On Thursday, he and his partners held a groundbreaking ceremony for a 13-story, 301-unit apartment building.

“That¶¶Ňőap just what we do in this business,” he said. “We have to shift to meet markets.”

Dwight of Invest Development Partners is building the Ave Station House project in conjunction with Halpern Real Estate Ventures and RXR, both New York-based firms, as well as Pennsylvania-based Korman Communities.

The $103.8 million project, which will also have 6,000 square feet of retail space, is RXR’s first in Denver. It¶¶Ňőap being built on 1.2 acres, an irregular city block formed by Walnut and Blake streets, along with 40th Avenue. The Regional Transportation District¶¶Ňőap 38th and Blake rail stop is just down the street.

Groundbreaking has been a long time coming for Dwight. In 2016, he said, he went under contract to buy the block as well as the similarly shaped one across the street at 1335 40th St. At the time, both were used by operators.

Dwight bought the western block, where Ave Station House is going up, in 2017. He bought the eastern block in 2019, after having built a new facility in Aurora for Mile Hi Express, the cold-storage warehouse and trucking company that sold the site.

In August 2019, with both blocks secured, Dwight brought on Halpern Real Estate Ventures and announced plans for Train, a mixed-use project across both blocks. The west block would have the office and hotel towers, and the east block would have hotel and apartment towers, as well as a 400-seat entertainment venue. Both sides would have two levels of retail and restaurant space at the base of the towers.

Then came COVID.

“When the pandemic hit, the world shifted,” Dwight said. “We then shifted gears on the project.”

RXR came on as a partner in the now apartment-centric project in the third quarter of 2022, Dwight said. The company had a long-standing relationship with Halpern.

The companies, working with Oz Architecture, drew up plans for a 17-story tower with about 400 units. Denver approved the plans last year.

Then, Dwight said, lenders got wary of financing a project that large. So the developers lopped off four floors and sent the amended development plans to the city.

Dwight praised the new leadership at Denver’s Community Planning and Development department, saying the organization worked swiftly to review the amended plans.

“Brad (Buchanan) is making a difference at CPD,” Dwight said, referring to the department¶¶ŇőapĚýnew director.

Buchanan spoke at the groundbreaking ceremony Thursday. He rattled off his cell phone number. Then, he repeated it.

“Call me with your ideas, call me with your questions,” he said.

“We want to make it easier to build in Denver,” Mayor Mike Johnston said at the ceremony.

Dwight¶¶Ňőap project is not the only one in RiNo that shifted significantly. Two blocks away, Denver-based Formativ broke ground last summer on an apartment building at 3850 Blake St., where an office building and hotel were planned pre-pandemic.

Denver has an oversupply of apartments right now, thanks to a flurry of developers breaking ground when interest rates were low amid the pandemic. Rents have fallen, and incentives like free rent areĚýat a 15-year high.

But Ave Station House isn’t expected to be completed until 2028, and Dwight said he believes that Denver will have worked through its apartment oversupply by then. Relatively few apartments are currently under construction in the city.

“I think Denver is going to have a complete lack of supply,” Dwight said of a couple years from now. He’sĚýalso planning to build apartments on his eastern block.

Brinkmann Constructors is the general contractor of Ave Station House. The project isn’t the only major apartment groundbreaking in RiNo this year. San Francisco, California-based Carmel Partners alsoĚýrecently started workĚýon a 481-unit project on a full city block at 3300 Blake St.

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They’ll be part of a contingent of local Democratic heavy-hitters — also includingĚýColorado Democratic Party Chair Shad Murib — visiting the Crescent City to bolster Denver’s bidĚýas it competes against four other cities.

Crow said the fact that Denver has done it before means it’s more than prepared to do it again. Denver hosted the Democratic convention in 2008, when a fresh-faced U.S. senator from Illinois named Barack Obama accepted the party’s presidential nomination.

“We know we can do this and do this well,” the congressman from Aurora told The Denver Post in an interview on Thursday. “We have the capacity. We have the infrastructure.”

And Colorado, he said, has the blue credentials to excite the base and put them to work making sure the next occupant of the White House is a Democrat.

“At a time when the Democratic Party is facing a crisis of confidence in so many places, and in so many ways, Colorado is a beacon of how to do it right,” Crow said.

Early last month, the national party announced that Denver to host the Democratic National Convention — joining Atlanta, Boston, Chicago and Philadelphia. The nominating convention for the party’s presidential ticket is set for Aug. 7-10, 2028.

The party and potential host cities are working out site visit plans for each in the coming weeks. A decision on which city wins the bid will likely be made this summer.

Johnston and other city representatives have lobbied for the event both formally and informally in recent months. The mayor’s spokesman, Jon Ewing, confirmed Johnston’s appearance in New Orleans this weekend and said the mayor recognizes the manifold benefits of steering the event to the Mile High City.

“Landing the DNC would be an enormous economic boon for Denver, bringing tens of thousands of visitors to Colorado and generating hundreds of millions of dollars in activity for the city and local businesses,” Ewing said.

Murib spoke to The Post by phone from New Orleans, where he’s been since Monday. He will join Crow and Johnston in speaking to the delegates at the spring meeting on Friday evening.

“We’re hoping to show them why Denver is the best place for the 2028 convention,” he said. “We want to emphasize the seamless experience they will have in Denver — from the airport to the hotels to the convention.”

