Taylor Farms has expanded a voluntary recall of its iceberg lettuce products sourced from central Mexico because of a potential link to the that has sickened people across the U.S.

Products with the potential to be contaminated with the diarrhea-causing parasite were shipped to 27 states including Texas, Florida, Pennsylvania, Illinois and New Jersey, the California-based company said in a statement Friday.

“We are actively removing the implicated products,” the statement said, adding that the company has stopped sourcing lettuce from an implicated lot in central Mexico.

U.S. health officials earlier this week identified lettuce from a supplier in Mexico as a source of cyclospora contamination in food served at Taco Bell restaurants in five Midwestern states.

The Taylor Farms recall announcement listed 25 shredded lettuce and salad mix products sold under eight different brand codes. Taylor Farms did not respond to an emailed request for the full names of those brands or retailers. The recalled products were shipped as recently as Thursday and have “best by” dates as late as Aug. 3.

Sysco, the nation’s largest food distributor, has halted distribution of all Taylor Farms iceberg lettuce products sourced from Mexico and instructed customers to destroy them.

Cyclospora is a microscopic parasite that infects food that has come into contact with human feces, most commonly when produce is irrigated or washed with contaminated water. When ingested, the parasite causes intestinal illness marked by “frequent and sometimes explosive bowel movements,” according to the CDC.

In 2026, cyclospora has sickened at least 1,645 people in the U.S. and hospitalized 141, according to the CDC, which is investigating more than 5,000 additional illnesses that may be linked to the parasite. This time last year, only 249 cases had been reported.

The CDC initially to avoid eating shredded lettuce served at Taco Bell restaurants in Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio and West Virginia.

“Taco Bell worked swiftly to voluntarily remove the product from restaurants and the affected ingredient has been removed from our supply chain nationwide,” the company said in a statement Friday.

On a normal day, more than 2,000 workers in this rural northeast Colorado city fill assembly lines as they carve up cattle bound for butchers and supermarkets across the United States.

But on Wednesday, these laborers — many of whom are immigrants or refugees — instead lined Main Street, holding signs that read: “The steaks are high.”

The economic engine of Fort Morgan — a beef processing plant that employs more than 20% of the town’s population — has remained largely dark since Cargill halted production in April, then locked out its unionized workforce in May amid contentious contract negotiations.

The union, , says Cargill refuses to budge on minimal wage increases, even as the company reports staggering profits. Company representatives, meanwhile, contend that their proposal offers substantial benefits for its workers.

A lockout is an effort by bosses to block employees from working in the midst of a labor dispute. Once a rare phenomenon compared to a strike, lockouts have become a more common tool used by employers to gain leverage during negotiations.

Still, experts say, they remain exceedingly uncommon in the beef industry.

The impasse has left Cargill’s workers with no idea when — or if — they’ll be able to return to work. Fort Morgan officials, for their part, have already implemented budget cuts and frozen hiring as they brace for even steeper revenue declines, potential layoffs and a deeper existential question.

What happens to a factory town if the factory goes away?

“This is the type of thing that could be a generational event,” said last week. “These are things that stick with a community for a long time.”

Cargill representatives declined an interview request for this story, and instead directed The Denver Post to a company dedicated to the Fort Morgan negotiations.

“This was not a decision we made lightly,” the company wrote of the lockout. “Cargill remains committed to reaching an agreement through continued good-faith negotiations with the union.”

How the lockout began

Fort Morgan is an agricultural community of 11,000, about 80 miles northeast of Denver.

It’s a diverse and largely poor population, where more than half of its residents identify as Hispanic and the .

Cargill, for many in northeast Colorado, represents the best option for making a decent living.

The company, headquartered in Minnesota, is the , employing more than 155,000 people across 70 countries. Its annual revenue:

Cargill, on its , acknowledges the “vital role” the company plays in supporting the local economy, saying it “strives to be the employer of choice” in northeastern Colorado.

The facility’s massive 85-acre complex — including a dozen buildings and 630,000 square feet of production space — sits on the outskirts of town east of Main Street. The plant dates back to 1966 and was acquired by Cargill in 1987.

