addition to the convention center since it first opened in 1990, will increase its economic impact on the city by $85 million per year. That will take the form of more nights booked at nearby hotels, more meals ordered at local restaurants and other consumer spending.

It was Johnston who cut the ribbon, but his predecessor, Mayor Michael Hancock, is the one who championed the convention center project. After discussions about updating the building began in 2013, Hancock backed a successful 2015 ballot measure that extended city taxes on rental cars and hotel room stays to raise $104 million for the project, along with millions more for the overhaul of the National Western Center campus on the north end of town.

The rest of the convention center budget was raised through the issuance of $129 million worth of certificates of participation in 2018, according to city officials, along with some help from hotels. The COP borrowing tool does not require voter approval and puts city assets up as collateral for the debt.

The project experienced setbacks, including the bid-rigging scandal that saw Hancock fire the original project manager, Trammell Crow, in 2018. Then, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the convention center was outfitted as a field hospital in case medical facilities were overwhelmed.

Construction finally got underway in September 2021. Now all that is left to be done is largely punch-list items, Scharf said.

Visit Denver will be the first group to hold an event in the Bluebird Ballroom. The organization’s Tourism Hall of Fame awards and scholarship event is planned for early March, Scharf said. It’s a soft launch to make sure there are no kinks in how the space will operate.

By summer, he expects the ballroom to be used frequently by convention organizers.

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He was mayor before the first legal recreational marijuana purchase was made in the city.

When he first took office, there was real concern the National Western Stock Show would pull up stakes and move to Aurora. Now the National Western Center campus in Denver is the site of one of the most significant capital improvement projects in the city’s history, even if voters in 2021 rejected Hancock’s request for bond money to build a new arena there.

Hancock was mayor before older neighborhoods were widely remade with boxy apartment buildings. Before tents became much more common sights at parks and along public rights-of-way, despite his support of a camping ban more than a decade ago. Before Denver’s rents and housing prices hit the stratosphere.

When one person holds power for three terms, unfolding over 12 years, his legacy and impact on a city takes many forms, some more outwardly visible than others. The Hancock chapter of Denver’s history weaves together an explosion in the city’s national prominence and population, alongside expanding gentrification, displacement and street homelessness. It features personal blunders, bold initiatives — some of which succeeded wildly, while others fell flat — and the city’s response to a world-reshaping public health crisis well beyond any mayor’s control.

Some of Hancock’s legacy is only beginning to come into view. He’s talked since he took office in 2011 about plans to attract an “aerotropolis” of commercial development around the burgeoning DIA, and it’s a vision that’s just begun to become a reality as he leaves office. Efforts at police reform have made progress — but he acknowledges that much more hard work remains.

With the pandemic and several years of upheaval still fresh in residents’ minds, judging Hancock’s success is a fraught question.

“Twelve years is a long time as a mayor,” said Paul Teske, the dean of the University of Colorado Denver’s School of Public Affairs.

Teske sees widespread frustration and fatigue with Hancock despite the mayor’s trademark upbeat demeanor. Four years after Hancock successfully beat back a runoff challenger, he’s not riding as high now as he leaves office — a measure of the toll of a COVID pandemic that derailed much of his agenda, along with increases in crime, homelessness and housing costs in recent years.

It may take the benefit of time and distance for the full impact of Hancock’s time in office to be digested and weighed after the bitterness of the last four years has faded.

“Most of it, I think, was pretty successful for Michael and the city,” Teske said. “Unfortunately for him, the last couple of years were probably the least successful. … History, I think, will perceive his term pretty positively. But it takes a while to get away from some of the unsolved problems of 2023.”

Looking back on his time in office, Hancock talks about leading Denver both as a job that was deeply gratifying and one that could humble him on any given day.

He celebrates successes such as a recreation center system that is expanding into previously unserved neighborhoods while also giving the city’s young people free admission on his watch.

He started from the bottom: With the city still reeling from the Great Recession and a housing crash, his first task as mayor in July 2011 was shaving $25 million off the municipal budget to balance the books.

Within a few years, the local economy bounced back — and then blasted off.

Denver became one of the most desirable places to live in the country and grew by almost 100,000 people. It was a magnet for young, college-educated professionals — an enviable position that quickly contributed to the city’s growing housing unaffordability problem as developers struggled to build enough new apartments.

Under Hancock, the city ramped up its spending on housing and got more involved in the market than ever. But were his responses sufficient — or did they fall woefully short? That is a question that divides Denver.

“One of the things you learn in this office: You can’t get too low with the lows, you can’t get too high with the highs,” Hancock reflected in an interview. “This is a wonderful, wonderful job, but it does come with a rollercoaster-like journey.

“You know, one day you wake up on top of the world. The next day, you wake up and the world’s on top of you.”

In 2011, Hancock said: “I will not give up on Denver”

Hancock wasn’t a political unknown when he surged past former state Sen. Chris Romer to win the runoff race for mayor in 2011.

He was a two-term city councilman who had represented far-northeast neighborhoods, including his newer subdivision in Green Valley Ranch, and he’d served two years as the council president. Before that, Hancock led metro Denver’s Urban League affiliate.

He captured voters’ attention and imagination, overcoming his better-financed opponent, by centering his campaign on a compelling life story and a message of perseverance and survival. Along with a twin sister, Hancock was the youngest of 10 children raised by a single mom in Denver. Part of that childhood was spent in public housing and homeless. He suffered through family tragedies that claimed the lives of two of his siblings.

The core message of his campaign, as he put it during his inaugural address, was that the city never gave up on him — and “I will not give up on Denver.”

He’s achieved or made headway on many notable campaign planks, from cementing a plan that kept the Stock Show in the city to hiring an outsider as police chief who initiated significant reforms, even as police have faced recurring criticism and legal scrutiny for use of force and tactics. He closed the city’s budget gaps, then won city voters’ approval to release Denver from property tax spending caps under the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, a move that, coupled with surging sales tax revenue, allowed for a significant expansion of local government.

Even some lesser campaign focuses, such as moving the city to the pay-as-you-throw trash collection fee model, eventually came to pass. In that case, the City Council voted to enact the program in 2022, and it took effect earlier this year — though not without ongoing delays and hiccups for some components.

