Residents still would receive free recycling pickup — every week instead of every other week as at present — if the 13-member city council approves this overhaul next month.

It also would authorize enforcement citations, like parking tickets, for residents who intentionally dispose of garbage in recycling bins — and additional waste inspectors would be hired. The penalty amount isn’t set.

Denver officials said the idea is to attack the huge volumes of waste hauled to landfills by incentivizing recycling – which has been free except for the yard and food waste composting, which costs $9.75 a month.

The estimated 193,988 tons a year of garbage that Denver buries in landfills — an amount that increased by more than 5% between 2019 and 2020 — emits heat-trapping methane gas.

Federal agencies have determined landfills remain a major source of methane in the atmosphere that accelerates global climate warming, which leads to increased fires, drought and other calamities.

“Right now, we’re asking people to pay for something we want them to do — compost recycling. And we’re providing them — for free — trash pickup service. This really doesn’t incentivize anybody to change their waste disposal behaviors,” said Grace Rink, director of Denver’s Office of Climate Action, Sustainability and Resiliency, who worked with transportation and infrastructure officials on the proposed overhaul.

“If we can get composting out of our trash bins, that����ap 50% of what goes into landfills and creates methane,” Rink said. “People have told us they want us to address climate change. And climate change has told us time is running out.”

Council members are scheduled to review the overhaul and vote on it in June after an informational meeting next week. A majority of council members support it, interviews with council members revealed.

An estimated 20,000 low-income residents would qualify for free or discounted waste services.

Other cities around metro Denver and elsewhere have developed municipal waste policies that incentivize recycling. In cities where residents rely on private waste haulers, prices for garbage pickup and recycling exceed what Denver would charge for waste services.

Denver currently lags behind other cities and the national average for recycling. Roughly 26% of waste was diverted from landfills in 2020, city data show, compared with 34% nationwide. City officials said they want to ensure 50% of waste is recycled before 2027.

“Absolutely we should be doing this,” councilwoman Robin Kniech said. “We have to live up to our values. We care about the snowpack. We care about the mountains. We care about air quality and the heat waves hitting our city… We need to create the right incentives to do the right thing.”

Under Denver’s new approach, residents would pay $9 a month for a small garbage bin (35 gallons), $13 for a medium bin (65 gallons) and $21 a month for a large bin (95 gallons). City crews would empty these weekly.

Those crews currently provide municipal waste services at 180,000 single-family households and buildings with seven or fewer apartments. Only about 30,000 pay the $9.75 a month for composting. They would save 75 cents a month under the new pricing if they opt for small bins.

City waste inspectors currently monitor recycling waste streams and tag purple bins they find to be contaminated with garbage. Notices inform residents problems must be fixed before bins will be emptied. Inspectors remove bins if issues aren’t resolved.

“As part of the proposal if it passes, we will hire additional inspectors to check carts for contamination.��Education will be the first step as we work to build compliance. Contamination fines only exist as a deterrent and will follow after multiple warnings,” city spokeswoman Nancy Kuhn said in an email. “Fine amounts are being discussed.”

The revenue city officials expect to collect from new garbage bills — around $35 million a year — is based on a projection that 45% of residents will choose the large 95-gallon garbage bin with 40% opting for the medium 65-gallon bin and 15% the small 35-gallon bin. And officials said the money will be used only to cover the cost of waste services — not to generate additional revenue for the city budget.

Denver residents long have benefited from free garbage pickup. If a resident fails to pay a garbage bill, city officials said, that household would receive notices similar to those sent when residents don’t pay fees for other city services. Unpaid bills persistently ignored could, after a multi-year process, lead to liens on property. However, city officials said nobody’s ever lost property for failing to pay city service fees and that liens typically lead to lost property fewer than five times a year when property taxes haven’t been paid.

Council members questioning the waste pricing overhaul include Candi CdeBaca. “As it stands, it needs some serious modifications. I absolutely believe recycling and composting should be free and expanded,” CdeBaca said. But provisions to help low-income residents aren’t sufficient, she said.

CdeBaca also advocates a broader city approach — requirements that companies create products and packaging designed for reuse, and tougher policies for developers whose construction waste constitutes a significant portion of waste sent to landfills. (Developers currently recycle at higher rates than residents, according to city officials, but construction projects generate large volumes of material sent to landfills.)

Denver voters in the upcoming 2022 November election will face a ballot initiative on whether to expand recycling further by requiring that all Denver businesses — including restaurants, hospitals, large apartment buildings, hotels and sporting arenas — provide waste compost and recycling services.

Councilman Kevin Flynn said he opposes the overhaul of waste services pricing. It would bring minimal gains because residential trash collection accounts for only 18% of waste generated around the city, Flynn said. He cast fellow leaders’ efforts as “hoping to squeeze blood from a turnip.” He advocates, instead, focusing on recycling and composting at large residential and commercial properties.

“With our current inflation and rising costs for gas, electricity, water, rents and home prices, it����ap time to tap on the brakes for a while and not pile onto our residents with another new fee,” Flynn said. “We’re making it harder and harder for working families to live in this town with added expenses year in and year out.”

METRO DISTRICTS: DEBT & DEMOCRACY

After months of reporting, investigative reporter David Migoya explains how Colorado’s special districts have created an enormous amount of debt, then put the responsibility for payment onto homeowners who often don’t know they’ll be paying off developers through growing property taxes with no end in sight.

Thousands live in Colorado’s more than 1,800 metro districts, but few know the details of how new developments are creating debt, holding elections and burdening future homeowners.

• Colorado metro districts and developers create billions in debt, leaving homeowners with soaring tax bills
• There is little transparency for metro district fees that are supposed to benefit the community
• Bruce Rau is one of the most elected men in Colorado but doesn’t live in any of the metro districts he represents
• Metro district debt is decided long before residents move in, but some are trying to take back control

When the project launched, we asked for your questions about Colorado’s metro districts. Then, Migoya answered the most common ones we received to help our readers better understand this topic. Read more from this investigation here.

STATE OF MARIJUANA

In January 2019, Colorado marked its fifth anniversary of legalized recreational marijuana. Reporters David Migoya, Jon Murray and Anna Staver tracked how and where the tax money from marijuana sales was used in this three-part series.

• Part 1: “Where’s all that marijuana money?” Colorado’s pot dollars help schools, but maybe not as much as you think
• Part 2: Colorado communities pocket big bucks from legal marijuana, but threats loom for some
• Part 3: Almost half of Colorado’s marijuana money can go wherever lawmakers wish

Bills and a baby: Colorado Sen. Brittany Pettersen is breaking new ground

At the end of the 2019 legislative session, Sen. Brittany Pettersen realized she was pregnant. With a due date at the end of January, Petersen is set to be the first Colorado state senator to give birth in office and the first state lawmaker to do so during a legislative session.

“I think this goes in the bad planning column,” Pettersen joked.

But joking aside, her absence from the Senate chamber during the 2020 session — the inevitable result of increasing diversity at Colorado’s legislature — will have real policy implications. Here’s a look from reporter Anna Staver at what a baby in the statehouse will mean for Colorado in the coming session.

MOURNING THE LIVING

For months our health reporter Jessica Seaman spent time with the Sanchez family, who have multiple diagnoses of Alzheimer’s disease. She set out to discover what it’s like for an average family to grapple with this devastating disease. As part of this project, we hosted a panel event for our readers to hear from doctors about the complexities of this disease. Watch the recording of the event here.