Each of the finalist cities has hosted at least one past Democratic convention — Philadelphia in 2016, Boston in 2004 and Atlanta in 1988. Chicago hosted in 2024, the most recent of its dozen times playing the role.

“We want to show how the convention could be one for the history books again,” Murib said, alluding to the nomination of America’s first Black president 18 years ago.

Murib said three Denver City Council members — President Amanda Sandoval, Chris Hinds and Darrell Watson — will be at the national Democrats’ meeting as well.

Crow, an Army veteran who represents a Colorado district that takes in the eastern and southern suburbs of Denver, is serving as battleground co-chair for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee for the 2026 election cycle.

Colorado was among the top states in the nation for Democratic performance in the 2024 election, bucking what was otherwise a red wave that handed control of the White House and Congress to Republicans. Democratic presidential contender Kamala Harris beat now-President Donald Trump in Colorado by a margin of 11 percentage points.

“We’re a model for the country,” Crow said.

He said this week’s gathering of party leaders is a critical moment in the push to get Denver back on the national stage two years from now.

“This is the biggest gathering between now and when the (convention) decision is made,” Crow said.

Murib said the meeting in New Orleans won’t be all serious business, though.

“It’s a little bit of a party — and a pitch,” he said.

Someone dressed in a big blue bear costume — an homage to the 40-foot ursine behemoth who peers into the Colorado Convention Center along 14th Street in downtown Denver — has already been getting a lot of attention from attendees, the party chair said.

“Everyone is getting a picture with the big blue bear wearing Mardi Gras beads,” he said.

The $150,000 contract with Axon Enterprise is for a year, allowing 50 cameras. The deal replaces the city’s contract with the controversial company Flock Safety, which expired Tuesday.

Seven of the 13 council members voted in favor of the deal, siding with Mayor Mike Johnston and citing the benefits to public safety. Councilwoman Flor Alvidrez cast one of the consequential swing votes, ultimately supporting the contract despite her concerns over possible misuse of the data.

“If we start to see subpoenas or other concerns come up, then I’m happy to address those,” she said. “But I’m not going to not use this technology (just) because that might happen.”

Alvidrez voted in favor of the contract with council members Darrell Watson, Kevin Flynn, Chris Hinds, Diana Romero-Campbell, Amanda Sawyer and President Amanda Sandoval. Council members Sarah Parady, Shontel Lewis, Serena Gonzales-Gutierrez, Stacie Gilmore, Paul Kashmann and Jamie Torres voted no.

Those opposed to the contract said they were concerned about ways the system could be exploited.

“The possible misuse of this system cannot be ignored,” Kashmann said. Axon and companies providing similar technology “are only a few clicks away from being one giant surveillance system.

“If that doesn’t terrify us, I wonder why?”

Johnston, whose administration proposed the Axon contract, has been an ardent supporter of the license plate-reading technology, saying it¶¶Ňőap a vital tool to help solve crime in the city.

Last year, the technology played a significant role in 16 homicide investigations, according to the mayor’s office. The cameras also helped in the recovery of more than 400 stolen cars and the removal of more than 60 firearms from the streets, the office said.

Car thefts decreased in Denver during the Flock pilot program, a drop that officials attribute to multiple factors beyond just the cameras. In 2023, more than 12,000 cars were stolen in the city. In 2024, thefts declined to about 8,500.

“Keeping Denver safe means giving our officers effective tools to combat crime while ensuring our rights are protected. This contract does both,” Johnston said of the Axon deal in a statement following the vote. “We’re proud to have Council’s support to move forward with this common-sense technology. … And with these strengthened privacy and data protections, we are ensuring that no federal agency or federal agent can access this data — now or ever.”

Denver has used fixed license plate-reading cameras since the first one was installed at the intersection of Federal Boulevard and West Sixth Avenue in 2018. The Denver Police Department also has license plate reading cameras mounted to some of its vehicles.

Some council members asked that the mayor’s office and the council continue to work on developing a citywide ordinance that would set some surveillance safeguards even as the new contract rolls out.

Johnston’s office convened a Surveillance Task Force last year that is in the process of developing that policy. Parady, one of the task force members, said she couldn’t say how long that would take, but said a draft was being developed.

“There will be an ordinance coming forward at some point,” Flynn said. “But I think it¶¶Ňőap appropriate to do the contract ahead because, again, I believe the contract has stronger safeguards and recourse than an ordinance will have.”

The council had been scheduled to vote on the Axon contract last week, but Flynn, a supporter, used a council rule that allowed him to unilaterally postpone it by a week. Ahead of Tuesday’s vote, three former Denver mayors — Michael Hancock, Federico Peña and Wellington Webb — penned an opinion article in The Denver Post encouraging the council to adopt the contract.

A change from Flock

Denver started a pilot program with Flock’s license plate readers at Denver International Airport, which had been struggling with high vehicle thefts, in 2023. The next year, officials expanded the program to other parts of the city, placing 111 cameras at 70 intersections.

In April 2025, Johnston’s administration attempted to extend the contract for two more years, but the council rejected the proposal, citing concerns about the company creating a mass-surveillance network.

The company also faced national scrutiny after to help carry out President Donald Trump’s mass-deportation efforts.

In August, nearly 1,400 times in 2024 and 2025, before the city asked last April to be removed from Flock’s national database.

After the council’s initial rejection, Johnston’s office extended Flock’s contract twice without council approval by signing agreements below the $500,000 cost threshold that requires a council vote.