Hancock and his administration have launched a slate of large city projects — the $1 billion-plus National Western Center that has a lot of work to go, a Colorado Convention Center expansion that’s nearing the finish line, an overhaul of the 16th Street Mall that’s underway, several big expansions and renovations at DIA, and two voter-approved bond programs totaling $1.3 billion in capital projects.

Not all of those went off without a hitch. At DIA, the Great Hall terminal renovation devolved into major disputes that resulted in Hancock and the city terminating the original partnership contract and hiring new lead contractors who will be at work for another five years on an expanded $2.1 billion project.

He’s got a mixed record on other initiatives. Vision Zero, a plan to eliminate traffic deaths on Denver’s streets by 2030, has seen traffic fatality rates rise to 20-year highs instead, .

Hancock also has faced personal scrutiny, including when a police officer in 2018 released a series of text messages from six years earlier, when she was on his security detail, that she said amounted to sexual harassment. He apologized, acknowledging they were “inappropriate” but disputing they were harassment — and had to explain them again during the 2019 election.

He also had to apologize for a bad decision during the pandemic. For Thanksgiving 2020, he asked people not to travel because of the health risks. Then he boarded a flight to Mississippi to spend the holiday with his then-wife, Mary Louise Lee, and daughter.

“I regret it to this day,” Hancock says of that trip.

Looking back on his tenure, Hancock said the best piece of advice he received when he moved into the mayor’s office was not to let the job change him.

“I think the role, the demands of the role, the expectations of the role — you know, you’ve got to stay within yourself to do it,” he said in an interview in his office in December, well before voters picked Mike Johnston as his successor. “And never forget who you represent. You are here representing the city and the 700,000 people who call the city home.”

In the eyes of some of his critics, Hancock let the office change him plenty.

Jeff Fard, a Five Points activist known as , grew up in working-class northeast Denver, like Hancock. He credits Hancock for rising “from humble origins and making it to those highest levels — and maybe being one of the best who has been able to do that.”

But as Denver grew so rapidly over the last dozen years, the city failed to create the same level of opportunities that benefited Hancock, he said. Instead, it����ap become more unaffordable — akin to a larger version of Colorado’s high-priced resort communities, Fard said, with some neighborhoods turning into development “investment zones.”

The median rent for a one-bedroom apartment in the city rose from $796 per month in 2011 to $1,480 per month last year, according to federal data. Most new apartments in the city cost much more than that.

“The average person can’t afford to live here. We call this the mile-high income city now,” Fard said, adding later in an interview: “Every day he has to look in the mirror and remember the calls he didn’t take, the places he didn’t visit, the levers of power he didn’t wield for the people in his own community.”

Even political observers with more centrist viewpoints, like longtime Denver political analyst Eric Sondermann, identify Hancock more with monied interests like developers over the workaday people who voted him into office.

“My overall read of Michael Hancock’s tenure as mayor is he was a fundamentally good man, certainly with some personal challenges, who did not quite meet the moment,” Sondermann said.

Facing unprecedented challenges

But supporters cut Hancock more slack, portraying him as a mayor who faced unprecedented challenges and marshaled city government as best he could to respond to the downsides of all the economic growth.

Janice Sinden, who served as Hancock’s chief of staff for his first five years, recounted moments that she said showed his humanity and his toughness. They included his impassioned drive to beef up and reform the city’s child-welfare system following the abuse death of a 23-month-old boy and his convening of a meeting with gang leaders, amid a sharp increase in killings of teens, to enlist their help in calming tensions.

“He made mistakes, but he’s a beautiful, kind-hearted person — and I just don’t want people to forget that,” said Sinden, now the president and CEO of the Denver Center for the Performing Arts.

Several years after leaving the administration, she rattled off the mayor’s mission statement from memory: “We will deliver a world-class city where everyone matters.” She thinks he lived up to that mission, and “I think that speaks to his heart and why he chose to spend 20 years in City Hall.”

Current and outgoing City Council members showered Hancock with similar praise last week when they honored him with a proclamation.

Charlie Brown, a former colleague on the council who served his last term during Hancock’s first as mayor, said in an interview that he appreciated that Hancock wasn’t afraid to support the growth and development that transformed Denver — making it more vibrant — even if it created pressures for neighborhoods.

“I like the fact that he’s a good listener, I like his wit and he understands the art of compromise,” Brown said. “I hope the new mayor will embrace all of that.”

Denver’s business community has given Hancock mixed reviews: Lauding his boosterism for the city, helping attract new business investment, while criticizing the way bureaucracy still hampered development and economic growth during the Hancock administration. That includes recurring understaffing in the city’s permitting offices, which has resulted in significant review delays for home renovations up to major new projects.

But J.J. Ament, the president and CEO of the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce, said that despite some criticisms, Hancock’s intense focus and support of DIA has been pivotal — even if those expansion projects created hassles for passengers.

“The generational impact of what he’s done with United and Southwest and the physical structure of the airport … I think will be his kind of legacy contribution to our region’s economy,” Ament said. “It was a big deal to build that airport (in the 1990s), but it����ap an even bigger deal to have that airport be as connected as it is now.”

During Hancock’s terms, the city has attracted more than a dozen new international flights, adding 10 countries to DIA’s roster of foreign destinations — from Japan to Switzerland. Last year, after one of the world’s fastest airport recoveries from the pandemic, DIA was the world’s third-busiest airport in terms of passenger traffic.

Finding purpose in pandemic response

All the growth and development that defined most of Hancock’s tenure was overtaken in early 2020 by the COVID-19 pandemic. Denver was one of the first cities in the nation to take that once-unfathomable step of enacting a stay-at-home order.

Sondermann’s impression of Hancock’s third term was that the mayor was no longer fully engaged in his work. He’s not alone in that critique.

Hancock himself has publicly said he did not have as focused an agenda for his third term as he had for the two that came before it.

But when COVID hit, he saw where he was needed.

“I just shudder to think what it would have been like had an inexperienced administration been faced with the challenges of COVID,” Hancock said at a public forum in the Park Hill neighborhood last fall.