• Part 1: Alzheimer’s disease creeps from one generation to the next in this Colorado family
• Part 2: As Alzheimer’s disease preys on a Colorado family, dad fights while mom accepts her fate
• Part 3: Greeley family wonders who’s next as they watch Alzheimer’s disease wind through generations

Shambhala, the Boulder-born Buddhist organization, suppressed allegations of abuse, ex-members say

For months our former intern Jackson Barnett investigated the Shambhala Buddhist organization. Through dozens of interviews and reviewing hundreds of documents, he found the Boulder-born mindfulness community for decades suppressed allegations of abuse — from child molestation to clerical abuse — through internal processes that often failed to deliver justice for victims.

That suppression came in the form of worshipful vows students said they were told to maintain to the very teachers they alleged abused them; in explicit and implicit commands not to report abuse; and through a cultish reverence that served to protect Shambhala’s king-like leaders, Barnett reported in July.

• RELATED: What is Shambhala? International The Tibetan Buddhist community has deep roots in Colorado

THE DENSIFICATION OF DENVER

More than a century ago, Denver’s leaders — inspired by the City Beautiful movement — built toward the ideal of a “city within a park.” But the last 20 years have seen immense change, as Denver’s population has exploded and developers cover more and more of the city’s remaining nature.

In this series, our environmental reporter Bruce Finley took a look at how development has cut back on green space in the Mile High City and what’s being done to restore parks to the metro area.

• Part 1: As development eats away at Denver’s green space, the “city within a park” is becoming a concrete metropolis
• Part 2: “We need more open spaces”: Denver residents feeling stifled by city’s building boom seek room to roam
• Part 3: “We are left with the dregs”: Heron Pond’s toxic brew spotlights obstacles in Denver’s push to regain green space

Investigator finds 43 Catholic priests in Colorado sexually abused at least 166 children

Throughout 2019, a third-party investigator reviewed sexual abuse allegations within Colorado’s Catholic Church. Criminal justice reporter Elise Schmelzer followed the investigation and its fallout. In October, the investigator released the report finding that 43 priests in Colorado had abused at least 166 children. Former Colorado U.S. Attorney Bob Troyer, blasted the dioceses for poor record-keeping, ineffective reporting systems and a culture that suppressed allegations and created a danger to children, Schmelzer reported in October.

• Who are the 40 priests named in the report?
• At least 11 priests accused of sexually abusing children in Colorado report are still alive. Where are they now?

Thirty months after fatal Firestone blast, Colorado’s widening web of underground pipelines still not fully mapped

In October, we published a story about how Colorado leaders failed to deliver on their pledged comprehensive public pipeline maps and better inspections to detect leaks like the one that caused the fatal Firestone blast 30 months earlier. Due to the difficulty of locating lines and a failure of government agencies to take charge, companies so far only have been asked to provide partial data on a subset of existing lines.

Federal government and industry officials contend pipelines are less risky and harmful than the alternatives of moving oil and gas in tanker trucks on public roads or by train, Finley reported in October. Yet pipelines still fail, sometimes causing catastrophic harm, and oil and gas companies are resisting stricter controls.

Hundreds of men say they were sexually abused during their time in the Boy Scouts. Now they want justice.

In a massive lawsuit involving nearly 700 men, former Boy Scouts are coming forward alleging they were sexually abused while in the program. The men plan to sue the organization and are demanding that the Boy Scouts be held accountable for hiding abusers from the criminal justice system and enabling them to keep preying on young men. Among the victims are 16 Colorado men. Reporter Sam Tabachnik talked with a few of them for this story.

While much attention has been paid to the Catholic Church’s sexual abuse scandal, the Boy Scouts’ history of abuse committed by troop leaders and scoutmasters is now coming into focus.

SHROUDED JUSTICE

Our Shrouded Justice investigation technically published at the end of 2018, but in 2019 we had a major update. The Colorado Supreme Court was tasked with taking on the issue of secreted court cases like the thousands that we reported on when our investigation published in July 2018.

Ironically, the discussion and decision on how courts would handle Colorado’s suppressed cases occurred in secret without any members of the public present. Instead, any proposed rule would be published and public input invited, including public testimony before the full Supreme Court at a later date. We’re still waiting for a decision or proposed change.

Want to support more stories like these? The best way to support our local reporting is to .��

The National Western Stock Show Complex will be revitalized in coming years, transforming a public facility that was edging on the definition of blight.

Almost $1 billion will be invested in our roads, bike lanes, sidewalks, libraries, and recreation centers in coming years following a careful plan to equitably distribute new bond proceeds throughout communities that have been historically underserved.

Bus rapid transit is planned for East Colfax, bringing an easy-to-navigate, high-speed transportation system to a portion of the city that hasn’t benefitted from light rail.

The 16th Street Mall will receive needed upgrades to ensure it remains an iconic tourist attraction for another three decades.

These transformational projects don’t occur by happenstance. They are the product of the leadership and vision of Denver Mayor Michael Hancock and his ability to organize and execute ambitious plans.

That is why The Denver Post Editorial Board is urging voters to support him for his third and final term in the May 7 city elections. Hancock faces five opponents who have rightly focused on the growing pains Denver’s neighborhoods have felt as construction has boomed, housing prices have skyrocketed and developers have tested the limits of zoning plans put in place before Hancock took office. We hope the attention brought to these issues by former state lawmaker Penfield Tate, co-chair of the Colorado Latino Forum Lisa Calderón, and River North urban planner Jamie Giellis will push the city to fight harder for its residents.

And Kalyn Rose Heffernan, a community activist, is right when she says the city must do more to protect and serve those experiencing homelessness. Her campaign slogan of “access” is so good that its spirit should be adopted by the city.

Hancock has made mistakes in his eight years in office. We called it an “incredible breach of public trust” when we learned that he had sent, early in his first term in office, sexually inappropriate text messages to a city police officer who was also a member of his security team. Hancock told us again last week that sending those text messages was wrong and unfair to the employee. He apologizes to her without any attempt at excuse. We think he is truly remorseful and has learned from his mistake.

However, many of the attacks lobbed at Hancock — accusations that he’s in the pocket of developers and has refused to respond to the affordable housing crisis – miss the mark.

Blaming Hancock for the housing crisis created by unaffordable housing and the displacement of low-income and minority residents is akin to blaming former Mayor John Hickenlooper for the foreclosure crisis that hit just a few months after he started his second term.

Hancock’s administration and City Council have stood up to developers, even if at times we wish they had reacted more quickly: rejecting slot-home developments; closing a loophole that allowed developers of multi-family houses on small lots to not provide off-street parking; setting an ambitious goal for affordable housing, meeting it early and then creating a multi-million dollar fund to keep the progress going. We see the mayor’s leadership in creating Denver Day Works, a program that sets aside city work for day laborers, and in his commitment to creating new shelter beds, improving existing shelter spaces and building a daytime facility with showers and other resources.

More needs to be done, but Hancock is ready and willing to meet the challenges of a booming city and he is the only candidate ready to meet the challenges if this nation faces an economic downturn.