The current stalemate traces back to February, when the union and the company began negotiating a new contract.

The parties traded proposals, with Cargill offering an estimated $33.4 million investment in Fort Morgan employees. Year one wages, under the company’s proposal, would range from $24.20 to $32.10 per hour, depending on the job and experience. Union officials, though, said this would only equate to a $2.15-per-hour increase over five years.

Cargill also touted significant jumps since 2018 to its base pay, average wages and annual payroll.

In April, amid the heated negotiations, the company stopped bringing cattle to the facility, though workers continued to receive their pay. The following month, 90% of union workers rejected Cargill’s deal, citing inadequate wage increases and other health and safety concerns. The union, however, never held a strike vote.

On May 20, Cargill locked the plant’s doors, saying the company “cannot operate the facility safely and responsibly amid continued uncertainty of a potential work stoppage.” A sudden shutdown, , could create risks related to food safety, animal welfare and extensive food waste.

“Our goal remains to reach an agreement that allows the facility to return to normal operations safely and productively as soon as possible,” Cargill officials said.

The Teamsters say the speed at which Cargill barricaded the factory showed that they had “full intention to lock us out.”

There have been no conversations of substance since, said Chris Suazo, a Local 455 business agent, though the two sides did meet on June 30.

Cargill said it would support a meeting with a mediator, while Suazo said the union remains open to negotiating. Still, the sides remain far apart.

Lockouts, once unheard of, have in recent years represented a significant portion of work stoppages as federal courts and the National Labor Relations Board have expanded their permissible use, said Moshe Marvit, an attorney and former National Labor Relations Board employee.

“At a time when the most well-known tools of labor organizing have already been undermined by aggressive — and too frequently unlawful — anti-union tactics by employers, this enhancement of management power is designed to weaken the bargaining power of unions, and lead to a further decline in the earnings and benefits available to hard-working families,” he said.

The dispute comes amid tumultuous times for beef producers nationwide.

The U.S. cattle herd��is at a��, driving up beef prices. Cargill has said it is currently losing hundreds of millions of dollars in its beef operations.

The Fort Morgan lockout came just two months after thousands of workers at a JBS meatpacking plant in Greeley went on strike over wage disputes and unsafe working conditions. The two sides reached an agreement three weeks later.

Industry watchers say production interruptions, such as the one in Fort Morgan, are unlikely to drastically impact the U.S. beef market since facilities nationwide are already running well below capacity. That means Cargill can easily transfer cattle destined for Colorado to other plants.

“Things like this can cause regional issues, such as producers seeing increased costs and headaches, but for the industry as a whole, it’s not an end-of-the-world scenario,” said Jaime Luke, an assistant professor at��Michigan State University’s��Department of Agricultural, Food and Resource Economics.

In fact, Cargill’s operational costs actually go down when the company can run its plants at closer to capacity, said Jennifer Martin, an associate professor in the College of Agricultural Sciences at Colorado State University.

Workers left in limbo

Cargill workers have been left in an uneasy limbo since the lockout.

They’re still getting paid $1,250 per week from the union’s “out of work” benefit fund, though it’s not clear how long that will last.

Instead of handling cow carcasses all day, they’re picketing along Main Street and outside the plant. On Wednesday, laborers chatted in small groups, looked at their phones and milled around a downtown park.

“The company has a real next-man-up mentality,” said Michael Torres, a supervisor at the plant. “There’s a real lack of empathy for the workers.”

Even though they’re still getting paid, Torres worries about not having health insurance, which stopped June 1.

Next to him, Robert Gasca pondered his future.

He’s been with Cargill for 17 years, taking an hour-long shuttle ride every day from Greeley.

Gasca’s mother died when he was young, leading the teen to drop out of high school. He earned enough at Cargill to allow his sister to graduate — an accomplishment he considers his proudest moment.

But the job has come with a cost. Gasca showed disfigurements on his hands from operating a meat hook all day and recalled once when a knife sliced through his leg “like butter.” It’s a physically demanding, intense gig, with few breaks.

“Religiously, God told me to leave this place years ago,” he said.