Lakewood Mayor Adam Paul was, at points, on calls with Hancock almost daily during the pandemic. He described his counterpart as always optimistic, kind and generous with his time.

Terrance Carroll, a former Colorado House speaker from Denver who supported Hancock’s candidacy in 2011, believes the lens of time will be kinder to the departing leader.

“I think he’ll be appreciated for the manner in which he handled the last 12 years — especially having initially dealt with an economic crisis,” Carroll said. “He had a very steady hand. And with COVID, he had a very steady hand.”

Hancock expanded city’s role in housing, but was it enough?

Housing and homelessness were the central issues of the crowded 2023 race to succeed Hancock, underlining how much work remains on those issues after Hancock leaves office.

Average home values increased 166.7% during the 12 years Hancock was in office, according to data from Zillow. That astronomical growth, to a nearly $570,000 average, put a mortgage well outside the price range of many average Denverites. Meanwhile, the number of people living unsheltered on the city’s streets more than doubled between 2015 and 2022, according to point-in-time counts performed in those two years.

Critics of Hancock in large part pin those numbers on him.

But Hancock touted numbers of his own during the waning days of his administration. By his count, his administration played at least some part in the construction of 10,000 units of income-qualified housing and helped an estimated 15,000 people who were unhoused move into more stable housing, more than any administration before him. He established the Department of Housing Stability, or HOST, the city’s first department dedicated solely to housing and homeless resolution, via executive order in 2019.

He rejects the notion that he and his administration reacted too slowly.

When he took office, the city spent no dedicated local money on affordable housing annually and served mostly as a pass-through organization for federal funding, he said. This year, the city’s budget called for more than $250 million in spending on housing and homelessness — a figure made possible by a voter-supported homelessness resolution sales tax and one-time federal stimulus dollars.

“I appreciate people’s reflection. But I think from my seat, I remember the chronology of the city’s engagement on housing,” Hancock said last week in his office on the third floor of the City and County Building, with the walls now bare as he packed up. “We had no infrastructure in the city of Denver whatsoever to begin to make that investment.

“We were building the plane as we were flying it.”

Robin Kniech, whose 12 years as an at-large City Councilwoman overlapped with Hancock’s three terms, credited Hancock with coming around to the idea that the city would have to play a role in housing. But she said he had to be brought along on things like creating a permanent city housing fund.

“It was an evolution to get him comfortable with permanent dedicated funding,” she said. “It was an evolution to get him comfortable with a dedicated (housing) agency.”

Kniech spearheaded a lot of the legislative work that made the city’s expanded role in housing possible, including the 2022 passage of the city’s affordable housing mandate for new development. She worked closely with Hancock’s planning and housing departments on that effort but emphasized that many of the more progressive developments of the Hancock years — including climate action efforts and the establishment of a city-wide minimum wage –were “City Council-catalyzed.”

Hancock’s legacy on homelessness is complicated. He both made unprecedented investments in housing and services but also backed a camping ban that service providers and advocates believe does nothing but move people around and makes it harder to assist them.

John Parvensky led the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless for more than 35 years, working with five different mayoral administrations. He recently retired.

“Unfortunately, part of his legacy is going to be there was a massive explosion in street homelessness,” Parvensky said of Hancock, acknowledging that Denver’s situation was not unique among other high-cost cities.

Though he described Hancock’s engagement on homelessness as coming about reluctantly, Parvensky credits the mayor with eventually getting behind some creative solutions. Those included a social impact bond program that used money from lenders to provide 250 chronically homeless people with stable housing and support services.

But Parvenksy is still critical of the city’s level of investment.

“They can spend hundreds of millions of dollars on convention centers and other public improvement projects,” Parvensky said, “but when it comes to housing and homelessness, the numbers always paled in comparison to the need.”

Unfinished business, but Hancock expresses pride

As the Hancock era ends, the economic impact of COVID has created a sort of mirrored bookend.

The gaping hole in the city’s revenue that existed when Hancock took office is long gone. The city had a record-breaking budget for 2023.

But the emptying out of offices downtown as more employees work from home or on hybrid schedules raises questions about the long-term stability of the city’s tax base. Hancock is optimistic that the city’s big investment in the ongoing overhaul of the 16th Street Mall, while painful now, will pay dividends in the long term — including helping resolve public safety concerns downtown by activating more storefronts.

The city’s public safety departments are in a similar place. When Hancock took over in 2011, the police and sheriff’s departments were beset by controversy and needed to regain the public’s trust. Hancock’s work included hiring Robert White as chief of the Denver Police Department, the first outsider to lead the DPD in decades. White led reforms including efforts to re-write the department’s use-of-force policies before his retirement in 2018. The department also mandated body-worn cameras for officers.

Lisa Calderón, a public safety reform advocate who became one of Hancock’s harshest critics and one of his opponents in his 2019 re-election campaign, said she had high hopes when a Black councilman with a reputation for being accessible to the community was elected mayor.

Instead, she said he made problems with over-policing worse during his tenure.

A jury last year rendered a $14 million judgment against the city for the way police handled the George Floyd racial justice protests in 2020, the highest profile of a slate of more recent police controversies. The city is appealing that verdict.

But progress is being made, according to Robert Davis, a former pastor and leadership coach who has been a top advocate in Denver for public safety reform. He’s served as project coordinator for the Task Force to Reimagine Policing and Public Safety, a community-led effort in which Calderón was also involved. It was convened after the Floyd protests in 2020.

“I have been surprised that we have been able to make the progress that we have, to be honest with you — pleasantly surprised,” Davis said. “The city has been intentional about working with the task force,” even if he thinks Hancock should have made a point of meeting with the group once or twice to forge a common agenda.

Davis’s wider view of Hancock is a “mixed bag” assessment that includes credit for helping foster the city’s economic boom while critiquing his approaches on homelessness, development and management of the police department. The city has paid out record sums in settlements stemming from injuries or deaths in the city’s jails and at the hands of police.

Rising crime and concerns about safety, particularly in schools, have weighed on Hancock as he prepares to leave city hall for the last time.