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TSA workers are among the lowest paid of all federal employees, and now they aren’t being paid at all. It is time for a blue flu. My estimate of the time between a complete jam of airport security lines and reopening the federal government regardless of Trump’s silly wall is 48 hours, max. The powerful and wealthy do not understand not getting a paycheck, but messing up their travel will get immediate attention.

Richard Opler, Parker

Government shutdown? Think again. Trump started by sending home staff from a number of agencies but keeping half, over 400,000 people, working without pay. As time passes, more employees are being brought back to handle things like the food stamp program and IRS workers to process tax returns. Now nearly half a million unpaid employees are working. We are approaching a fully staffed and functioning government again but one provided by unpaid indentured servants. For shame!

Harry Puncec, Lakewood

An amazing international airline pilot did the kindest thing. His name is Deepak Sethi and he lives in Denver. He went on his time off Monday, in uniform, and drove to Denver International Airport to buy all the air traffic controllers lunch because they have not been paid due to the government shutdown.

I definitely think he should be recognized for this thoughtful act in such a difficult time for so many people affected by shutdown. He truly has a great heart.

Kirsten Daniels, Newbury Park,Calif.

I am a retired federal employee who is sick at heart about the way our federal employees are being pitched aside during this shutdown.

What is happening is “usion.” While there might not be collusion, there’s a lot of: delusion, the president says the furloughed workers are supporting him; illusion that federal employees can ask banks and landlords for time to pay their mortgage or rent; and confusion that the president thinks throwing a tantrum and storming out of negotiations is effective leadership.

Cheryl Brungardt, Wheat Ridge

This shutdown impasse could be ended if Trump would just change his insistence on funds for a border wall to funds for border security. A wall might work in some areas but apparently there are many places where one would be impractical. We should have a panel of experts in security develop a workable plan rather than rely on the sole opinion of Trump. I doubt his experience in real estate and game show hosting makes him an authority.

Tony Miller, Castle Rock

Responding to the densification of Denver

Re: “The densification of Denver,” Jan. 13-15 series on maintaining green space during growth

George Orwell could have used this language to explain doublespeak in his novel 1984. Developers looking to build in Denver must satisfy requirements for parks and open space as part of any development. City authorities now advise that construction of recreation center buildings can, in part, satisfy those requirements. What is the point of having development guidelines if they can be so mangled that a structure constitutes a park. No wonder natives like me are wondering why there is so little green in our Mile High City.

Vic Reichman, Denver

Bruce Finley’s three-part series on the concreting of Denver paints the city as Joni Mitchell’s lyrics in “Big Yellow Taxi” come to life: “They paved paradise, and put up a parking lot.”

The main lowlight was the seeming impotence of Denver’s current administration to expand the amount of green, open space available to citizens. Deputy Director of Parks and Recreation Scott Gilmore says it����ap not “feasible” to establish significant new green space in Denver and dismisses out of hand the idea of using eminent domain to buy properties that could be turned into open space. But his boss, Happy Haynes, insists, “We will lose ground if we don’t get busy.”

Given Mr. Gilmore’s position, one wonders if Ms. Haynes has the right person working on this. The state didn’t hesitate to use eminent domain when it had to expand I-70, did it? Isn’t it interesting that voters turned down two statewide proposals for road construction, but Denverites approved new taxes for parks?

In order to create new parks, “We would have to spend a lot of money,” Gilmore says. Well, yes. And didn’t we just hand the city $45 million a year specifically for parks? He seems resigned to the current, inadequate and shrinking ratio of green space to concrete.

In short, the city ought to put our money where we voted in November to put it, into park space.

Steve Lang, Denver

In last Sunday’s edition of the paper there were two letters about global warming and a feature on the front page about the density of urban development crowding out open spaces in the nation’s cities.

Those who think global warming is simply the result of using carbon-based fuels miss the message of urban development in today’s world where parks and greenways are displaced by buildings and parking lots made of concrete and asphalt and other dense, heat-absorbing materials. The latter are heat sinks that capture and release heat over an extended period — they retain the heat of the sun in our cities long after it has set and contribute significantly to the warming of the surrounding area.

Perhaps we need retractable sun shades for our urban areas rather than abolish the use of carbon-based energy which is fundamental to the sustenance of the nation’s economic well-being.

Marion Anderson, Idaho Springs

Give us back our parks from the summer concert crush

Re: “Grandoozy won’t return to Denver in 2019,” Jan. 12 news story

No Grandoozy for Summer 2019. Good news for the Godsman Community. The noise level is too disruptive and invasive for the neighborhood. The concerts at Levitt-Pavilion should also be terminated. They are not being monitored at all by the City of Denver. Levitt monitors itself. I live one mile away from Levitt on the other side of Ruby Hill and can hear every performance. This is a disservice to everyone who wants to enjoy their yard. It����ap every weekend for the entire summer. The City of Denver should be enhancing the peace and quiet not destroying it. Denver, stop letting private corporations misuse our parks and give us back the summer.

Robert Lopez, Denver

No such thing as free kindergarten

Re: “Full day kindergarten: Polis unveils his $227 million plan,” Jan. 16 news story

First headline I read after our new governor takes office is free kindergarten for all. Free being the operative word. Since the beginning of time, all humans have understood everything comes at a cost, or effort, and that nothing is free. This is no different. Someone a lot smarter than me once said, “a government big enough to give you everything, is certainly big enough to take everything you have.”

This is just the start, what else is next I ask? I don’t need a crystal ball that a tax increase is in the works, disguised as a fee. Once they give you everything, they will start taking everything from you.

Ron Reihmann, Denver

Our new governor, Jared Polis, is off to an interesting start and I would just like to remind Colorado voters you get the government you voted for. Polis wants to take $227 million of the expected windfall and spend it on free full-day kindergarten. This is a great big gift to the teachers’ unions that will require hiring more dues paying teachers for what is essentially free baby-sitting. Mr. Polis has his $227 million this year while things are good but what about the future when we have leaner years, which inevitably happens? Meanwhile Mr. Polis apparently doesn’t think Colorado roads are a priority and makes no proposal for their improvement at all.

Now, the good news is the governor doesn’t get to write the actual budget but rather just proposes his suggestions. The legislature will make the actual decisions. Let����ap hope some common sense rules the day but, keep in mind, Colorado voters gave Democrats control of both houses. Hang on everyone, it����ap going to be an interesting year!

David Longenecker, Morrison

Hunters must speak up now to protect wildlife

Every five years, Colorado Parks and Wildlife revises its big game season structure, which determines how many licenses will be issued in various seasons for the next five years. That time is now, and if you are among the growing number of hunters who agree there are way too many of us out there in September (unlimited either-sex archery elk tags, plus deer, bear, pronghorn, grouse and muzzle-loading ), now is your chance to help spark needed change. Time is short, with the comment period ending Feb. 4, and I urge you to go online and fill out the opinion survey today. It only takes minutes.

Wildlife management in Colorado is dysfunctional, with science and public interest being overruled by politics and special interests. Please take this opportunity to tell CPW what we are seeing out there and how we feel about it.

If we who hunt in Colorado (residents and visitors alike) don’t speak up, then self-serving groups like the Colorado Bowhunter’s Association will continue to have their way at the expense of the wildlife resource and the vast majority of hunters. (And by the way, I am a bowhunter.)

As a group, we hunters are unsophisticated when it comes to biology and politics, always seeking more opportunity while refusing to sacrifice anything for the long-term good. Now is our chance to change that sad history. Please take the survey.