Local businesses in town expressed their support for the union members, with some putting signs in the windows that proclaimed they “stand with Cargill Teamsters.”

A few business owners said sales have dropped since the lockout, while others lamented the lack of parking when workers picket downtown.

“At first, we were worried about the unknown,” said Kim Filener, who works at a women’s clothing store in town. “But everyone has been respectful and things have been pretty calm. We know Cargill is big for this town and we support our workers.”

At the end of the day, townspeople said, they just want a resolution to end the stalemate.

‘Plan for the worst’

As workers mull their fate, the city of Fort Morgan does the same.

Not only does Cargill employ a significant percentage of the population, but the company also represents the city’s largest water and electricity customer. Since the lockout, utility usage from the plant has plummeted, said Nation, the city manager.

Sales tax receipts have remained stable so far, since workers are still getting paid, but officials are worried about a hit there, too, if laborers stop getting paychecks.

Nation earlier this month, saying all municipal departments needed to cut 5% from their current budgets and institute an immediate hiring freeze.

The 2027 prognosis is even worse. If Cargill doesn’t come back online, the city would lose $15 million of its $100 million annual budget, Nation said. As a result, all departments next year face 15% cuts, which would likely result in layoffs.

“We need to plan for the worst in this case,” he said.

The city manager has been in close touch with officials in Lexington, Nebraska, which plant��that employed 30% of its total workforce. In that case, the move resulted in the loss of 7,000 jobs, $3.3 billion in statewide economic impact and $2.7 million in lost sales tax revenue for the county.

Nation thinks about his father, who worked in the oil business. The family talked for decades about the oil bust in the 1980s and the economic devastation that it caused Colorado. If Cargill doesn’t reopen its Fort Morgan plant, he said, it would cause similar ripples through the community.

“Looking at the dollars and cents, the trickle-down effect is scary,” he said. “But these are the cards we’ve been dealt.”

The price seemed too high given the unremarkable craftsmanship, but it triggered the idea for a business that would become .

Over the last 35 years, Faith has gone from hawking glass panels that he brought over from Glasgow to crafting customized stained glass windows for thousands of local homes to completing historically significant restoration projects.

Today, his Centennial-based team of 35 employees has restored over 40,000 stained glass windows in churches and buildings across the country.

Places where Colorado residents might run across the company’s handiwork are the Mother Cabrini Shrine in Golden, the Deer Creek Church in Littleton, the Boulder Theater’s stained glass facade, and Temple Emanuel in Denver.��The company also restored windows for , one of the few structures to survive the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921.

To commemorate the 100th anniversary of the tragedy, Scottish Stained Glass donated a custom, three-story “Legacy” window remembering past pastors and church members who survived the massacre.

And this year, Faith, 64, received his own monumental recognition. In May, the U.S. Small Business Administration named him Colorado’s Small Business Person of the Year.

“It’s more than just a business. I mean, you have to stay in business, but it’s just something else. It’s the reason I’m not retired,” Faith said of his long love affair with stained glass, which began when he was a small boy staring up at the colorful windows in church.

In college, Martin was studying for his real estate license when he was recruited into the replacement vinyl window business. While they were��an energy-efficient improvement over older and draftier windows, many historic homes in Glasgow contained beautiful, artistic panels of stained glass.

As those older windows were ripped out, a piece of the city’s cultural history started disappearing.

Rather than tossing out the panels as many people did, Faith stored hundreds of them in a warehouse, not knowing what to do with them — until the idea came to him in that coffee shop.

If a mediocre piece of stained glass could command so much in Colorado, what might a genuine work of stained glass art be worth?

He began shipping century-old pieces of Glasgow Style windows, marked by a minimalist, linear approach that allows natural light to flood through, to a hungry market in Colorado.

Scottish Stained Glass is part of the larger Scottish Group Companies, which installs windows, doors, siding and decks and has a division that distributes and installs a wide array of window films and tints.

That work paid the bills, but home improvement work is not the kind that wins SBA attention.

Stained glass is where the company now sets itself apart and where Faith expects most future growth to happen.