That includes the killing of East High School student Luis Garcia, who died two weeks after being shot in his car while parked just off school grounds in February.

“We feel sometimes helpless, sitting here knowing what our vision is and recognizing that if we don’t have a whole community moving toward a healthy environment for our young people, then we’re going to all continue to have regrets about incidents in our community,” Hancock said in an interview days after Garcia died.

When asked what achievement he was most proud of from his time in office, Hancock didn’t hesitate: It’s the creation of the MY Denver Card during his first term.

The card grants children and teens 18 and younger free access to the city’s recreation centers, pools and more. “Opening up the city to young people,” as Hancock puts it. He emphasized he never stopped working on ways to boost education, opportunities and stability for young people in Denver.

“One of the things that I want to do, and I said this coming in, is I want this to be one of the top cities for children to develop and grow and be nurtured,” the father of three said last week.

As for what comes next for him, Hancock says he doesn’t know yet. Or at least he’s not saying. But it likely won’t be in government.

“I’ve been successful and blessed in the nonprofit arena. I’ve been successful and blessed in the government arena,” he said. “I’m going to try my hand out in the private sector.”

He’s newly single, after agreeing with his wife to separate and seek a divorce in 2021. Right now, he’s planning to take some time to breathe, to travel and to prep for football season. The soon-to-be-former mayor at one time was a Denver Broncos’ mascot, and he’s often been the city’s sports fan-in-chief.

During his waning days in office, Hancock’s team has been handing out copies of a glossy, 71-page magazine titled “Denver Rising” summarizing the mayor and his administration’s work and contributions to the city. A feature-length documentary film of the same name recently ran on the city’s Channel 8, prompting one last controversy of sorts over the expenditure of city resources on something for which Hancock himself holds the copyright.

Brown, the former councilman, said he hoped more Denverites would develop a positive view of Hancock, a local kid who made good.

“A couple of years — maybe longer — down the road, people are going to appreciate more of what Mike did for our city,” Brown said. “He went to Manual High, he was a waiter at Wellshire (in the golf course’s restaurant), he’s come a long way. But third terms are tough. I think it����ap going to take a little time for him to be appreciated, if ever, by some people.”

How Denver changed during Hancock’s time in office

Denver’s many changes between 2011, when Mayor Michael Hancock took office, and now are evident in the numbers below. In some cases, comparable figures weren’t available for all 12 years of his tenure.

93,023: Growth in the city’s population, through mid-2022, according to U.S. Census estimates and the Colorado State Demography Office. Denver grew by nearly 15%, to 713,352 residents last year.

52.9%: Growth in real gross domestic product, an inflation-adjusted measure of economic activity, within the city and county of Denver, through 2021. That is the most recent year available from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis.

84.3%: Increase in per-capita personal income through 2021, according to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. The increase in average income, from $53,797 to $99,133, reflects both salary increases as well as a higher share of high-income earners moving into Denver.

167%: Increase in the average estimated home value, from about $213,700 to nearly $570,000, from 2011 through June, according to the Zillow Home Value Index.

86%: Increase in the median rent for a one-bedroom apartment or other home through 2022, from $796 to $1,480 per month, according to the U.S Department of Housing and Urban Development. Rents for two-bedroom units increased by nearly 79%, while studio rents went up nearly 92%.

1,057: Growth in the number of people experiencing homelessness in the city from 2015 to 2022, according to the Metro Denver Homelessness Initiative’s point-in-time counts each year. The 2022 count was 4,794, with 27% considered “unsheltered,” or living on the street — a higher proportion than the 16% who were unsheltered in the 2015 count.

187 stores: Number of recreational marijuana shops opened, up from zero when Hancock took office, according to the Denver Department of Excise and Licenses. The city also has 14 stores selling only medical marijuana. But the combined total of 201 storefronts is actually a decrease from the roughly 250 medical marijuana dispensaries Denver had when Hancock took office.

17 flights: New international direct flights added at Denver International Airport, including Tokyo; Paris; Zurich, Switzerland; and a handful of Central American countries. DIA lost some past foreign destinations, but the international roster has grown to 27 destinations in 15 countries, up from just five countries in 2011, according to DIA.

1,918 acres: Parks and open space added by Denver Parks and Recreation, according to the department. More than 1,400 acres of new and existing city-owned open space were legally designated as parkland, which requires voter approval to remove. That����ap more than double the acreage designated in the prior half-century.

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Progress didn’t come easy. From the recession and growing unemployment in 2011, we emerged with a AAA bond rating, budget reserves, and as one of the country’s fastest-growing economies. As growth came to our city, we refocused to manage it.

Now, we’re boldly leading Denver’s recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, the ensuing economic shutdown, and the triple crises of untreated mental illness, drug addiction, and homelessness. We also are forging new pathways forward following the murder of Georg Floyd and the more recent influx of Central and South American migrants.

Without fail, this city rose to meet every one of those challenges. Every obstacle we faced and every problem we solved, we did it together. I will be forever grateful to every partner who selflessly linked arms with me and my administration and set out to make Denver better.

The job of building a city is never done. A mayor’s time in office is limited. We know the work we set in motion doesn’t always finish while we’re here. Part of our mandate is to address the challenges of today and set up the opportunities of tomorrow. My hope is that my administration built a solid foundation for the incoming administration of Mayor-elect Mike Johnston to succeed, a foundation that itself was built on the shoulders of the mayors who came before us.

The pieces are in place for Denver to seize the future. Over $1 billion in infrastructure investments approved by voters will make improvements in neighborhoods and drive our economy forward for years to come. Several major projects are primed to elevate Denver, including the revitalization of downtown Denver and , , Denver International Airport, the Denver Performing Arts Complex, and the South Platte River. Housing, homelessness resolution, transportation, and climate action are now core services with programs and funding ready to tackle these challenges. Your city government is now geared to deliver on its work with a focus on equity and justice so that no one is left behind – ensuring that ours is a city that works for everyone.

We attracted tens of thousands of new businesses and new jobs. We supported hard-working Denver residents. We created new opportunities for children, the unhoused, and other vulnerable members of our community. We strengthened neighborhoods. We enhanced our airport, increasing the economic impact by $4 billion with 17 new international flights that will continue connecting Denver to the world.