The cameras snap photos of passing cars, capturing images of license plates and any identifiable features — say, a scratch or a dent — and using the information to help investigate crimes, such as car thefts, hit-and-runs, kidnappings and homicides.

Flock’s cameras were taken down Tuesday, said Tim Hoffman, the director of policy for the mayor’s office.

Axon has other city contracts

Johnston’s team announced the contract with Axon in February, saying that it would provide a more secure option compared to Flock. Unlike Flock, the company doesn’t have a nationwide database system. Denver also wouldn’t share its data with other jurisdictions unless they have agreed to certain restrictions. Axon will have a shorter retention period for photos — 21 days, instead of 30 under Flock.

The mayor’s office opted to bring the contract to the council despite it being well below the council-approval threshold. The council also hosted a one-hour courtesy public hearing last week to hear feedback from residents about the contract.

Axon already contracts with the city for some other police equipment, including body-worn cameras, Tasers and a livestream camera system called Fusus that uses hundreds of cameras throughout the city. The new license plate cameras have livestreaming capabilities as well.

Sandoval cast the deciding vote on the new contract Tuesday, saying she had wrestled with which way to go.

“I’ve made a lot of hard decisions,” Sandoval said. “And I can’t remember making a harder one.”

U.S. District Court Judge Gordon P. Gallagher ruled that federal authorities could not compel officials in Denver or at the state level “to implement federal regulatory programs.” He rejected the federal government’s attempt to strike down the city’s and the state’s rules limiting cooperation with immigration enforcement, and he fully dismissed the lawsuit, which was filed in May, less than four months after President Donald Trump returned to office.

“This lawsuit by the Trump administration was a straightforward attack on Colorado’s sovereignty,” Attorney General Phil Weiser said in a statement. He was one of the named defendants in the suit, alongside Gov. Jared Polis, Denver Mayor Mike Johnston, the city of Denver, the state of Colorado, and other prominent officials.

“The 10th Amendment protects states’ rights to make our own decisions about how our personnel protect public safety,” Weiser said. “In the order, the court makes it clear that the federal government cannot force states and local governments to use their resources for federal civil immigration enforcement.”

In a statement, Johnston said that “Denver will always stand for safe communities and accountable government.”

“Instead of being bullied by President Trump, we will continue to do what we do best in making our neighborhoods safer, strengthening trust with the community, and delivering for Denver families,” the mayor wrote.

The dismissal was a victory for Colorado’s top elected officials and for the immigration policies they’ve enacted and strengthened in recent years — which federal officials have derided as so-called sanctuary laws that shield immigrants from federal enforcement.

Those laws generally prohibit state and local officials from cooperating with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents or allowing the use of state resources for civil immigration enforcement.

Indeed, just as the Trump administration was filing its lawsuit last spring, the legislature passed a new law that further curtailed cooperation with ICE. The federal government then amended its lawsuit to include the new statute. State lawmakers are considering new measures to tighten those rules even further this year.

In a Tuesday evening statement, Polis spokesman Eric Maruyama called the lawsuit “baseless” and reiterated a recurring Polis argument that Colorado “is not a sanctuary state.”

“If the Trump administration wants to get serious about decreasing crime, instead of wasting time and money on meritless lawsuits, we are happy to share the actions we are taking in Colorado that have driven year-over-year reductions in crime,” Maruyama wrote. “We look forward to working with our local and federal partners to make Colorado even safer by tackling serious crime.”

In its lawsuit, the DOJ challenged four statewide laws — including the one passed last year — as well as two municipal laws in Denver. The Trump administration had argued that the immigration powers granted to the federal government preempted those local limitations and that the laws had “singled out federal immigration officials … for unfavorable and uncooperative treatment.”

Colorado and Denver officials asked Gallagher to dismiss the lawsuit, arguing that the federal government couldn’t use city and state resources to carry out immigration enforcement. Denver city officials wrote in court filings that the lawsuit “has no basis in law, logic, or policy. It is nothing more than political theater.”

Echoing rulings from federal judges elsewhere, Gallagher, who is based in Colorado, wrote that “the Constitution does not grant Congress the authority to ‘dragoon’ state officers into administering federal law.”

The federal government has filed similar lawsuits against other states and cities that limit federal immigration cooperation. A federal judge in Illinois dismissed litigation targeting Chicago and the state of Illinois last year, while cases against officials in California and Los Angeles; New York City; New Jersey; and elsewhere are still winding through the courts.

The proposal is a one-year contract with Axon Enterprise to install 50 license plate reader cameras in high-traffic areas. These cameras help law enforcement identify vehicles connected to crimes. Some in our community have raised concerns about privacy–and we should take those concerns seriously.

As Denver council faces vote on new license plate cameras contract, distaste lingers for ‘this whole Flock era’

But we should also look at the facts.

This contract includes some of the strongest privacy protections we’ve seen. The data belongs only to the City of Denver. It cannot be shared with outside agencies like DHS or ICE. And it is automatically deleted after just 21 days. These safeguards didn’t happen by accident--they are the result of months of careful work by city leaders, law enforcement, and independent experts.

At the same time, we know this technology works. License plate readers were used in more than 40% of homicide investigations in Denver last year. They have helped recover stolen cars, take illegal firearms off our streets, locate missing children, and both confirm and eliminate suspects. Cities across the country--from New York City to San Diego—rely on them every day.