“Stained glass, just in the last couple of years, has grown to become the biggest division,” he said.

Faith plans to offer lessons to the public on stained glass work. He is assembling an in-house gallery that will contain traditional pieces salvaged from churches in Scotland as well as modern designs.

Pushing the medium forward

Under the direction of conservator and master glass painter Maria Valentina Sheets, the studio is also pushing the boundaries of the art form.

Sheets has become known for her hand-painted, kiln-fired stained glasswork and a technique called Vitreonics that creates realistic images.

Faith will turn to her when he has a creative vision.

One of those collaborations resulted in a David Bowie polyptych capturing the four phases of Bowie. It greets visitors in vivid colors as they enter the showroom’s lobby in Centennial.

Sheets has also translated a painting from iconic feminist artist Judy Chicago into glass and is working on vitrifying other works created in different mediums.

Programmable LED backlighting behind custom glass pieces is driving a wave of renewed interest and modern creativity, Faith said.

��

Out of a dark period, a bright future

The pandemic in 2020 forced the company, which had focused mostly on local work, to rethink its business model.

A boosted online presence and Zoom consultations allowed sales reps to safely interact with customers and to expand their market.

The company quickly found itself pursuing and winning major commissions around the country.

“So I thought, okay, so when this thing is over, we should be able to see Colorado come back again. But why don’t we just try to become a national company?” Martin recalls.

That expansion, however, required more physical space and capital, so Faith turned to the SBA for funding.

An SBA loan helped the company, which was renting an 8,000-square-foot building, purchase a much larger 25,000-square-foot building that once housed a mortgage brokerage.

��

Weeping windows

Staff at the Mother Cabrini Shrine were shocked when, a year ago, they entered the chapel and found water cascading from a stained-glass window.

The building had recently undergone a major renovation and expansion, but nobody thought to restore the windows, which at 55 were still young in stained glass years, said JoAnn Seaman, executive director of the shrine on Lookout Mountain.

But decades of harsh Colorado foothills weather had taken their toll, creating the conditions for a structural collapse of the four windows.

“I knew immediately that we could trust them, that they understood the significance of the windows and how they were part of the fabric of this place,” Seaman said.

In January, workers removed four massive, 700-pound panels from the steep roofline. At the Centennial workshop, other workers delicately removed and cleaned 1,200 pieces of grimy faceted glass by hand.

The restored pieces were then bedded into a newly formulated, highly durable modern matrix designed to last 100 years. And the windows were reinstalled in time for the Easter service.

While the Shrine opted to keep its original glass, the Deer Creek Church in Littleton chose to go with a highly customized design.

Two decades ago, the congregation blocked the east-facing windows because of the intense sunlight streaming through on Sunday mornings, said Aaron Ellis, the church’s worship director.

Hoping to let natural light back in, the church landed on stained glass, but struggled to find a contractor willing to work on the sanctuary’s 30-foot-high frames.

“Scottish Stained Glass was capable of getting that high and installing the windows,” Ellis said.

Sheets embedded the themes of word, water, bread, wine, and prayer into soft, cloud-like abstract forms, providing the church with a style uniquely its own.

“They did a phenomenal job designing windows that let natural light in without blinding our congregation, and the design is beautiful,” Ellis said.

Lowrie and his wife, Tenicia, are asking $7.8 million for the 11,147-square-foot home, which overlooks the 12th hole of Castle Pines Golf Club. The couple bought the property in 2022 for $6.3 million after selling their longtime Golden mansion for $6.4 million.

Jerome and Mary Kern built the home in 2008. Jerome Kern, who died in 2024, was a telecommunications attorney and philanthropist widely credited with rescuing the Colorado Symphony from bankruptcy in 2011.

The five-bedroom, seven-bathroom home was designed by BOSS Architecture and Semple Brown Design and named Home of the Year by Colorado Homes & Lifestyles magazine in 2012. It has a Castle Rock address because it����ap in an incorporated part of Douglas County, just outside Castle Pines limits.

The Lowries weren’t in the market when they stumbled on it.

“We had already bought land in Sedalia and were planning to build,” Troy Lowrie said.