We drove an agenda focused on the people – helping to build or preserve over 10,000 affordable homes, rehouse over 15,000 of our unhoused neighbors, opening our recreation centers for and older adults, reducing child poverty by 13%, supporting workers with good-paying jobs across the city, and bringing more services to every neighborhood and community.

We also kept our city vibrant: Over 5,000 miles of roads repaved, expanded bike lanes and transit and micro-mobility options, protected and grew our parks and open spaces by over 2,000 acres, hired more safety officers and implemented reforms to improve policing, built four new recreation centers and four branch libraries. We brought the minimum wage up to $15 an hour, the first city in Colorado to do so, and kept supporting our local businesses even during the depths of the pandemic.

It����ap true – we still face serious challenges. But we’ve worked hard to set the next administration up for success with the policies, programs, and projects that remain underway, including new approaches to address unsheltered homelessness, housing affordability, untreated mental illness and gun violence.

Denver’s reputation is one of never giving up – we always lean in and put people first, because that����ap how we deliver a world-class city where everyone matters. We’re headed in the right direction.

I have full confidence that Johnston will continue to reach for and attain the hopes and aspirations of our beloved city. I wish him the best of luck as he prepares to take office and get to work for the people of Denver.

I love you, Denver. Thank you once again for the privilege of serving you.

Michael Hancock was first elected mayor of Denver in 2011 after having served on Denver City Council for eight years.

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The craft beer bar kicked off a fun-filled week each year when its digital GABF countdown clock hit 00:00:00 and owner Chris Black began tapping special, rare and delicious beers. Falling Rock also was the first stop for many out-of-state visitors coming into town for the fest and the last stop as they headed back to DIA. It was a meeting place, a hub and a heartbeat.

But Falling Rock closed in June 2021 after 24 years. The pandemic hadn’t been good to the taproom, and a years-long construction project out front and a changing neighborhood made things worse. Plus, Denver’s beer culture had evolved. People were heading out to myriad taprooms all over the city to find fun and trendy new beers and experiences, eschewing the old guard beers that typically adorned Falling Rock’s 75-tap beer menu.

Which begs the questions: Where will people congregate before, during and after GABF, Oct. 6-8? What, if anything, will become the de facto meeting spot for brewers and beer geeks alike? Will there be one primary spot or a group of beer bars and breweries?

The answer for many will be , 2875 Blake St., which is already a hot meeting destination for both out-of-towners and locals during Denver events like last year’s Craft Brewers Conference and previous GABF weeks.

“Returning to Denver for the first time after Falling Rock closed offered up a conundrum,” New Jersey-based beer writer, author and editor John Holl wrote in an email to The Denver Post. “The bar was always my first stop from the airport. I’d slip in early in the week, have a quiet pint, catch up with the staff and then descend into the madness of the Great American Beer Festival.”

“When it closed, I needed a new anchor. So it was fitting last year when the Craft Brewers Conference was held in Denver … that when I walked into Bierstadt Lagerhaus for that first pint I was greeted by Chris Black of Falling Rock. He was there holding court and it all felt right and a little normal, even with no IPAs on offer. Once again, that’ll be my first stop.”

Longtime Colorado beer judge and craft brewery expert Dev Adams concurred. “I think it’ll be Bierstadt. Still easy to get to, good food and, after all the heavy beers, it’s so refreshing.”

With its insider cachet, large space, food options and great beer, Bierstadt is probably the top contender. But it’s not the only one.

We asked around to see where else beer lovers will go to help fill the void that Falling Rock left when it poured its last pint.

MobCraft Beer

Falling Rock’s Black said he will be at MobCraft Beer, a new-to-Denver brewpub that opened in early September, in the former Liberati Brewing space in Five Points. Black has teamed up with the business to offer some of his former events there, including an IPA showdown. “What we’re trying to do at MobCraft is re-create some of the camaraderie that the industry has been known for in past years — wth the focus on the event themes being to allow many breweries to participate,” Black said. But MobCraft is also very new and it hails originally from Wisconsin, so people don’t really know about it yet, and it doesn’t have any kind of track record in Denver. Nevertheless, the space is very large with a huge patio, and there’s food (from partnering restaurant Dee Tacko). The vibe will likely be comforting and familiar to people.

MobCraft/Dee Tacko, 2403 Champa St., Denver.

Goed Zuur

Like MobCraft, Goed Zuur is in Five Points, and the upscale bar, which specializes in sour and wild ales along with a small plates menu, has become a popular hangout during GABF, in part because of its rare beer list and its beautiful setting. “Downtown it����ap tough, but parts of Falling Rock’s mission are covered by Star Bar [see below], Finn’s Manor [see below] and, of course Goed Zuur,” said Black. “All three have their own vibe and specialties, and all three have really good people selecting the beer that have good relationships in the industry.”

2801 Welton St., Denver. 

Star Bar

Star Bar, despite almost no online or social media presence, has been an underground hot spot during GABF for at least a dozen years now. There’s no food and very little room to move, but its divey feel and stellar cans and draft list attract brewery staffers in particular, who are looking for an all-out party where just about anything can and does happen. “It’s where the brewers flock,” said Dev Adams. “But the popularity with the general populace seems to have waned during that week.” Nevertheless, it will likely be crowded again.

Star Bar, 2137 Larimer St., Denver. .

Finn’s Manor

Located in the heart of trendy upper Larimer Street in RiNo, Finn’s Manor has become legendary for its beer menu, which is full of rare and hard-to-find beers — even when GABF isn’t in town and no one is looking. The indoor-outdoor venue is far from luxurious and the food options have shrunk from multiple trucks to a single burger pop-up (although a delicious one), but it would be hard to do GABF week without landing at Finn’s. Black loves it. And David Lin, the owner of Comrade Brewing, said he plans to hit up MobCraft, Bierstadt (early in the week, before it gets too crazy) and Finn’s, where he says the beer list is always top-notch.

Finn’s Manor, 2927 Larimer St., Denver. .