We also know what happens when safeguards fall short. Denver’s previous vendor, Flock Safety, misused data, and that contract was terminated. We learned from that experience. After a thorough review, the city selected Axon, a company widely trusted for its strong security and accountability.

Let¶¶Ňőap also be clear about what these cameras do--and don’t do. They are aimed at public roads, capturing license plates that are already visible to anyone. Courts have consistently ruled there is no violation of privacy in those settings.

Since taking office, Mayor Mike Johnston has overseen meaningful progress in reducing crime, with homicides and auto thefts both declining. License plate readers are not the only reason, but they are part of a broader strategy that is making a difference.

At a time when fear and distrust can easily take hold, we have to stay grounded in reality. We cannot have police officers everywhere at all hours. But we can give them tools that act as extra “eyes”--helping them identify reckless drivers, track fleeing suspects, and respond more effectively to serious crimes.

The choice before us is not between safety and privacy. With this contract, we can--and must—have both.

If we expect safer streets, we have to give our law enforcement the tools to deliver them.ĚýDenver City Council should vote yes.

Michael B.Hancock, Federico Peña and Wellington E. Webb are former mayors of Denver.

To send a letter to the editor about this article, submit online or check out our guidelines for how to submit by email or mail.

After the original contract vote was delayed last week, several council members have seemed hesitant to approve the deal, leaving its chances unclear amid continuing concerns about the risks of surveillance technology.

“I don’t know that we need this tool,” Councilwoman Flor Alvidrez said Friday. “I don’t know that it¶¶Ňőap actually helping.”

A contract with the city’s current provider for the license plate cameras, a controversial company called Flock Safety, will expire Tuesday. Mayor Mike Johnston’s administration proposed that the city begin a new contract for the service with Axon Enterprise.

If the council rejects the one-year contract — which would cost $150,000 and provide 50 cameras at a maximum of 20 intersections — Johnston’s administration has said the program will shut down. Axon’s network would have roughly half as many cameras as Flock’s.

“Losing this technology would weaken our police department¶¶Ňőap ability to investigate homicides, sexual assaults, hit-and-runs and auto thefts,” said city spokesman Jon Ewing in an email. “In short, it would make our city less safe and would leave Denver as one of the only large cities in the country without a license plate reader system.”

Johnston’s office and the council have been at odds over the cameras for months after in its efforts to carry out mass deportations. After the council rejected a contract with Flock over concerns about the company last year, Johnston’s administration extended the city’s relationship with the company twice more, calling it a vital crime-fighting tool.

Denver District Attorney John Walsh recently sent a letter to council members in support of the contract, calling the automatic license plate recognition, or ALPR, technology “uniquely powerful and effective.”

“In case after case, ALPR has been the key initial tool to identify suspect vehicles and suspects – often providing the only initial avenue for investigation,” he wrote.

The technology played a significant role in solving 16 homicide investigations in 2025, he said. The mayor’s office also credits the cameras for the recovery of more than 400 stolen cars and the removal of more than 60 firearms from the streets.

During a public hearing last week, the council heard an , with 55 people signing up to speak. Forty-two of them were opposed, 12 were in favor and one person was neutral.

Councilman Kevin Flynn triggered an option that delayed the vote by one week. Now, the council will take its sole vote on the contract on Tuesday. The council is meeting a day later than usual because Monday is “SĂ­, Se Puede Day,” a city holiday renamed recently after a New York Times investigation reported sexual abuse allegations against CĂ©sar Chávez, the holiday’s former namesake.

Though the council normally votes only on contracts valued at over $500,000, Johnston’s office opted to bring the Axon deal through that process in an effort to be more collaborative.

Last week, the council asked some questions of Axon, the mayor’s office and the Denver Police Department. Several of them signaled they had major concerns about the contract.

“With the current person who is occupying the White House … I don’t have faith that if we expand this, what happens (as a result). That’s why I’m concerned about a security breach,” council President Amanda Sandoval said.

Tim Hoffman, the director of policy for the mayor’s office, acknowledged those concerns during the meeting.

“We aren’t in the world that we were in a year ago. We aren’t even in the world we were in a couple of months ago, in terms of what we have seen out of this federal government,” he said of President Donald Trump’s administration. “What we have done with this contract is try to balance the very real benefit to public safety that it provides with the very legitimate privacy and civil liberty considerations.”

The cameras work by snapping photos of passing cars, capturing their license plates and any identifiable features — such as a scratch or a dent — and using that data to help investigate crimes like car thefts, hit-and-runs, kidnappings and homicides. The city now has 111 Flock-operated cameras doing that work.

In February, Johnston announced that the city would end its relationship with Flock because of the concerns raised by council members and residents. Johnston said Axon was chosen as a replacement because it doesn’t have a national database and has a high degree of data security.

Axon already contracts with the city for police officers’ body-worn cameras, Tasers and a livestream camera system called Fusus that uses hundreds of cameras throughout the city. The new license-plate cameras would have livestreaming capabilities as well.

Councilwoman Sarah Parady, one of the most vocal council opponents of Flock, cited the Fusus network as one of the reasons she still had concerns about the technology.

“They are integrated into so many other systems,” she said. “We are sort of trading what was basically a national ALPR company for a company that is not primarily focused on ALPRs, but is layering all of these different forms of surveillance — and we do not have all the information on that yet.”

Parady is one of the members of the city’s Surveillance Task Force, which Johnston’s office convened last year in response to the concerns over Flock. Some council members have said they want to see that task force develop an overall city ordinance related to surveillance before they approve a new contract for license plate readers.