But then they walked through Albion Place. “It����ap impossible to build something like this now. The concrete alone would cost at least $3 million,” he said.

Lowrie said the grounds hooked him, especially the year-round heated pools, the glass-walled garden studio and tea house, the koi pond with cascading waterfalls, fire features, and mature 250-foot pine trees on the 1.11-acre lot.

“You feel like you’re in the mountains,” he said.

The home blends centuries-old materials with a modern aesthetic. A 16th-century granite fireplace mantel anchors one room; a 17th-century marble mantel anchors another. Walls of glass throughout dissolve the boundary between inside and out, and a dramatic gallery-style entry opens to soaring ceilings.

After moving in, the Lowries put their own stamp on the home.

Tenicia Lowrie overhauled the kitchen, adding a pizza oven, a full-size refrigerator and freezer, a larger range and a warming oven.

She also updated her bathroom in the primary suite. Step 1: removing an empty fish tank from the shower.

“It looked like a hospital, not a home,” Tenicia Lowrie said. She converted it into a spa-inspired bath, with lighting that mimics falling raindrops.

They added a massage table to the tea house, already a meditative retreat.

Troy Lowrie said there’s room downstairs to add a golf simulator — though he admits he’s not much of a golfer. He plays pickleball and tennis.

“This house probably should belong to someone who plays golf,” he said.

The primary suite is a particular favorite. In addition to double baths and walk-in closets, it includes a sitting area with a television and couch — something Troy Lowrie was initially skeptical about.

“Now I couldn’t live without it,” he said.

The suite also has a small kitchen, and when they are home, the couple admits they often spend most of their time there. Tenicia Lowrie said she already knows she’ll miss her walk-in closet.

The retired couple plan to stay in Florida full time. Tenicia Lowrie is a co-founder of Lucy Sky Cannabis Boutique, a retail cannabis shop.

They have been splitting their time between Colorado and Florida, and if they could, Tenicia Lowrie said they would take their house with them.

During one of their extended absences, a bear got into the koi pond and ate all the fish.

“We feel like we’re cheating the house by only being here four months out of the year,” Troy Lowrie said. “It deserves a full-time caretaker.”

Listing agent Christine Malara with Compass-Denver said the home in the gated community likely will appeal to an executive or an athlete. Denver Broncos quarterback Bo Nix owns a home nearby.

Although the home feels secluded, it sits near Interstate 25. Denver Tech Center is about 15 minutes away, Dove Valley is 24 minutes, and Denver International Airport is 35 minutes away.

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“All affected employees have been notified of their separation dates and that their separation from employment will be permanent,” Kristin Popek, vice president of talent at the company, wrote in a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification, or WARN, letter.

Popek, who did not return a call asking for additional details, said the layoffs would start Sept. 11 and that all employees would continue to receive base pay and benefits for the next 60 days.

The facility, 4750 Nome St., initially belonged to Medicine Man, which The Cannabist Co., then known as Columbia Care, acquired on Nov. 1, 2021.

Columbia Care also acquired The Green Solution, once Colorado’s largest marijuana retail chain, on Sept. 1, 2020. That came with a large grow operation that was both indoors and outdoors. Those locations have been sold or closed.

Wholesale marijuana prices in Colorado have fallen from a peak of around $1,700 per pound during the pandemic boom to less than $600 a pound recently, according to industry sources.

That huge drop has proven devastating to growers and is pushing more vertically integrated companies to take the risk of relying on sourcing product in the open market.

Chicago-based PharmaCann, owner of LivWell Enlightened Health and The Clinic, announced in March that it would close a cultivation and processing facility near the National Western Complex, eliminating 132 jobs.

Eaze, owner of the Green Dragon, shuttered a 92,000-square-foot facility at 830 Wyandot in Denver in June 2025, resulting in the loss of 45 jobs.

The number of actively registered recreational cultivation licenses has fallen by nearly half since the market’s peak in 2021, according to the Colorado Department of Revenue’s .

The Cannabist Co. has faced severe financial distress. After a loan default this year, the �� and is liquidating assets across states to satisfy creditors.