Hops & Pie

Almost everyone we asked mentioned Hops & Pie Artisan Pizzeria. The 11-year-old spot probably has the largest and best list of craft beers on tap during GABF and just about any other time — and its pizza is some of the tastiest in the city. But Hops & Pie is located a good 20 minutes from downtown in the trendy but remote Tennyson Street art district. So heading there from the downtown corridor, where most GABF-related events take place, has to be more of a thought-out trip with a planned Uber budget rather than a short walk, scooter ride or pedicab trip from the Colorado Convention Center or the other locations on this list. Nevertheless, if you walked into Hops & Pie on Wednesday and didn’t leave until Sunday, you’d probably taste a wider variety of specialty beers than anywhere else in the city.

3920 Tennyson St., Denver.

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It has a prominent place in nature
Complimenting the sun
Seldom appears on a dinner plate
Unless for something fun

It����ap often described as soothing
Calming and uplifting too
Evoking deeply spiritual feelings
The closest to a heavenly hue

It����ap become my favorite color
And I sometimes wonder why
Don’t have the right words to explain it
But I’d sure like to try

Blue tickles the fancy of the majority of Denverites who responded to a random, thoroughly unscientific poll that asked what����ap their favorite color. The results weren’t even close, with 28 of 43 respondents proclaiming blue immediately, some adding with a smile, “It����ap that Colorado blue.” Green was next with five votes.

Although I now find every shade of blue to be delightful, from powder to royal to metallic to cobalt to coastal highway, I gave it no props when I was young.

I disliked it back in the day mainly because my grade school’s uniforms were a boring pale blue bodice and skirt combination that we donned every day. They were a pain to iron which I had to do every Saturday afternoon like clockwork.

Lining up micro pleats on three rough-dried dresses in order to press them perfectly took time and a lot of sweat in the Alabama heat and humidity…sans air conditioning.

Blue was also uninteresting to me because my mother was enamored with it.

“Oooh, I love blue,” she said hundreds and hundreds of times.

As a child heading into the recalcitrant teenage years with a strict mother, it was my duty to dislike everything she liked.

However, today, I wish I could share with her my appreciation of her favorite color.

I’ve even fantasized about picking her up at the Denver airport and pointing out Blucifer in the median of Peña Boulevard. I wonder what she’d say about the intensity of the glossy blue mustang raring 32 feet into the air on its hind legs, scary red eyes aglow.

My guess is she would frown upon hearing that Blucifer killed its creator, Luis Jiménez, in 2006 when its head fell and severed the sculptor’s leg artery.

On the other hand, she would get a kick out of The Denver Bear, head cocked and peering into the window at the Colorado Convention Center. She would have found the brilliant blue, 40-foot sculpture adorable.

We’d take selfies and walk through its legs to examine how artist Lawrence Argent pieced the halves together.

I’d show her where the lines on the bear’s backside come close enough to the middle of the sculpture to look like a crooked butt crack. I can hear Mom admonishing me with, “Oh, Jo Ann!”

Perhaps we would have gone to Brandi Carlile’s recent show at Red Rocks that featured the amphitheater’s iconic slabs bathed in a rich blue light. A friend described the color as setting the perfect mood for the singer’s more mellow songs.

If Mom had visited in 2018, we would have experienced The Blue Trees in Denver’s Theatre District. Artist Konstantin Dimopoulos said he chose the color for the temporary installation “Because blue trees do not exist in nature and I wanted people to notice them” and to raise awareness about global deforestation.

I picture Mom among the electric blue trees, gazing up at their majesty.

Most Coloradans know that, contrary to a once popular song, the bluest skies you’ll ever see are not in Seattle but across our state. The scientific explanation is that less water vapor in the air at high altitudes results in a bluer sky. Clear blue skies are what the blue in Colorado’s flag represents.

Ever wonder why many alpine bodies of water, especially Ice Lake in San Juan National National Forest, are so stunningly blue? Again, science has the answer. Melting glaciers produce silt from rocks underneath the ice that then flows into the water to create that lasting vibrancy.

My mother passed away in 2005, long before I recognized the gloriousness of her favorite color. If I could have one impossible dream come true, it would be to spend time with her figuring out why blue evokes immense happiness in both of us.

We’d also take in awe-inspiring natural wonders found in the Centennial State, such as The Majestic Columbine, Colorado blue spruce, Mountain Blue Birds, blue clouds at sunset, and more.
Mom would undoubtedly exclaim over and over, “Oooh, I love blue.”

Jo Ann Allen is the creator and host of the podcast Been There Done That. She started her journalism career in 1975 at The Capital Times newspaper in Madison, WI. She spent 18 years as a news anchor at WNYC/New York Public Radio, and also worked as an anchor at KPBS Radio in San Diego, WHYY Radio in Philadelphia and Colorado Public Radio in Denver.

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He appeared to have turned the corner last year when he led the Rockies with 27 2/3 innings pitched in the shortened season, posted a 2.93 ERA and walked only 2.0 batters per nine innings.

But the first half of Almonte’s 2021 season has been ugly. After he gave up five earned runs, including a grand slam, in the Cardinals’ six-run 10th inning Friday night at Coors Field, Almonte was left with an 11.52 ERA. Perhaps even more disconcerting, Almonte is walking 7.6 batters per nine and has served up seven home runs in just 25 innings.

“The thing that sticks out to me is the walk rate for Yency,” manager Bud Black said prior to Saturday night’s game vs. the Cardinals. “With the increased traffic, you have a tendency to maybe be a little bit too fine and try to make too good a pitch. That leads you down a bad path.

“And he’s been pitching behind in the count too much, and he’s not been on the attack early. He’s been in hitters’ counts and he’s had to throw strikes and I think hitters have feasted on that, to a certain extent.”

Black said Almonte’s arm is fine, adding that the fastball velocity (94.3 mph) is good. But Almonte is not locating his pitches and he’s failing to pitch in the bottom of the zone.

Rolison’s rough ride. Lefty prospect Ryan Rolison, who had a legitimate chance of making his big-league debut later this season, has run into a buzzsaw of bad luck. Rolison, 23, was pitching for Triple-A Albuquerque when he went on the injured list on June 14 after surgery to remove his ruptured appendix.