David Petersen, Durango

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But this is industrial wasteland. The 2-foot-deep pond holds toxic sludge laced with lead, arsenic and cadmium. Contaminated stormwater runoff from surrounding work yards worsens the brew.

And even though low-income north Denver residents say they are practically starved for nature in the city, a festering sense of injustice rankles the deal.

“We are left with the dregs,” longtime resident John Zapien said at a recent community meeting, urging city officials to prioritize health.

“We need to clean up Heron Pond. No ifs, ands or buts,” Zapien told officials in the room.

Denver’s willingness to embrace such a site for future parkland reflects the increasingly difficult challenge of establishing enough public green space to keep pace with population growth and development. Denver has fallen behind other U.S. cities in urban parks and open space. This is causing discomfort, hurting public health, exacerbating heat waves and risking costly problems with stormwater runoff.

City officials interviewed by The Denver Post said they see establishing new green space as essential but, perhaps, impossible given the rising price of land. Yet voters recently ordered a sales-tax hike that will raise $45 million a year for parks and open space. This has compelled planners to pore over thousands of acres that could be preserved as green space.

“We will lose ground if we don’t get busy,” Parks and Recreation Director Happy Haynes said as she contemplated Denver’s green-space crunch.

The problem, city officials said, is competing with private developers for land. Developers since 1998 have installed buildings, paved over natural terrain and otherwise overhauled vast tracts of the city — profiting from shopping plazas and upmarket apartments that eventually sell as condominiums. They’ve built higher, lot-line-to-lot-line in some areas, leaving less space to even plant trees.

Turning to marginal industrial land, city officials said, may be Denver’s best hope for stabilizing a decline in green space per capita.

Chief parks planner Mark Tabor said that, after establishing the new green space around Heron Pond, Denver officials could try to purchase the land around the Arapaho power plant south of downtown and in the rail yards northwest of downtown for preservation as large green space where natural ecosystems could be restored.

This approach hinges on cleanup.

It can be done, not just by excavating and hauling away contaminated soil but by using modern cleanup methods that remove acidity and toxic metals, said Fonda Apostopoulos, a Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment engineer who managed decontamination of the Asarco smelters and 862 residential properties near Heron Pond.

“The low-lying fruit of clean property in Denver is few and far between. are pretty much the only property people are developing,” Apostopoulos said.

“It is all about exposure pathways” — the ways contamination can reach people, he said.

Around Heron Pond, cleanup included excavation and replacement of soil around homes. Nine new monitoring wells will be installed between the smelter site and the South Platte River to make sure toxic metals no longer contaminate groundwater, Apostopoulos said, pronouncing the area safe for at least passive recreational activity.

While cleaning up industrial wasteland costs hundreds of millions of dollars, “there are a lot of private-public partnerships that could do that,” he said. “Denver could get extra federal funding. They could get cleanup grants.”

Competing against deeper pockets

Earlier this year, Denver officials tried to buy a single acre in the highly sought Golden Triangle near downtown to establish green space needed for one of the city’s worst “park deserts” — only to find they were hamstrung by insufficient funds. They’d obtained $2 million in grants from groups such as Great Outdoors Colorado. But developers were able to bring more than three times that amount, and prevailed in the range of $7 million to $9 million.

“We are never in there strategically,” City Council President Jolon Clark said in an interview. “Now that land is going to be developed, wall-to-wall, 10 to 12 stories tall.”

Clark has championed a push for more green space and bristled. Denver “absolutely should not” turn away from its ideal of being a city within a park, he said. “But this is where we are barreling. We’re getting farther and farther away from it every single year. We need to turn it around. This is about turning things around and getting back to our vision.

“I don’t think people in Denver realize how far away we’ve gotten,” Clark said. “This matters because the fabric of our city is the public open space, the parks. It is critical for us to preserve that. I am very worried.”

Yet city leaders’ commitments appear complicated. Mayor Michael Hancock, in office since 2011, recently acknowledged the problem. “We are falling behind… We are falling so far behind,” he said at a public gathering. Yet rather than build new 100-acre-plus green spaces — New York’s Central Park covers 840 acres, for comparison — Hancock has prioritized the creation of “pocket parks,” covering less than two acres, scattered around Denver so that every resident can reach one by walking less than 10 minutes.

“We are not talking about we have to have massive parks,” Hancock said.

Denver has 27 existing pocket parks, covering a total combined area of 13.5 acres. In contrast, parks established last century to ease industrialization covered more than 150 acres. Washington Park covers 161 acres and City Park encompasses 330 acres, including the Denver Zoo.

Nearly 86 percent of Denver residents already can reach a park within a 10-minute walk, city documents show.

On the City Council, Clark said he sees a need for both large and small green space, as much as possible. “We have to look at these micro parks. But, yes, we need big parks. We need open space. We need preservation along the river for habitat,” he said. “If we could get a pocket park on every single block in the city, that, too, would be part of being a city within a park.”

No big swaths of land left

Developers contend they should not be seen as villains in the lessening of nature in the city.

Lack of city leadership has been the problem, said Mark Johnson, president of the Denver-based urban design firm Civitas, which has guided green-space projects here and around the world.

Pocket parks may actually may hurt health rather than improve it, Johnson said, referring to . Researchers found these open landscaped courts tended to be located in polluted areas and that young men who played basketball likely inhaled contaminants, while benches were used mostly by relatives who sat and ate unhealthy food.

“The real issue is livability. Denver does not have enough parks and enough green spaces, and the parks are no longer connected,” he said. “Denver probably could use 50 percent more parks than it has — a significant increase in the types of parks and the distribution of parks.”

Some developers now advocate increased green space to buttress economic value.

“Land has gotten very expensive in Denver. We don’t have big swaths of open land left. We do have a pretty good supply of paved areas like parking lots. I have not heard anybody say, ‘Let’s turn parking lots into pocket parks.’ That could be interesting,” said Michael Leccese, director of the Urban Land Institute of Colorado, a developer-run global nonprofit organization that encourages smart growth.

“It’s not fair to put the blame entirely on developers,” Leccese said. “If you are developing a site, and everybody wants density to support urban living, you’re not going to solve the problem of open space. … But we should be thinking about creating the proper green spaces for a growing city. This is really an emerging issue. We really need to have a broad community discussion about where we want to have our future parks to serve growing neighborhoods that will be increasingly crowded.

“If you want the City Park, Commons Park, Cheesman Park or Washington Park of the future, no one private-sector developer is going to provide that,” he said. “They can be part of it. They would see the long-term value of it. People love to think developers are just out for profit. But you have a number of really community minded developers here who get involved in civic issues. Can the development community solve this on their own? No. Could we analyze where the opportunities are? Does the city have surplus property?”

“Practically had to have a bake sale”

One of the last parks Denver established became possible after the cleanup of contaminated land, a 1.2-acre west-side parcel that city officials obtained in 2007.

Trailers and a bar at the site regularly drew police to deal with disorderly conduct and vandalism. The trailers were deemed derelict. But after city contractors razed the land in 2009, it sat empty for years. Residents led by Spanish-speaking mother Norma Brambila proposed the creation of a park.

Called , it officially opened in the Westwood neighborhood in 2014.��While tiny, it improves one of the city’s worst park deserts and is heavily used.