“For just us — we are not a big-time real estate investment company — it was just too much,” Chris Herron said.

The couple opened Achieve Sports Center at 22675 E. Aurora Parkway in January 2023 and sold the 58,000-square-foot complex last month for $9 million to Red Rocks Church. Chris Herron said she poured close to $2 million into the building, adding turf and courts into what had been a Safeway.

At its peak, the business employed a staff of 120 and the Herrons were recognized as the U.S. Small Business Administration’s businesspeople of the year for Colorado. Achieve Sports mainly focused on youth programming, but parents and senior citizens also used the space.

The Herrons purchased the property for $6.1 million in September 2021. The couple didn’t have investors.

“We had so much space that we could really make a huge impact in a lot of ways,” Chris Herron said.

But a litany of financial challenges plagued the operation. The interest rate on their property rose from 4% to 8%; property taxes were $224,000 in 2026.

Additionally, the city opened a 75,000-square-foot recreation center 12 minutes up the road right around the time Achieve opened its doors, adding more competition into the market.

Other factors included impending state regulations on energy efficiency that would’ve required a “tremendous” amount of investment into the property to meet certain benchmarks, Chris Herron said.

“We would not ask our families what we would (have to) charge them to sustain a facility like that,” she said.

Achieve Sports began with a gymnastics center at 3460 S. Fairplay Way, also in Aurora, back in 2013. The couple decided to expand their operations with the addition of a sports complex once the gymnastics operation got so popular that it needed to waitlist participants.

“We did this as a big, hairy, audacious goal — the BHAG,” she said. “We put everything we had into it.”

The pair remodeled the entire building, from eight new rooftop HVAC units to a gym overlooking the gymnastics facilities for parents to work out in while watching their children. Sports played inside ranged from lacrosse to soccer to golf.

The 2025 tax bill, and a failed appeal to lower the amount owed, pushed the Herrons to sell the property.

They tried to sell to someone who would lease back to them, so they could keep operating. But Chris Herron said there were no takers on that.

Red Rocks Church emerged as the buyer. The organization operates four suburban Denver locations along with one in Austin, Texas, and in Brussels, Belgium.

“While we are excited about the potential of the site, we are still in the early stages of evaluating long-term possibilities and do not have specific plans or timelines to announce at this time,” said Josh Kingry, who works in facilities for the church.

The Herrons, meanwhile, are excited to get back to focusing on gymnastics full time. But the loss of the center continues to weigh heavily on them.

“It’ll be different now,” Chris Herron said. “We’re going to still have the same philosophy and operate for the benefit of the kids, but it����ap on a smaller scale, that����ap for sure.”

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The on Thursday approved $4.43 million in Job Growth Incentive Tax Credits for a company using the code name “Project Laser.” That incentive is tied to the creation of 225 net new jobs paying an average annual wage of $232,021.

That wage is twice the average in Broomfield County, which has the highest average pay in the state and is often used as a benchmark.

Although the company’s name was not disclosed, the limited information provided — including the executive who spoke on behalf of Project Laser — points to .

Project Laser will most likely be located in Boulder, which is home to the country’s biggest concentration of quantum computing companies, said Dan Salvetti, semiconductor industry manager with the .

But the company is also considering Chicago, which has become Boulder’s chief rival for quantum dominance.

The company plans to invest $158 million in a new research and development center with 80,000 to 100,000 square feet of space.

In a sign of the importance the state places on the new R&D facility, the company has also received approval for an additional $10.3 million in Enterprise Zone tax credits, for a combined $14.7 million in refundable credits.

Because startup companies are often unprofitable and lack state income tax liability, the commission approved converting $9 million of those credits into a direct cash refund under the state’s .

Awards under the program are capped at $15 million a year through fiscal year 2028. Given the high demand, the award approved Thursday will dip into what remains of the 2028 allocation.

Atom Computing was started in 2018 by Ben Bloom and Jonathan King. Their approach uses a unique laser cooling and optical trapping technique to put neutral atoms, which can be packed together more tightly, to work running complex computations.

Although the company is based in Berkeley, California, about 85 of its 130 employees work out of Boulder, where Atom Computing opened an R&D center in September 2022.