Then he recently suffered a fracture to the third knuckle of his left hand during batting practice while he was shagging flyballs. Black said the hope is that Rolison will begin throwing again in about 10 days. Rolison could begin a throwing program by the end of July.

All-Star Game tickets. MLB All-Star Game tickets are still being sold in limited quantities at

Tickets also may be purchased for next Saturday’s MLB All-Star 5K at Civic Center Park, and next Sunday’s All-Star Futures Game and All-Star Celebrity Softball Game at Coors Field. Plus, tickets may also be purchased for the All-Star Workout Day on July 12 and the Home Run Derby on July 12.

Play Ball Park, scheduled to open Friday at the Colorado Convention Center, is free but requires a reservation to enter the facility.

For more information on all of the events, visit

On Deck
Cardinals RHP Carlos Martínez (4-9, 6.38 ERA) at Rockies RHP Germán Márquez (7-6, 3.62)
1:10 p.m. Sunday, Coors Field
TV: AT&T SportsNet
Radio: KOA 850 AM/94.1 FM

Márquez has been one of baseball’s best pitchers over the last six weeks and he’s coming off a one-hit gem vs. the Pirates in which he took a no-hitter into the ninth inning. He became the first pitcher in franchise history to toss a one-hit complete-game shutout at Coors Field. He is 3-0 with one run and four hits allowed over his last three starts (23 innings). The right-hander is 6-1 with a 3.06 ERA in 11 starts at Coors Field, including 4-0 with a 0.51 ERA in his last five home starts. Márquez is 2-1 with a 2.43 ERA in five career starts against the Cardinals, including a 1.53 ERA in five starts against them in Denver. Martinez is making his first start at Coors Field since 2017. He’s 5-1 with a 5.49 ERA in seven career starts against the Rockies, with 44 strikeouts. It’s not been a good season for the veteran right-hander, who snapped a five-game losing streak on Tuesday by beating the woeful Diamondbacks, allowing one run on four hits and two walks while striking out six over six innings.

Trending: Entering Saturday night’s game, Rockies starters had allowed just 12 runs (11 earned) over their last 10 games for a 1.57 ERA.

At issue: Right fielder Charlie Blackmon’s subpar season has hit another dip. He was batting .175 (10-for-57) with no home runs, seven walks and 11 strikeouts over his last 15 games, entering Saturday’s play.

Pitching probables
Monday: Off
Tuesday: Rockies RHP Jon Gray (5-6, 3.89) at Diamondbacks RHP Riley Smith (1-4, 6.02), 7:40 p.m., ATTRM
Wednesday: Rockies RHP Antonio Senzatela (2-7, 4.58) at Diamondbacks RHP Merrill Kelly (5-7, 4.67), 7:40 p.m., ATTRM ]]> /2021/07/03/rockies-yency-almonte-2021-season/feed/ 0 4631785 2021-07-03T18:28:39+00:00 2021-07-03T19:12:08+00:00 /2021/02/17/denver-national-western-center-upgrades-bonds-arena-market/ /2021/02/17/denver-national-western-center-upgrades-bonds-arena-market/#respond Wed, 17 Feb 2021 13:00:30 +0000 /?p=4457782 Denver must delay some of its plans to renovate and expand the National Western Center campus as it wades through the financial troubles brought on by the coronavirus pandemic.

City officials plan to use $274 million in bonds — yet to be approved by the City Council — for long-planned early-phase upgrades and expansions to the National Western Center and the Colorado Convention Center.

But later phases at the National Western Center including a new 10,000-seat arena, an exposition hall and a public market in the to-be-renovated 1909 Stadium Arena are on hold, Denver Chief Financial Officer Brendan Hanlon told The Denver Post.

City officials had planned for that later work, worth an estimated $528 million, to be paid for with a public-private partnership. In May, the city paused the idea, and on Tuesday, Hanlon said straightforwardly that the price tag is “just a bridge too far right now” for the general fund, because the city’s share likely would have been hundreds of millions of dollars in the coming years.

Denver, however, remains committed to the entire plan for the center that has been in the works for years, according to Hanlon and Tykus Holloway, executive director of the Mayor’s Office of the National Western Center. It’s just that city officials will need to decide in the coming months how best to fund the marquee work. Because funding wasn’t secure for those phases there was never a clear time line for completion, said Jenna Espinoza, spokeswoman for Holloway’s office.

That’s not to say some of the work on Phases 1 and 2 aren’t underway: a new Stockyard Events Center, new stockyards to the campus, new roads and infrastructure that’s needed to “set the table” for more work down the line. The first two phases are expected to be finished by the end of 2024, Holloway said, and are being funded by bonds that were approved by voters six years ago.

If passed by the city council, the additional $274 million in new bonds would provide an infusion of $10 billion into the local economy and create nearly 7,200 jobs in a variety of industries like construction, retail and food service, Department of Finance spokeswoman Julie Smith said. That would be on top of a $170 million bond issuance the council approved late last year for infrastructure and construction around town.

“Infrastructure investments work to recharge our local economy, as we know well from the Great Recession, and we will deploy these same tools here,” Mayor Michael Hancock said in a release.

Already, the pandemic has sharply cut into the convention center’s business and canceled the 2021 National Western Stock Show (though Holloway noted it gave construction workers time to make more progress). The stock show cancellation turned away an estimated 900 booths, 700,000 attendees and an estimated $120 million economic boon.

Holloway said it����ap not yet clear whether the 2022 Stock Show will happen, but crews are preparing as though it will.

Meanwhile, the convention center had been turned into a temporary COVID-19 overflow site, though it was decommissioned as such last month having never served a patient.

Plans for the Colorado Convention Center include an 80,000-square-foot ballroom and a 50,000-square-foot outdoor terrace with mountain and downtown views built on top of the existing parking garage.

The Denver City Council is expected to consider the bond issuance request in committee later this month before passing it on to the entire group for a vote, Smith said.

The city settlement follows smaller agreements reached by the Colorado Attorney General’s Office last spring with Trammell Crow, the project’s former development manager, and Mortenson Construction, a construction bidder.