City Councilman Paul Lopez, representing residents, celebrated that park and praised the women who demanded it to make their neighborhood livable.

“We practically had to have a bake sale to get this park built,” Lopez said.

“That’s the problem,” he said. “We as Denver residents, as taxpayers, should not have to have bake sales to raise funds to build our parks. This could be something that is a city government function.”

Denver’s success as a city increasingly may depend, in an era of global urban expansion and rising interest in resilience amid climate change, by how it connects with nature. But urban design experts said restoring significant green space would require major public and private investments and a vision, with help from the federal government.

“Private developers need to play a role. They’re trying to make a profit. It all comes down to detail. Is it going to be quality, meaningful green space? Or is it just a tree every 20 feet?” said Jeremy Stapleton, climate resilience director for the Sonoran Institute, an Arizona-based think tank considering expansion to Colorado’s high-growth Front Range.

“We’re hoping we are seeing a paradigm shift here where people are saying, ‘We will work with nature,’ ” Stapleton said. “We have got to embrace natural processes. Nature is going to provide way more benefits than a built environment — like air quality and water quality and access for people. It comes down to your land-use planning.”

Fighting for equity

For the industrial wasteland around Heron Pond, city and state health officials are finding that, when residents get involved, they demand full cleanup.

Denver has owned that land, next to the Asarco cleanup site, since 1951.

Fish tissue samples have confirmed elevated concentrations of heavy metals, including cadmium, lead and arsenic, according to a toxic inventory in city records. Waste from runoff continues to collect in this low-lying pond.

“No fishing” signs have been posted for years. Ball sports and other activity that could disturb surface soil also are limited. Yet birds live at the pond. City managers have designated the property as a “natural area.”

While health officials advise only passive use of the pond area for now, adjacent land, spanning nearly 15 acres, would be designated active use, such as ultimate Frisbee and soccer. Denver officials have created a master plan for an 80-acre “park” to be called Heron Pond/Heller/Carpio-Sanguinette.

At a November gathering in the adjacent Globeville neighborhood, city parks planner Cincere Eades led a process that lets residents vote on how the park will be designed. The process focuses on technical details, such as how fragments of sayings by school children could be embedded in cement pathways.

That’s when longtime resident John Zapien and a friend stood to raise the issues of natural integrity, justice and cleanup. A former meat plant worker who has lived in Globeville since 1958, Zapien insisted environmental health ought to be a priority for green space in Denver.

Eades told residents the city is committed to establishing a park, but lacks funds for dealing with final cleanup matters such as the sludge at the bottom of Heron Pond. Dredging the pond to remove arsenic, cadmium, lead and other contaminants would cost more than $2 million, Eades estimated, emphasizing that this industrial land has been deemed by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment as fully “remediated.”

Water in the pond, she said, serves as a natural “cap” containing toxic contaminants to keep them from spreading.

Yet residents keep raising the issue, Eades said. “Every single time.”

Concerns of residents appear related as much to justice and fairness citywide as to the actual safety of this land, she said. “And I don’t blame them.”

Zapien and a friend proposed a new idea for solving this problem and ending the delays in establishing new public green space.��Why not seek private funds for dredging, in return for visibility? They pointed to the green plastic dinosaurs that the Sinclair Oil Company deploys at gas stations around Denver. Children love these, Zapien said. What if cash-strapped city officials persuaded Sinclair to help establish this green space by funding a dredging of the pond?

In return, green dinosaurs could be installed in the park, Zapien said, including one big dinosaur that could be set in the pond, rising out of formerly toxic muck.

“Not clean this up? That would be doing the same thing we’ve been letting industry and government do to us in here Globeville for 100 years,” he said.

“We cannot go on like that.”

Parents, in particular, say they struggle to raise healthy children as natural space increasingly is built over or paved.

“If they just stay inside, they grow up to be fat people on phones, all the technology things,” said Gabriela Azevedo, 27, a mother of two boys in north Denver.

One of her children, Sabian, 7, has asthma so severe that Azevedo and her husband recently moved him to a different school — away from Denver’s Interstate 70 redevelopment construction near their home, an area . There’s a small park nearby.

“But when the air is really bad, we just stay inside,” Azevedo said.

A couple times a month, this family rolls across Denver and joins growing crowds at a bigger, cleaner park with open green space, large trees, a pond, playgrounds and birds. “The one near the zoo,” she said.

When possible, they escape to the mountains. Azevedo’s message to city leaders and developers: “Build more parks, think about parks more often, be more green. Because of our kids.”

Lack of sufficient green space has become a common complaint among residents such as Azevedo, as Denver morphs into a concrete metropolis. Rapid population growth and a development boom have combined to reduce green space per person. Ample backyards increasingly are relics as residents shift to condos, slot homes and high-rise buildings. More of Denver’s 155-square-mile area is paved or covered over each year, part of a national trend that has worsened heat waves and can cause havoc with stormwater runoff.

In parts of Denver, green space has decreased to fewer than 5 acres per 1,000 residents — less than half the national norm.

“It is different from rich areas to, like, this area — low-income people. It’s just different,” Jose Sotelo, 51, said on a recent afternoon after he escorted his kids to the newly refurbished Westwood Park, which features exercise equipment and a playground around open grass.

Green space in other parts of Denver seems “nicer, greener. I can see flowers. It is a little unfair. We pay taxes, too. Why?” he said.

“Fresh air’s the No. 1 thing”

A food warehouse worker and father of two in west Denver, Sotelo said he’s been struggling to find nature. The kids — Levi, 9, and Iraci, 10 — recently had to say goodbye to their 72-year-old grandfather, who retired to a Mexican village because it offered peace with fresher air, birds and starry night skies. Now Sotelo was looking for outdoor alternatives to computer screens after school.

“Nature here? We don’t have it. Not enough in Denver. Maybe in the suburbs they have it,” Sotelo said. “We need more open spaces, more natural spaces.”

At the end of summer, Sotelo realized Levi’s waist was as big as his own and that he seemed practically addicted to video games and television. So as part of a family initiative, they were aiming to go to a park every day after school, away from “suffocating” technology. If not for this park, “they’d be inside on the tablets.” He watched as Iraci played on swings and Levi lay on the grass by a flat blue soccer ball.

“The outdoors is to have fun,” Levi said. Sotelo nodded, adding, “Fresh air’s the No. 1 thing.” He kicked that ball with his son.

A growing body of scientific research points to  for green space in cities. The research from psychologists and urban planners has found green space is .

People are healthier and happier when they have access to nature, researchers contend, correlating proximity to vegetation with lower stress, anger, aggression, diabetes, stroke and cardiovascular disease. They have found that people exposed to green space tend to be more active physically, healthier mentally and more connected to other people. Children appear to suffer less from blood-pressure problems and asthma.

Denver’s green-space crunch, reducing contact with nature for residents unless they can afford escapes to the mountains, has mobilized voters. In 2017, they passed a ballot initiative ordering city officials to install green roofs on buildings (to absorb more of the heat-trapping greenhouse gas carbon dioxide and to produce more clean oxygen). Last fall, voters approved a sales-tax hike to raise $45 million a year to improve and expand green space.

“The younger population is more and more interested in keeping the world green and paving less. They are concerned about carbon emissions, social equity and resilience,” said Mark Johnson, president of the Denver-based urban design firm Civitas, which has helped establish green space here and other cities worldwide.