“Even if the contract has some good provisions, those are not laws,” Alvidrez said. “Remedies are different when you’re talking about a contract, versus city ordinance.”

Alvidrez, who is one of a few key undecided votes on the contract on the 13-member council, said she was leaning toward “no” on Friday. Councilwoman Jamie Torres, another undecided member, said she was also more likely to vote against it.

“I’ve heard evenly from folks who want (Denver Police Department) to be able to solve crimes … and others who frankly just can’t get over the apprehension that was developed during this whole Flock era. That’s going to leave a bad taste in people’s mouth,” she said.

If the contract doesn’t pass, Torres said she would be interested in seeing the city try again after developing more protections.

Alvidrez said she would want to see whether not having the tool made much of a difference in crime solving in the city.

The council’s meeting is set to begin at 3:30 p.m. Tuesday.

It’s one of the most ambitious efforts in U.S. cities to reduce space for vehicle traffic and replace it with wider sidewalks, bike lanes and dedicated bus lanes. Proponents cast the makeover as the best solution to multiple problems as traffic deaths increase and developers build high-density housing.

City transportation officials began the work a decade ago with pilot projects. They made traffic calming an official policy around 2020 and, three years later, adopted a plan. Scores of projects have been done, and the $280 million reconstruction of East Colfax Avenue with Bus Rapid Transit is scheduled for completion next year. The bulk of the projects are still in planning and design but should mostly be done by 2032.

While proponents say changes have made streets safer, critics suspect projects that reduce space for cars will only make traffic congestion worse — even after the construction disruptions end.

“They don’t want you to drive,” optician Rachelle Fresquez said as she ate lunch in the cool tranquility of her car, idling a block off West 29th Avenue, where 13 speed bumps, and white plastic posts and green-painted bicycle lanes have slowed a once-speedy route. She’s lived in Denver all her life and commutes across it to work. “It’s a mess.”

The road work creates conditions where “drivers are sitting longer in traffic, which is worse for emissions. And as you put more bicycles and pedestrians on the same roads with cars, more accidents are happening,” said Colorado Automobile Dealers Association president Matthew Groves.

Asked about the criticism, Denver Mayor Mike Johnston acknowledged the difficulty of transforming a city long oriented around cars.

“When you try to make some streets narrower, it will make traffic slower on that street,” Johnston said. “It stands to reason you can put fewer cars through a two-lane street than you can through a four-lane street.”

Among other , Seattle and San Francisco have also invested heavily in transit, pedestrian, and bike infrastructure.Ěý From New York to Los Angeles, are reengineering roads to create streets designed for more than cars. Denver officials studied efforts in San Francisco before launching pilot projects here a decade ago and, in 2020, under Mayor Michael Hancock, adopted as policy.

“The hope is you get some behavioral changes, that you will get some folks choosing to take a bus,” Johnston said.Ěý“We want to make it a city where you don’t have to rely on a car.”

Fewer car lanes, wider sidewalks, faster buses

The projects that the Denver Department of Transportation and Infrastructure, or DOTI, is planning include overhauls of The plans show vehicle lane reductions, sidewalk widening, and signal adjustments to give buses priority on West 38th Avenue, West Mississippi Avenue, Evans Avenue, and Speer Boulevard.

Larger-scale projects like the East Colfax work will install bus-only lanes and high-frequency Bus Rapid Transit along Federal and Colorado boulevards. Hundreds more smaller projects in neighborhoods across the city would alter vehicle routes.

The funding for the overall effort comes from DOTI’s $890 million annual budget, with support from the Colorado Department of Transportation and federal grants, and voter-approved $441 million in bond debt.

Fighting congestion

Denver leaders’ rationale is that without major change, , already increasing faster than in other cities, will get worse. The fear among critics is the same — that remodeling roads will worsen congestion.

“So what’s the right solution?” asked Jill Locantore, director of the Denver Streets Partnership, one of several advocacy groups pressing city leaders to carry out planned projects quickly.

“Overwhelming inertia” has prevented Denver from moving people more efficiently, Locantore said. “The status quo is our biggest problem. …. When street space is rebalanced, many people will choose other ways of getting around, travel at different times of day, combine multiple trips into one, or simply take fewer discretionary trips.”

But in areas such as Washington Park, the density of schools, shops, and high-rise apartments guarantees heavy vehicle traffic, and reducing lanes is a recipe for “traffic jams, more than we already have,” said Christophe Goudy, co-owner of along Alameda, who commutes for up to an hour from his home near Parker.

“Making it safer? That’s another thing. Before we opened, we had a car crash through the window. Shrinking the road isn’t going to make it safer. If we had a police car parked there by the school, that would decrease the speed.”

While Denver business owners generally like the idea of increased options for moving around the city using bicycles and buses, any road changes must preserve the ability of residents — including “a vast amount of our customers” — to drive their vehicles and park, said J.J. Ament, president of the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce.

“We need the city to focus on the mobility choices that people will actually use, not just what they say they want. In too many cases, DOTI has made changes proposed by a small minority of vocal interest groups that don’t represent the bulk of how people use our transit system,” Ament said.

“We need to align urban planning with human experience.”

But narrowing Santa Fe Drive from three lanes to two through a popular arts district south of downtown proved “absolutely transformative” and “we can’t wait” for sidewalk widening and protected bike lanes, said Nolan Hahn, president of the La Alma Lincoln Park Neighborhood Association, who rides e-bikes instead of driving. “The way we’ve built our cities — until now — is coercive.”