The new $9 million settlement, split evenly by the companies, will cover the cost of delays to the project, city spokesman Ryan Luby said. The city had to start the bidding process anew after it discovered evidence two years ago that a Trammell Crow executive had provided Mortenson, one of three bidders, with confidential information about the $233 million expansion project, among other irregularities.

In July, the city awarded the design-build contract to Hensel Phelps Construction. This summer, construction is expected to get underway on work including the addition of a large rooftop terrace. The project is expected to wrap up in late 2023.

The city settlement bars Mortenson from bidding on city contracts for three years. Both companies also issued new public apologies, with Trammell Crow reiterating that the blame fell on the actions of a senior vice president whom it fired “as soon as the misconduct came to light.”

“This settlement means we’ve made taxpayers whole, our well-established procurement rules have been fortified and this critical public project is moving forward to support our post-COVID economic recovery,” Mayor Michael Hancock said in a news release. “This case involved a serious breach of Denver’s well-established procurement rules by companies that should have known better.

“The watchful efforts of city employees in this administration uncovered the breach,” Hancock added, crediting city officials for acting on it.

In April, Mortenson agreed to pay a $650,000 state fine and to donate construction services worth the same amount to a project of public interest, among other terms negotiated by Attorney General Phil Weiser’s office following a state investigation. Mortenson later aided construction of a tiny home village for the homeless in Denver.

Trammell Crow’s state settlement included a $250,000 fine, a lower amount that recognized its early cooperation with investigators.

Construction began last week on . When completed this fall on East 37th Avenue near York Street, it will have a cluster of 14 standalone tiny homes and a larger common house with bathrooms, a kitchen, meeting space and other services.

Mortenson Construction is working as general contractor, a role approved recently by the Colorado Attorney General’s Office under its April settlement agreement with the company. Mortenson had denied allegations that a project manager treated it favorably during bidding for the $233 million Colorado Convention Center project, but its CEO acknowledged the company “did not meet our own expectations.” It agreed both to pay a $650,000 fine and to donate construction services worth at least that amount to a project of public interest.

At first, the intent was that Mortenson and executives involved in the convention center bid would help with a project geared toward the COVID-19 pandemic, such as a field hospital. But the need for such a project receded as hospitalizations declined.

“Homelessness is a challenging issue in Denver, and the economic fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the urgent need for stable housing,” said Lawrence Pacheco, a spokesman for Attorney General Phil Weiser. On Monday, he confirmed the office’s approval of the project selection.

Cole Chandler, executive director of the Colorado Village Collaborative, said Mortenson’s donated services have sped up the project’s timeline by two to three months. He hopes the first women, potentially including transgender individuals, will move into the 96-square-foot homes by mid-October.

“We would not be starting construction right now if Mortenson was not contributing their services,” Chandler said.

The new village in the Cole neighborhood is modeled on Beloved Community Village, which opened in 2017 near 38th and Blake streets with the intent to serve as a transition to stability for people experiencing homelessness. Chandler’s group moved it last year to East 44th Avenue and Pearl Street in Globeville to make way for an affordable housing development project at the original site, and it now has 19 tiny homes.

The Women’s Village also is likely to have a limited lifespan at its initial site. Mile High Ministries has plans for a full-block affordable housing development on the site called , named for an enterprising and charitable former slave who moved to Colorado in the 1800s after gaining her freedom.

Chandler says Mile High has granted a renewable two-year ground lease to the collaborative.

His group hopes to build several more tiny-home villages across the city, with an eventual goal of 200 units. Its latest project relies heavily on donors, volunteers and partners, including the Cherry Creek Innovation Campus in Centennial, which is building a half-dozen of the units for the Women’s Village.

The collaborative also is involved in the city’s separate plan to launch a sanctioned homeless encampment. At the same time, the city is making plans to close a temporary shelter set up for women and transgender people inside the Denver Coliseum during the pandemic.

“There’s a plan in place to help shuffle people around,” Chandler said, “but we can see a need for more units to meet that need. We’re eager to extend these units towards that population.”

Hensel Phelps will be the design/build contractor, the city announced in a release Tuesday.

The company is already working on other major city projects, holding a $275 million contract for work on the under-development National Western Center campus and taking the lead on the estimated $195 million renovation project at the Denver International Airport after DIA fired its first contractors.

The convention center expansion’s original development manager, Trammell Crow, was kicked off the project in December 2018 and construction bidder Mortenson Construction barred from involvement with it after the city brought to light questionable dealings between the two companies. Both companies reached settlements over their conduct with the Colorado Attorney General’s Office this spring.

The convention center project will include an 80,000-square-foot multipurpose room, a rooftop terrace and lobby renovations, Denver Department of Transportation and Infrastructure spokesperson Nancy Kuhn said in a release.

Construction is slated to start in mid-2021 and finish in late 2023, she said.

Nearly half the estimated $233 million needed for the project comes from a measure passed by voters in 2015, Kuhn said. The rest comes from a mortgage-like arrangement with certificates of participation that were issued in 2018 and will be repaid with a mix of tourism and seat taxes and hotel revenue.

Since May the center has been outfitted to serve as a temporary field medical facility with several hundred beds at the ready in case hospitals overflow with cases of COVID-19. So far it hasn’t been needed, and it’s unclear for how long it might need to remain on standby for that purpose.

If the center is needed as a medical facility during construction, Denver officials will coordinate with state officials, who have taken charge of its use as a temporary hospital.

While the center is unused now, during non-pandemic years it creates jobs and a cash flow for Denver. The expansion should create or support nearly 2,700 jobs, generate $195 million in labor income and about $475 million in sales, Kuhn said. It should add approximately $4 billion to the area’s gross regional product, she said.

However, it remains unclear when the convention center might revert to its normal use as coronavirus cases tick upward in Colorado and many experts anticipate a second wave of cases. Large gatherings are still not allowed and last month Gov. Jared Polis ordered bars to close once more.

Kuhn said the city will now negotiate with Hensel Phelps for design and buildout services, which must be approved by the City Council. That’s expected to take several months.