“Our marketplace and our culture is insisting on more environmental benefits,” Johnson said.

“Living in a concrete box”

It’s gotten to the point where well-to-do people pay for nature therapy.

“A lot of people come to see me saying nature is kind of their church, the place they go to heal and feel better,” said psychologist Aleya Littleton, one of several “nature-based therapists” in the city.

Typical clients seek one-hour-a-week sessions talking outdoors “because they know it is so good for them,” she said, though many struggle to fit sessions into their schedules.

“There’s definitely an increase in stress and discomfort. The urban environment has a way of distracting attention that is violent and aggressive,” she said, compared with “subtle inputs of nature that we are biologically predisposed to receive. … We’re becoming more connected to our technology. It is a contrived experience. We are not more connected to each other.”

Around Denver, residents young and old increasingly migrate in vehicles to find natural space. During heat waves last summer, mothers stuck inside the city flocked to parks with water fountains, helping their children stay cool and active.

“Really important,” said Brittany Aynei, 32, who walked nearly 2 miles from her home west of downtown to the Union Station area where, though the plaza is paved, the fountain was not as crowded as usual, because the bigger kids were back in school. Her 2-year-old son splashed jovially while his 6-year-old sister waded around.

“I prefer to have my kids outside every day, just to be active. We don’t do TV,” Aynei said.

More green space is “necessary for a growing city,” she said. “I’m OK with building up vertically. Better than building new houses everywhere. But we could have more open space.”

It seems to bring relief.

“It is pretty important to have at least some sort of escape in the city. It gets alienating if you don’t have nature or greenery anywhere,” said Michael Perkins, 29, a University of Colorado Denver engineering graduate student and cafe barista walking through Lower Downtown.

Perkins grew up along the Front Range and said he’s noticed the increasing density of Denver as developers install high-priced modern apartments and condos.

“Feeling like you are living in a concrete box is going to change your psychology. You start to forget what it is to be human and to be a part of the Earth,” he said, noting the apartment he shares is close to a park.

“I would definitely favor more open space. And I would favor integration of nature into urban spaces — for solving the problems of urbanization.”

While the scattered “pocket parks” that Mayor Michael Hancock celebrates draw heavy use, residents living near them indicate they’d prefer something bigger.

A new public-access pocket-park courtyard that city officials painstakingly negotiated with a developer as part of a contested high-density development in Park Hill “is sort of pathetic. Everybody can see through it. Developers have a very clear profit motive, and this is a city that gives whatever it can to developers,” said Caleb Hannan, 35, sitting with his toddler daughter on a bench in a pocket park at Dexter Street and 23rd Avenue.

“Not the greatest green space, but it is 15 minutes away,” Hannan noted.

“We need green”

Farther away, Denver offers 14,000 acres of mountain foothills parks. While residents recognize that option, many say they need more of a tolerable environment right where they live and work.

“We need green. We gotta have something that puts oxygen back in our air,” said retiree Dennis Chambers, 63, who was fixing a fence at his Park Hill home.��“But the mayor doesn’t want it. He’s going to go where the money is.”

Now that his children are grown, Chambers and his wife often drive to Chatfield Reservoir southwest of Denver and to Bluff Lake.

Workers often cannot escape.

“I feel more heat,” RiNo food market employee Sulema Palacios, 23, said while emptying trash into a Dumpster on an asphalt parking lot during Denver’s eighth consecutive 90-degree day in September.

At the very least, city planners should plant more trees, she said. “We need more big trees in the streets. For air.”

Denver Parks and Recreation officials pointed to privately installed open space that developers include as part of projects spanning more than 10 acres.

Yet one of those areas, near the Denver Indian Center off Alameda Boulevard and Morrison Road, contains AstroTurf instead of grass. It served well for the soccer-playing grandchildren of Lorenzo Clark, 54, who sat on a bench watching them. “But they should build a bigger park.”

In an ideal world, those kids would spend time in nature, Clark said. “It is better for them to grow up in open country. They can get off their computers. Get out and explore. Get on a horse. Build a fire. Have a cookout.”

One result of the green-space crunch may be that Denver residents increasingly envision their best life elsewhere, treating the city like a way station.

Between rows of shiny box-shaped apartments installed atop the former Gates Rubber factory along South Broadway, neo-natal intensive care nurse Alexa Horn, 27, said there was no significant green space nearby and that rent of $1,500 a month felt steep even on her steady wages.

She could drive to Washington Park in about 15 minutes, depending on traffic.

Her tight apartment was sufficient for now, she said. “I mean, I lived in a college dorm” at the University of Wisconsin.

“Parks are important. I like the outdoors. A place to escape the city feel,” she said, noting that she grew up near a lake in Minnesota.

“I won’t be living here all my life. I want a house with at least a small yard. This is temporary,” she said. “I wouldn’t want to live here forever.”

They wanted peace, and calming views, with room to roam and starlit night coolness they could savor in silence. So they pored over an array of ultra-light shelters for a trip into Colorado’s mountain wilderness that, hopefully, wouldn’t entail too much traffic.

“You definitely have to leave the city. I wish it wasn’t like that,” said Von Feldt, who grew up in Wichita, where a carefully platted park gave residents a natural oasis.

“It just feels hectic being in the city,” she said. “You cannot get that detachment from the chaos.”

Von Feldt is caught in a green-space crunch that is hurting Americans as cities grow denser, more paved over and more crowded. Denver epitomizes this diminishment of nature in the city, a trend worldwide with 55 percent of humanity living in urban areas and a projected 2.5 billion more people on the way by 2050.

Large areas of Denver overhauled to sustain an exploding population now are so built up and paved over that residents rapidly are losing contact with nature. Excluding the undeveloped area around the airport, nearly half the land in Denver’s city limits is now paved or built over — up from less than 20 percent in the mid-1970s, a Denver Post analysis of city and federal data found. And that figure could approach 70 percent by 2040.

Denver’s elected leaders and developers over the past 20 years drove this shift toward high-rise towers, yard-devouring duplexes and shopping plazas — and away from Denver’s “city within a park” heritage that a century ago incorporated natural preserves of 100-plus acres.

They replaced Denver’s original pattern of settlement amid green space with an increasingly dense format that has enabled population growth by 41 percent, from 498,402 residents in 1998 to 704,621 in 2018. This heavily built cityscape is replicating, a recent aerial survey revealed, like the circuitry inside computers.

This denser development covers more and more of Denver’s 155-square-mile area, including the River North, Uptown, Cherry Creek and Highlands neighborhoods, and the 44th Avenue and South Broadway corridors. It’s intensifying as City Council members weigh future high-density projects across the South Platte River floodplain encompassing the Elitch Gardens Theme & Water Park, Colfax Avenue, Loretto Heights and the already jammed Colorado Boulevard from Interstate 25 north past the old University Hospital campus and Park Hill Golf Course to Interstate 70.

The question is whether “livability” will improve, especially for children and the majority of workers who cannot afford frequent escapes.

The Denver Post’s analysis found:

— Green space in Denver is disappearing faster than in most other cities, with paved-over cover increasing from 19 percent of the city in 1974 to 48 percent in 2018 (not including Denver International Airport), federal and city data show. Up to 69 percent of the city is expected to be paved or covered by 2040. Only New York and a few mega cities exceed that level of what planners call “imperviousness.”