Denver streamlined

Denver residents from the 1890s to the 1920s relied on an extensive . Since the 1940s, Denver leaders have built and maintained roads to facilitate car-first mobility, according to the plan that city officials commissioned and adopted as a blueprint for change.

The city spans 100 square miles (excluding the 53-square-mile Denver International Airport), and 22 square miles of the area are road lanes, compared with 12 square miles of parking, five square miles of sidewalks, one square mile of bicycle-only lanes, and less than one square mile of bus-only lanes, the plan says.

The makeover eventually will give buses priority along 600 miles of lanes overall — 10 times the transit-priority miles today, city spokeswoman Nancy Kuhn said.

DOTI officials decide timetables, targeting high-accident areas and historically neglected neighborhoods, according to the plan. A 2024 DOTI based on the extent to which they promote walking, biking and using buses and trains — and limits projects to expand capacity for cars.

When Denver reduced vehicle lanes and installed bus-only lanes in 2017 along Broadway and Lincoln Street south of downtown, the average travel time on RTD buses between downtown and Englewood decreased by three minutes, said Jaime Lewis, a former RTD director who also has served on Denver’s transportation advisory board. City officials didn’t say what the impact has been on travel times for people driving cars.

But Groves, the Colorado Automobile Dealers Association president, estimated his work commute from south Denver up Broadway has increased by six minutes.

“Why are we spending all this money? Drivers on Broadway cut through side streets where people live, and they’re frustrated, so they’re going too fast,” Groves said. He had heard “great promises” from city officials about liberating new options for moving around and seen the passionate advocacy by young urban activists. “They are choking off our streets.”

The overall amount of driving in metro Denver has reached a record-high level, exceeding 85 million miles a day, according to transportation analysts at the Denver Regional Council of Governments. They project a 43% increase in by 2050. However, DRCOG’s noted that the amount of driving per person – about 25.7 miles a day in 2019 – has decreased to 24.8 miles a day.

Meanwhile, Denver traffic fatalities hit a record high of 93 in 2025, up 16% over the 80 in 2024, and nearly double the 49 in 2017, police data shows. The deaths in 2025 included 35 pedestrians.

DOTI director Amy Ford said investments in the road projects are already showing results, such as increased bicycle ridership in areas where protected bike lanes were installed.

“Our goal is to reduce single-occupant vehicle trips, to encourage transportation mode shifts, and to ensure that people still can move around our city,” she said.

The alternative of increasing road capacity won’t work because housing and commercial development along roads prevents widening, Ford added. “There is simply no more room. It would be cost-prohibitive to do that.”

Friction

As projects advance into public input meetings, residents and business owners often object, challenging final plans. City officials didn’t cite any project where opposition forced cancellation. However, a six-month tussle over a proposed lane drew in scores of neighborhood activists, leading to a compromise to be tested this year as a pilot project.

“Everybody got their knickers in a twist,” longtime resident Biddie Labrot said, walking her dog recently just north of Alameda. She’s skeptical that the compromise switching from a full lane reduction to a partial lane reduction with “turn pockets” will improve conditions because “when you change the pattern, you cause problems,” Labrot said. “We’re going to have a lot of head-ons.” When traffic on Alameda and Downing gets too crazy, cutting onto slower side streets “is your option,” she said. “I started doing that because it was prettier and my blood pressure didn’t go up.”

Sharing roads with new users creates challenges.

“It makes me uncomfortable,” Laurie Heiken said after navigating the curves and protected bicycling lanes along East Yale Avenue. “Bike riders should stay on the bike paths we have.”

Behind the counter in Taqueria Mi Pueblo at the corner of Federal and West 29th, co-owner Jesus Tarin noted that, before a bike lane was installed, “we had parking on the street. It was good for our customers,” he said. “I don’t like the bicyclists riding on the street.”

The friction reflects a hard truth that metro Denver residents widely prefer driving to moving around by walking, bicycling or riding buses and trains, said economist Randal O’Toole, director of the at the Independence Institute, a libertarian think tank in Denver.

“Cars get you from where you are to where you want to go in the shortest time possible, and it is actually pretty cheap. Transit does not get you from where you are to where you want to go,” O’Toole said.

Just as two decades of densification by building apartments has failed to make Denver housing more affordable (O’Toole argues that replacing single-family homes reduced the supply of housing people prefer), shrinking vehicle traffic space to promote bicycling and transit also will fail, O’Toole said. “It just doesn’t work. It is happening nationwide. It hasn’t worked anywhere else. It is not going to work in Denver.”

Traffic calming in and Ěý has proved popular in neighborhoods. San Francisco officials have been struggling to work through backlogs of proposals to install more speed bumps, raised crosswalks, and concrete islands to improve safety. However, the overall impact on citywide vehicle traffic congestion remains a challenge. Both San Francisco and Seattle struggle with severe congestion that ranks among the worst in the nation.

Johnston said balance will be the key to success in Denver, maintaining smooth flows for the cars “in our blood” while giving new options so that people in Denver “can have a great time and make great time.”

When conflicts arise, “both sides have strong convictions,” and tradeoffs must be made. “No one stakeholder can get everything they want,” Johnston said.

The road remodeling will be done in a way that lets residents choose whether to switch from cars to buses — “not because they feel they are forced to do it,” he said.