That initial leased space was 17,000 square feet, and it was later expanded to 40,000 square feet at BioMed Realty’s Flatiron Park. Even that has become too tight.

In May and June, Atom Computing raised $200 million, including $100 million from the U.S. Department of Commerce and a $100 million venture capital round.

Boulder had been on a hot streak of landing quantum research centers this year.��In March, Google Quantum AI set up a team in Boulder to work on its own neutral-atom hardware system.

In May, rival IonQ cut the ribbon on a new 22,000-square-foot laboratory at Boulder 38, where it will test its next-generation ion trap chips and install one of its latest-generation commercial quantum computers.

Broadway Bark takes up an acre at 363 S. Broadway in Denver, just south of Alameda Avenue. It����ap within Broadway Park, a 75-acre site that features stand-alone restaurants, big-box stores and, increasingly, apartment buildings.

Denver has 17 city-operated dog parks. But Broadway Bark, which opened two years ago, is operated by a metro district created to help develop Broadway Park.

And D4 Urban, the Denver-based master developer of Broadway Park, is warning that the dog park may have to shut down.

“Without an exemption, there is no park,” said Dan Cohen, D4 Urban’s CEO and a board member of Broadway Park’s various metro districts.

Cohen and other D4 Urban partners own the dog park’s land and have leased it to the metro district for $1 a year. Previously, they told the county assessor the land was used for public purposes, and they were automatically exempt from paying property taxes, which are $88,000.

That exemption helped offset dog park maintenance costs, according to Cohen.

Last year, however, the governor signed a law that scrutinizes situations in which metro district board members own land that is leased to the metro district. That change left Broadway Bark without an automatic exemption from paying property taxes.

Cohen hopes to restore the exemption. His request has landed before the Denver City Council.

At a council committee meeting Tuesday, members heard from a handful of people who say they and their dogs visit Broadway Bark frequently.

“I know like 15 or 20 people that I would consider friends just from going there all the time,” said Jordan Bentley, who lives a seven-minute drive away.

“We know our neighbors, which is really not a common thing in urban areas,” another speaker said.

Cohen told council members that the metro district spent hundreds of thousands of dollars building Broadway Bark. The site will eventually be developed. But the timeline on that is unclear and has been for years, he said.

“This is a really good model of what we should do for other vacant spaces,” said Caitlin Braun, executive director of the South Broadway general improvement district.

Councilwoman Flor Alvidrez, who represents the area, signaled her support.

“This is a very important part of my district,” she said.

The council committee voted 3-2 to recommend that the exemption be approved, suggesting the outcome is up in the air when the matter goes to the full council to make the final decision.

In voting no on Tuesday, Councilwoman Amanda Sandoval noted that the city is in a budget deficit.

“I don’t support this. I don’t like it,” she said. “It����ap taking money from residents.”

Speaking to BusinessDen a day later, Cohen said he believes the council is supposed to weigh in on whether the land is used for a public purpose, not whether it wants to grant an exemption.

“Self-evidently, a park serves a public purpose if Denver spends millions to operate its own parks,” he said.

Cohen’s wary of his request — and others like it that may come up — going before the council, where it can be politicized.

“Our read of (the new law) is that council could designate the authority to someone else, so this can be an administrative process,” he said.

The tax exemption was a factor in the decision to create Broadway Bark, he said. And he’s worried other property others now might not make a similar decision.

“No developer or district is going to create one of these open spaces … if there is not certainty that there is the tax benefit,” Cohen said.

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The neighborhood will soon welcome the “Shark Tank”-backed dessert franchise Crispy Cones to 3000 W. 23rd Ave., according to permits filed with the city.

The spot serves ice cream in dough cones coated on the outside with flavors like cinnamon sugar or Oreo. Those are warmed in a rotisserie-style contraption, and then a spreads like Nutella or strawberry jam is smeared inside. The flavored ice cream is added and gets a drizzle or extra toppings, such as Oreo or Biscoff cookies.

It����ap based on a delicacy that founder Jeremy Carlson had during his time in the Czech Republic years ago, he told the celebrity investors in an episode that aired in December 2023.