— Denver ranks nearly last among major U.S. cities, including New York, in park space as a percentage of total area. It also ranks nearly last in park acres per resident.

— City leaders are overriding residents’ desire for increased green space as they sign off on more high-density development.

— The dwindling of nature in Denver could lead to potentially overwhelming increases in stormwater runoff, and is causing worsening heat-wave impacts and likely hurting residents’ physical and mental health.

The situation has reached a point that clashes with the “green” images Denver economic development officials project to promote growth, tourism and the outdoor recreation industry.

“There’s a ton at stake. This is something to be concerned about — not just for some big net loss of biodiversity, but for what it means for people to interact with nature on a regular basis,” said Liba Goldstein, a Colorado State University conservation biologist who has helped guide efforts to nurture nature north of Denver in Fort Collins.

“We benefit from regular interaction with nature. It is good for human health. … We all know we have big obesity and mental health problems on the rise in cities. As people are more and more connected to computers, technology, and less and less connected to nature, it is harder to generate interest and enthusiasm and curiosity in young people,” Goldstein said.

“This all has major impacts on our own health and well-being. We are going to be less happy and less healthy. We will be leading shorter, less happy lives. And we will miss out on what is spectacular, unique and interesting about the natural world.”

Denver’s transformation has been happening gradually, and The Post — analyzing city and federal data, interviewing officials and developers, talking with residents — tried to determine the cumulative impacts.

A city increasingly “impervious”

The pace of Denver’s shift from natural to an increasingly built urban environment — roofs, roads, parking lots, park trails, other ground coverings — may be accelerating. In 1974, 19 percent of Denver was built over, according to federal U.S. Geological Survey data. In 2012, about 32 percent of that area was covered (roughly the same as the broader Denver/Aurora area tracked by USGS), the city and federal data show.

Denver officials now estimate the paved-over portion has increased to nearly 40 percent. And it’s 48 percent if the largely undeveloped 52-square-mile property around Denver International Airport isn’t included, said Brian Muller, a University of Colorado urban design professor and director of the school’s Community Engagement and Design Center. Using high-resolution imagery to assess Denver’s changing landscape, Muller has projected 66 percent imperviousness by 2040, and up to 69 percent if DIA is excluded, assuming likely expansions of transit and roadways.

“You’re looking at 95 percent imperviousness now in the newly developed parts of Denver — a very high rate,” Muller said in an interview.

“Other cities are going this way, towards very compact development without much open space,” he said. But Denver’s shift is extreme.��“We’re not retaining much of our natural landscape. There are multiple processes going on that are generating imperviousness: the large buildings, some on residential lots, and when we build impervious trails in parks.

“You’re looking at substantial increases, more or less in line with the population growth. … Denver should be very careful in how it manages green space.”

Covering natural terrain with concrete and asphalt increases the volume and velocity of stormwater runoff. Denver officials in 2014 estimated it would cost $1.47 billion to upgrade the city’s storm drainage infrastructure to handle the surges so that flooding on streets would stay under one foot deep. Water contamination also worsens as road grit, petroleum and chemicals whoosh off hard surfaces into the South Platte watershed. Denver officials recently began an effort to try to turn back the clock and restore natural processes, a limited effort to re-engineer waterways that could slow flows and harness the H2O.

Other U.S. cities, such as hurricane-plagued Houston, also are struggling with increased stormwater deluges set off by over-developing urban terrain.

Less room to roam

Denver’s 155-square-mile area includes 6,238 acres of parks and open space (the city counts 831 acres of golf courses, 137 acres of road medians and 204 acres for future parks), which is 6.2 percent of the total area, an inventory provided to The Post shows. That ranks the lowest among major U.S. cities, according to Trust for Public Land rankings, which used an 8.2-percent figure for Denver. The city also owns about 14,000 acres of non-contiguous park property in the mountains.

By comparison, New York City has designated 21 percent of its area as parks; Washington, D.C., 22 percent; San Diego, 23 percent; and Los Angeles, 13 percent, Trust for Public Land data show. Commonly used comparable “peer cities” also beat Denver, with Minneapolis devoting 15 percent of its area to parks; Portland, Ore., 18 percent; Boston, 17 percent; Seattle, 12 percent; and Chicago, 10 percent.

The rapid population growth in Denver — the city has added nearly 10,000 new residents a year since 2010 — intensifies the impact.

Park space per person in Denver has fallen to 8.9 acres per 1,000 residents, down from 9.4 acres per 1,000 residents in 2006 and 9.5 acres per 1,000 residents two decades ago — far below the national average of 13.1 acres per 1,000 residents, city data show. (By comparison, Portland offers 23 acres per 1,000 residents.) Denver officials project the acreage will decrease further to 7.3 acres per 1,000 residents as Denver’s population tops 857,000 before 2040.

It would take at least 1,500 acres of new green space to stop the decline and hold steady at about 9 acres per 1,000 residents, and 3,000 new acres of parks to approach the national norm of 13.1 acres per 1,000 residents, city planners said. Denver parks planners recently identified 625 city owned acres that could become future green space.

Yet Denver stands out as one of the only major cities in the U.S. that has not drawn on public funds to expand public green space — until voters in November approved a ballot initiative establishing a sales tax that will raise $45 million a year to go toward parks.

In addition, Denver’s rules for developers rank among the most permissive when it comes to installing buildings without a requirement to offset impact by establishing new public green space. Only “master-planned” development on parcels larger than 10 acres — relatively rare — must leave 10 percent of the total area open, according to city community development officials. That open space, under Denver’s current rules, can include paved-over courtyards or plazas.��For example, city officials recently told high-rise developers they could include construction of recreation center buildings as part of their required parks and open space.

Higher and hotter

One result of all this is that Denver’s denser urbanization exacerbates climate-driven heat waves. CU urban design researchers determined that Denver’s temperatures have increased by at least 3 degrees over the past two decades — above the increase from global warming. When more surfaces are paved or covered over, temperatures spike because concrete and asphalt absorb sunlight and then release it, the urban equivalent of a hot pack.

Since 2012, Denver has experienced more than 50 days a year with temperatures topping 90 degrees. A 2014 Climate Central analysis of National Weather Service data found that Denver has one of the nation’s most severe “heat island” effects, with a 4.9-degree increase compared with the surrounding, and mostly treeless, high prairie.

The spiking heat dissipates in leafy central neighborhoods, said professor Austin Troy, chairman of CU Denver’s department of urban and regional planning. Hardest hit are the mostly paved downtown areas, RiNo and newly overhauled areas along the concrete I-25 and I-70 corridors, Troy said. Trees can help ease the heat. But Denver lags in trees and shrubs, with a 9.6-percent cover in 2009, compared, for example, with a 53-percent cover in Atlanta, a 2012 urban forestry study found.

Finally, a shift toward taller buildings adds to perceptions of being trapped by blocking views of the mountains, prairie and sky. Denver had six buildings higher than 13 stories in 1950, city records show. Today there are 151. Developers have filed a master plan with the city to build several skyscrapers taller than 40 stories, as high as 59 stories, south of downtown along the South Platte.

Rising discomfort

Denver officials are approving denser development even though residents object.

Since 2003, city surveys have documented that residents favor more green space. Two years ago, intensifying discomfort led to complaints about “a new concrete jungle,” reflected in news stories, with residents lamenting that development decisions were foisted on them without opportunities to prioritize non-commercial values of beauty, peace and functioning natural ecosystems.