“Every incremental trip people don’t have to use the car for does reduce traffic congestion,” Johnston said. “We are trying to build transit hubs around the city that will have density. … We want toĚý have a street system that supports them.”

Drivers look ahead

In west Denver, Alejandra Castañeda said she strongly supports traffic-calming and wishes she could rely more on buses to avoid the hassles of driving. Work demands and moving around with her daughter forced her to purchase, reluctantly, a used orange electric Fiat, she said. Reducing road space for cars “isn’t about slowing us down, inconveniencing us. It’s about encouraging safe speeds. Too many people have been killed. We just need the city to help drivers, including me, do the safe thing.”

While Stacey Walker’s roommate hates the West 29th Avenue speed bumps and diverts to 26th, Walker accepts the reconstructed route as “a good reminder,” he said. “You can’t blow through here at 45 miles per hour anymore.”

American Automobile Association lobbyist Skyler McKinley still hails the car as “the single greatest invention for economic mobility of all time.” He relies on driving to manage a tavern he purchased 156 miles from Denver. “The car is a foundational technology in American life and will remain so,” McKinley said recently, standing on the corner of 14th Avenue and Franklin Street, on his way to the state Capitol.

He observed that nearly every vehicle whizzing past him carried one person.

“We know that adding lanes for vehicles won’t reduce traffic congestion because of induced demand (the concept that expanding urban road capacity encourages more driving). The question is whether removing space for cars increases traffic and congestion. In the near term? Yes, no question about it. But other modes of transportation may move more people more efficiently,” McKinley said.

“By removing lanes, you increase options. If the goal of the transportation system is to move people, is the car the most efficient tool within a city? The jury is out on whether Denver’s choice will be the right choice in the long run. We won’t know until they do it.”

The House State, Civic, Military and Veterans Affairs Committee voted unanimously Monday afternoon to advance the bill. was introduced Friday, days after into Chávez that accused the late Mexican-American civil rights icon of sexually abusing and assaulting women involved in the agricultural labor movement.

His victims allegedly included underaged girls and his fellow organizer Dolores Huerta, who described Chávez’s abuse to the Times.

HB-1339 would change Colorado’s March 31 voluntary legal holiday — which falls on Chávez’s birthday — from CĂ©sar Chávez Day to “Farm Workers Day.”

“When we talk about removing a name from statute, we’re not just talking about policy. We are talking about history. We are talking about identity, and we are talking about people’s experiences,” said House Majoriy Leader Monica Duran, a Wheat Ridge Democrat. “This conversation didn’t start here. It started with survivors. It started with members of our communities, who came forward with painful stories of sexual abuse and rape. And (they) asked something very simple of us: to listen, and to not look away.”

Duran is co-sponsoring the bill with Rep. Lorena Garcia and Sen. Jessie Danielson, both also Democrats.

Duran and Garcia said renaming the voluntary holiday — which doesn’t require state government offices to close — would emphasize the broader farm labor movement and the workers who filled its ranks, rather than the man who led it decades ago.

Garcia quoted a comment by one of Chávez’s victims to the Times: “The movement — that¶¶Ňőap the hero.”

The bill passed the committee 11-0. It now heads to the full House for the first of two votes. Garcia says lawmakers intend to pass the bill before March 31 so that the new holiday can take effect.

If the legislature works at its maximum speed, the bill could be passed by the end of this week.

The Times’ revelations about Chávez have prompted a wave of similarly swift recriminations nationwide. Lawmakers in California, where March 31 is also named for Chávez, have similarly discussed stripping him from the holiday. Annual marches in Chávez’s honor were canceled in Denver and in several other cities, and officials in multiple states said they would consider renaming the scores of streets and schools that bore his moniker, according to the Times.

Last week, Denver Mayor Mike Johnston announced that the city would change a full municipal holiday named for Chávez that’s set to be observed next Monday. The city also planned to strip his name from a city park.

Thousands of Denverites have made it clear that they reject constant and unwarranted surveillance, the violations of our constitutional rights and that we find the profits companies rake in selling our data unconscionable.

Over the last year, organizations like mine, the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC),Ěý successfully organized to end Denver’s contracts with one such company, Flock. But now Mayor Johnston is proposing another contract using our taxpayer dollars, with Axon Enterprises, a company at the forefront of the Trump administration’s investments in the surveillance state.

Denver residents are deeply engaged in networks of rapid response and mutual aid, seeking to protect one another as more ICE agents hit the streets each day in rapid, kidnap-style actions profiling immigrants and people of color.

Each day, we receive dozens of calls to the Colorado Rapid Response hotline and hear from our volunteers across the city. A pattern of indiscriminate detention targeting the breadwinners of immigrant families has emerged. The machinery of this injustice involves few humans and relies on the corporate surveillance state. Artificial Intelligence selects which of our neighbors to unleash ICE on next.

The cameras behind the License Plate Reader system build data profiles on all of our driving patterns, creating dozens of location data points for each unique license plate daily. This data is sold to other companies, analyzed by AI and compared against lists of people who’ve applied for asylum, temporary statuses or green cards.

These companies sell ICE a list of our neighbors whose routines are predictable — be they advocates or immigrants. The federal government¶¶Ňőap ability to wreak havoc and attempt to silence our communities depends mightily on the machines running on our streets and in data centers.

Axon currently has a $370 million contract to provide ICE and DHS with body cameras, TASERs, and other devices and technologies. Their technologies have been used in immigration enforcement and deportation operations.