He and his wife, Kaitlyn, won’t be running the Denver Crispy Cones, though. That’ll be Abu and Sharmeen Parvez, who bought the building at the corner of Federal Boulevard and 23rd Avenue a year ago for $400,000, according to city filings. They did not respond to requests for comment from BusinessDen.

The spot will be the second Crispy Cones in Colorado after an outpost in Centennial opened earlier this year.

Carlson started Crispy Cones in 2018 out of a tent on the side of the road in his Idaho college town. He sold $21,000 in four months, he told the sharks, and bought a trailer and increased sales to $70,000 the year after.

In pandemic-riddled 2020, he sold $80,000 out of that same trailer and soon after opened his first storefront in Utah. In 2021, Carlson said he had $207,000 in revenue and was projecting $500,000 for the next year after adding a store in Idaho.

Those numbers convinced real estate mogul Barbara Corcoran to invest $200,000 in Crispy Cones for a 20% stake in the company, a little more equity than the 10% Carlson hoped to give.

Since then, Crispy Cones has expanded through franchising, with dozens of locations in 18 states, according to its website.

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Please & Thank You, which is nationally known for its chocolate chip cookies, was slated to open at 2908 E. Sixth Ave. this summer. But the company, which also has locations in Indiana and Kentucky, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last month.

“Capital improvements were made to the space, equipment was purchased, and the café was furnished,” P&TY owner Brooke Vaughn wrote in a June 2 filing, which generally allows businesses to restructure their debts. “It was slated to open in June 2026, but the project is stalled due to lack of working capital.”

Vaughn, who hails from Indiana but moved to Denver five years ago, told BusinessDen in March that she signed a 10-year lease for the space. The spot was home to Maggie & Molly’s Bakery from 2010 until that outfit got seized for back taxes in December.

Vaughn did not respond to requests for comment from BusinessDen.

In Please & Thank You’s Chapter 11 filing, she said the business hasn’t been profitable since 2019. Most years, those losses came despite growing revenue, she told bankruptcy court.

The business lost $430,000 on $4 million in revenue in 2025, filings show. Sales this past January were 19% below January 2025. Through May, P&TY posted $1.1 million in revenue.

“The cost of scaling P&TY’s brand post-pandemic has been exorbitant,” Vaughn wrote. “In addition to the pandemic itself, P&TY has struggled financially due to massive increases in the costs of supplies, unpredictable tariffs, and increases in the cost of labor.”

Vaughn wrote that those issues were amplified by late financial reports from her accountant and a “negative online smear campaign,” without providing specifics. But the latter appears to be connected to an incident in February, where an employee at one of her Louisville, Kentucky, stores allegedly treated a law enforcement officer disrespectfully.

Vaughn then sent out a memo to her staff, which told them to “leave your religion and politics at the door,” according to Louisville Public Media. That memo became public, prompting a flurry of negative online comments.

In the bankruptcy filing, Vaughn said the situation caused sales to tumble 31% in February and 33% in March.

She said the situation caused investor and franchisee relations to worsen, and she had to take out several bridge loans to keep the lights on at her four cafés. At the time of the bankruptcy filing in early June, P&TY reported $332,000 in assets and $4 million in liabilities. Her largest creditors are financial institutions, filings show.

A group of Louisville hospitality veterans are aiming to buy the cookie shops, including the yet-to-open Denver store, for $175,000, according to court filings. The sale would need to be approved by a bankruptcy court judge. That could come as soon as next month.

That group is already running P&TY day to day, according to filings. The Courier Journal reported that two of the group’s partners own Good Folks Coffee, a wholesale coffee roaster in Louisville that has been Vaughn’s supplier since she opened 15 years ago.

Good Folks did not respond to requests for comment on the future of the Denver store.

“The big thing that we’re focused on right now is we think that they’ve got an amazing product,” one of the owners, Matt Argo, recently told the Courier Journal. “We love the cookie. The community loves the cookies. My kids love their cookies. There’s a good product there. And if we don’t step in and help, this thing is not going to survive.”

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