Historically, Denver residents demanded green space along with development. An 1894 plan for “the parks and boulevards system” of Denver began a tradition of deliberately interspersing settlement with green space, driven by civic leaders who aimed to improve human health as the nation industrialized.

Mayor Robert Speer was inspired by the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893 that celebrated a classical balance achieved by preserving nature inside cities, according to Denver historian Tom Noel at CU Denver, whose 1985 book on the explored Denver’s aspirations of being a city within a park.

Speer faced public demands for greater livability. He set out to double park acreage, establishing the Civic Center and other large green spaces. He gave away 10,000 elm trees to residents who promised to plant them around their homes.

But density and “compact cities” have emerged as modern priorities. This push toward a denser high-rise format in Denver “is a fairly new trend” driven by developers trying to capitalize on an influx of younger millennial residents, Noel said.

“A lot of people fight it, a lot of old-timer geezers like me,” Noel said. “A lot of the population is not in agreement.”

Some environmentalists have looked favorably on “infill” development as a way to contain urban sprawl — though suburbs around Denver still are devouring more semi-arid high plains prairie despite water scarcity. A compact configuration also enables energy and transportation efficiency. (Cities cover roughly 3 percent of the Earth, and people in them consume 70 percent of the energy and emit 75 percent of the carbon dioxide.)

“Denser cities are good, if they’re done right,” said Chris Hawkins, the Nature Conservancy’s Denver-based urban conservation program director.

“But as cities continue to become denser, we think it is important for them to continue to keep people and nature at the fore of many decisions,” Hawkins said. “We believe many cities find a way to balance denser, more vertical, transit-oriented sustainable development with the creation of new parks and open space. We think Denver can do the same and are working to support those goals.”

Parks of the future

Developers in Denver acknowledged a shift toward greater density and less green space. A balance is possible — if cities prioritize creating more green space, said Mike Zoellner, president of the real estate company ZF Capital and vice chairman of the Urban Land Institute Colorado, which encourages smart urban design.

“From a land-use point of view, we see open space as a critical component. Cities have been falling behind in paying for and getting open space,” Zoellner said.

Greenways and parks “make for better communities. The value for real estate around parks is better,” he said. “The recent sales tax increase to fund parks is the community saying, ‘We want the city to buy more parks and build more parks.’ That’s a positive thing and the development community is very supportive of that.”

Directors of the Colorado Association of Home Builders and Home Builders Association of Metro Denver declined to discuss green space. The metro Denver association’s chief executive-elect, Chérie Talbert, who also runs a developers’ political committee, said in an email that members work with local governments “to ensure the new communities we build agree with the character of the area, including the right density.”

However, “attainably priced housing is a goal of both builders and city leaders,” Talbert said. “As the cost of both land and labor continue to rise, building at greater densities helps us address that goal.”

But if Denver fails to add significant new green space, “you will become more and more of a concrete metropolis, much more like the bigger mega-cities of Southern California and the Bay Area. You could get to that point,” said Charlie McCabe, director of the Trust for Public Land’s Center for City Park Excellence, which advocates for nature in cities.

“This is not just about nature and parks. It is about your quality of life,” McCabe said. “You would be losing some of your quality of life.”

Blaming population growth, lack of funds

Denver leaders say soaring land prices and population growth limit their options to preserve nature beyond limited landscaping. Parks department officials said they lack funds to establish green space, even though general fund revenues have increased rapidly as a result of the development boom.

Public discomfort and green-space complaints “are very common themes and concerns that arise in a city that is growing, particularly as exponentially as we have grown,” Mayor Michael Hancock said in an interview after his latest State of the City speech, in which he invoked former leaders’ City Beautiful vision of creating a city within a park.

“And because we are growing, and because we don’t have enough houses to accommodate all the people who want to live in the city, densification is going to have to be one of the things that we are going to have to do, particularly around our transit-oriented development sites,” Hancock said.��“But we must do it in a way that people don’t feel like they are in a jungle. That means we gotta communicate, work with and value neighborhoods, and really have conversations with people who live there today.”

No new park covering 50 acres or more, let alone the parks of the past of 100-plus acres, has been established in Denver for more than a decade. Parks crews focus on maintaining and improving existing parks, installing playground equipment and landscaping, which in some cases entails paving over natural terrain.

Meanwhile, City Council members have approved or are considering high-density development along the South Platte at the Elitch’s amusement park, Loretto Heights campus, RiNo, the former CU hospital, Park Hill Golf Course and the Gates Rubber Factory. They have allowed developers to build higher and smaller units in return for agreements to offer housing at prices Denver workers might afford.

The documented a shortage of green space. City planners are wrestling with the implications.

“We’re way down because so many people have moved to the city,” said Deputy Parks and Recreation Director Scott Gilmore, a longtime champion of exposing children to nature.��“And we’re going to keep dropping because so many people want to come to Denver.”

But establishing significant new green space in Denver? “I don’t think it is feasible, to be honest,” he said. “We would have to spend a lot of money. And do you want to take peoples’ homes just to build parks? I mean, where are we going to get land? It is an infill city. We don’t have a ton of land.”

The nascent effort to address stormwater flooding by creating naturalistic green corridors could add a couple hundred acres of green space around the city — though public access would be limited.

“Certainly, as lots are developed, and redeveloped at higher density, just the roofs cover more space than they used to, in addition to the skyscrapers around them and the paved areas to provide access to them,” said Mark Tabor, Denver’s chief parks planner and architect of the game plan.

“Yeah, there’s less space for landscaping. There’s less space, unfortunately, and really critically, for street trees and trees on private property — what we are trying to promote in our game plan,” Tabor said. “We need to take a strong look at how we can provide for new development, but, at the same time, not lose the benefits of land that has been built over or built up.”

The great escape

For residents, the green-space crunch compels frequent escapes in vehicles. It favors those with the economic power to reach nature. Yet those who flock out for recreation in the mountains increasingly face crowds, trampled terrain and impaired natural processes. The annual visitation at Rocky Mountain National Park, 90 minutes northwest of Denver, has increased by 60 percent since 2008. Boulder officials say they see more Denver residents heading onto their foothills trails.

It was the promise of parks and open space that enticed Elaine Conoly, 28, to move from Texas for graduate studies in accounting at CU Denver. Conoly said she checked a visitors bureau website and got the impression that Denver was green with more parks than other cities, along with at least 300 days a year of blue skies and sunshine.

For the past five years, she’s been renting a third-floor condo north of downtown in RiNo, paying $1,400 a month and lamenting that there’s no significant green space nearby.

“I would have to drive. Like, Washington Park would be the closest,” Conoly said on a sidewalk near 32nd and Blake streets.

“What I would desire would be, like, four times a week I’d take a jog around a park, a walk around a park, or a bike ride around a park.”  Instead, she makes it to a park about twice a month. This compels escapes to the mountains.

“And that is a hassle when everyone is going,” she said, recalling a three-hour drive with her snowboard to the mountainside slopes at Keystone Resort.

“You are going to sit in the traffic.”

Updated 2:25 p.m. Jan. 13, 2019: Because of a reporting error, an earlier version of this story incorrectly reported the status of plans for development at Loretto Heights and the Park Hill golf course. The Denver City Council has not approved those plans.