EDGEWATER COUNCIL Creativity, Teamwork Elevate Edgewater Page 4
WEST METRO FIRE ARM Car Program Rolls Out New “Wheels” Page 5
NEIGHBORHOOD ARTS New Shows, Moving Galleries and Riot VIII Page 7
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EDGEWATER
| SLOAN’S LAKE | WEST COLFAX | TWO CREEKS | WEST HIGHLAND September 17–October 14, 2019 • ngazette.com • FREE
Long Vacant Edgewater Retail Space Finds New Life As Food Hall ■ By
Mike McKibbin
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derelict eyesore in Edgewater will soon get new life as a food hall operated by food truck vendors. The hall will also feature a brewery, large bar and a central seating area, all in a former King Soopers building at 20th Avenue and Depew Street. The Edgewater Public Market project includes retail renovation and development of over 76,000 square feet of commercial space, including 16 food vendors and as many as 14 retail businesses. Along with the food hall, the project includes two freestanding units for possible restaurants and a shopping strip that will feature a fitness studio and retail units. The site has more than 400 parking spots. Littleton Capital Partners, or LCP, is the project developer and founding principal partner Jonathan Bush says plans are to open the food hall the first or second week of October. “That’s a little later than we would have liked, but there Continued on page 2
THE EDGEWATER PUBLIC MARKET in the long-vacant King Soopers building at 20th Avenue and Depew Street is scheduled to open in the first few weeks of October. The renovated site, developed by Littleton Capital Partners, will feature several food truck operators and retail businesses and could produce around $760,000 a year in new city sales tax revenue. PHOTO COURTESY OF LCP
Local Councils Offer Varied Approach To Tobacco-related Regulation ■ By
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Mike McKibbin
obacco-related products may or may not be sold to minors in Lakewood or Edgewater as neither city had conducted compliance checks. Wheat Ridge, meanwhile, just started developing its regulations to ban the sale of such products to youth and require city licenses. Earlier this year, the Edgewater City Council voted unanimously to raise the minimum legal sale age for tobacco products, including e-cigarettes, from 18 to 21. The city first required tobacco product retailer licenses on Feb. 1, 2017. Edgewater also raised the age to obtain a tobacco retailer license from 18 to 21; required retail tobacco businesses to set a minimum store customer age of 21 unless accompanied by a parent or guardian; and made it illegal to provide tobacco to any person under 21 by gift, sale or any other means. Retailers that violate those regulations risk revocation of their tobacco retailer license. Meanwhile, the Lakewood City Council unanimously passed a non-cigarette tobacco retailer licensing ordinance requiring any city business selling such products to purchase an annual license. The ordinance also required the city’s 115 tobacco retail businesses to confirm customers buying non-cigarette tobacco products are at least 18; banned minors under 18 from selling, stocking, retrieving or handling non-cigarette tobacco products; prohibited self-service displays of all tobacco products, except in tobacco businesses with age restrictions; and prohibited tobacco retail businesses within 500 feet of a youthoriented facility. Edgewater Police Chief John Mackey noted in an email that these types of potential violations are generally brought to
law enforcement attention by on-site citizen complaints. “I do not have any record of complaints regarding our new tobacco ordinances to this point, and we have no immediate plans to initiate new enforcement actions,” he wrote. Interim City Manager Dan Maples says the city had no previous compliance issues. Audits to test each store’s practices are usually conducted twice a year, he added, and anticipated the next one in the next six
months. “We only have six retail outlets that sell tobacco products and King Soopers only sells tobacco products at their gas station,” Maples says. Edgewater’s ordinance also expanded the city’s smoke- and vapor-free law, prohibiting smoking and vaping in public parks and recreation areas and within 20 feet of public transportation waiting areas. Lakewood Police Department spokesman John Romero wrote in an
email that no compliance checks had been conducted since that city’s ordinance took effect earlier this year. “Because of a city-wide budget reduction, we are not able to do them at this time,” he wrote. “We estimate it would cost between $10,000 to $15,000 a year to perform these checks and unfortunately that isn’t a possibility in the short term. We are working on a (public service announcement) to help Continued on page 12
PEOPLE YOU SHOULD KNOW
Music & Memory Program Can Diffuse Dementia ■ By
Ken Lutes
“We’re all different, but we all have one commonality, and that’s music,” says Carol, a 66-year-old resident at The Argyle, an assisted- and independentliving facility at 4115 W. 38th Ave., in the Berkeley neighborhood. Carol has been in the Argyle’s Music & Memory program for about a year. Argyle participants are using an Apple iPod Shuffle or SanDisk— digital units that can store hundreds of songs—to help them feel like themselves again, to socialize and stay present. “I’m only 66 and I still have my wits about me, but a lot of people here don’t,” Carol says. “The program helps jar memories and evokes feelings that these people need badly, because they don’t have a lot of joy and pleasure and outside stimulation in their lives. It’s immensely beneficial.” “Music brings folks alive, it sparks happiness,” says Argyle’s Music & Memory specialist Celeste Richardson. “Residents may have dementia, or short-term memory issues—they may not even know why they’re living here, but the music taps into their older memories, like when they’d go to dances at Elitch’s Trocadero Ballroom when they were Continued on page 8
CAROL, A RESIDENT AT THE ARGYLE, an assistedand independent-living facility at 4115 W. 38th Ave., says her participation in the Argyle’s Music & Memory program gives her a boost. PHOTO BY KEN LUTES