And on a recent earnings call, their CEO told investors the company’s rapid growth was attributed to its “AI era plan”, which includes a voice-activated companion to body cameras, as the company eyes federal law enforcement contracts as a “major opportunity” for the company.

This is not surprising. , who served as the acting director of ICE under the first Trump administration, where he oversaw the implementation of the zero-tolerance policy that separated families at the border.

Since joining Axon, he has deepened the company’s relationship with DHS agencies. Amid reports of informal information sharing with federal immigration agents, we must question both the technologies we’re inviting into our city and the private companies that control them.

Axon’s relationships and technologies are not only a threat to our privacy today, but inviting the company into our community will only be the beginning. While the company markets its products as an accountability tool, it can quickly become one of mass surveillance. Axon is already testing its enhanced facial recognition body cameras to check against police records with the Edmonton Police Department, raising serious concerns about civil liberties and privacy.

Inviting Axon into our community sets a dangerous precedent, and our residents deserve to understand the full scope of what this partnership means. For the safety of our community and the protection of our civil liberties, the City Council must vote against a contract with Axon.

Jennifer Piper is the Program Director for the Colorado office of the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), a Quaker-based peace and social justice organization. For more than two decades Ms. Piper has worked extensively at the intersection of legal, community, and policy solutions to support the human rights of immigrants and the larger community.

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“They needed to have, really, a better plan in place before they started executing,” O’Brien said in an interview with The Denver Post.

In a response to , Johnston’s office sent out its own news release to take issue with several of its findings.

“The city’s review of this report finds it misstates key facts and is in some instances willfully misleading,” Johnston’s office wrote.

The two sides were disagreeing publicly — and not for the first time — over an audit report that analyzed the All in Mile High homelessness program between July 2023, when Johnston took office, and June 2025. Johnston had promised to end street homelessness while running for office, and he launched the initiative in the second half of 2023 by opening a network of temporary shelters in former hotels and new micro-communities that used tiny homes and other structures.

One of the key disagreements Thursday was over whether the mayor’s office underreported the cost of the program to the City Council by about $20 million. According to the auditor’s office, the mayor’s office told the council late last year that the initative’s total cost in its first two years was about $158 million.

But the auditor’s office said expenses in the city’s “system of record” were estimated at $178 million in the same period.

Johnston’s office said the discrepancy came from auditors including costs for some homelessness services that city officials didn’t consider part of All in Mile High — like cold weather shelters and noncongregate shelters that had opened under previous administrations.

“It¶¶Ňőap just inaccurate, unfortunately,” Johnston said in an interview with The Post. “Not a single dollar was overspent, not a single dollar is not accounted for.”

Johnston met an initial goal of moving 1,000 people indoors from street encampments by the end of 2023. As of Thursday, the city’s counted 3,530 moves of people into All In Mile High’s noncongregate shelters since July 2023, with some of those involving the same people more than once. A broader measure that includes other programs says the city has moved about 7,300 people into more permanent housing during Johnston’s administration.

Annual point-in-time counts have found that the number of people sleeping on Denver’s streets went down by 45% between early 2023 and early 2025, but advocates for homeless people dispute the reliability of those single-day counts, saying weather and other factors can influence the results.

Besides questions about cost reporting, raised concernsĚýabout how the city reported outcomes for people in the program, how and where it selected locations for shelter sites, and how it awarded some contracts.

On Thursday, both sides discussed the report during an Audit Committee meeting.

After audit staffers began the meeting by acknowledging what the homelessness program had accomplished, the two sides went back and forth over whether the mayor’s office was doing enough to track its expenses, inform the public on the program’s progress and create strategic plans.

“I think that shows there’s a systematic problem with how you guys track the expenditure amount,” he said. “I think there is a problem.”

Such assertions drew pushback from the mayor’s administration. The report, the committee meeting and Johnston’s response also amounted to a parade of comments from both sides as they made and rebuffed criticisms about how the other side had behaved during the audit process.

According to the auditor’s office, the mayor’s office failed to provide documents showing overall spending and refused to give access to expense-tracking spreadsheets.

“The Mayor’s Office also said the $20.1 million in underreporting was unintentional,” according to a news release from the auditor’s office.

Johnston’s office said officials did provide those documents and added about the underreporting characterization: “The Auditor’s Office said this, not the Mayor’s Office. We did not say that, as we do not believe we underreported any figures.”

Tensions between O’Brien’s and Johnston’s offices intensified last year during the budget process, as they fought publicly over the mayor’s attempt to cut O’Brien’s budget during a citywide budget crisis. At the time, O’Brien said Johnston was interfering with his work as a separately elected official.

The mayor’s office agreed with seven of the 12 recommendations made in the All In Mile High audit report.

Amid the back and forth at Thursday’s meeting, Schafer at one point expressed a wish that there had been more dialogue on some issues during the audit process.

Cole Chandler, a senior adviser to Johnston on homelessness,Ěý responded plainly: “Our relationship just doesn’t lend itself to that kind of conversation. That¶¶Ňőap not the way those meetings are set up, and not the outcome they’re seeking. So I would encourage you to go back and look at the way you’re structuring that and structuring that partnership moving forward.”

The auditor’s office has announced plans to investigate several other city initiatives this year, including the 16th Street mall reconstruction, Vision Zero efforts to reduce pedestrian deaths and the city budget process.