A Trip Through Denver Parks and Neighborhoods

A Trip Through Denver Parks and Neighborhoods
Friday, May 2, 2008

Guide Carolyn Etter, a former co-manager of the Denver Parks and Recreation Department, was an expert guide for this trip.

Let me first explain “co-manager.” Mrs. Etter had experience in non-profit and charitable managing. Her husband, Don Etter, had just retired from law practice. While reading the Denver Post once morning she said to her husband, “Wouldn’t it be fun for us to co-manager the Parks and Recreation Department?” A few phone calls later the newly elected Mayor Frederico Pena, later head of the Department of Transportation in the Clinton administration, made a dual appointment of this couple to head the department. They were among the highest executives in the country to have this arrangement.

What could have been an administrative nightmare turned out to be an executive success. Mrs. Etter says their parenting skills came into play. If mama has said no, don’t come to daddy for a different answer. Those asking questions soon learned.

The tour began at City Park with its view west over downtown Denver to the Rocky Mountains. We could see all the way to Wyoming, the sky being clear that day. From this park, which had a small lake, we could see surrounding low-story apartment houses as well as one high-rise which interfered with the view. Mrs. Etter said that when the building permit was given it was ambiguous and allowed this high-rise to be built. When citizens and dwellers around the lake realized what had happened they became very vigilant and had stopped other projects. For the first of several times she commented that it take constant vigilance to keep unwanted commercial interests from taking advantage of public places built and maintained by taxpayers. Mrs. Etter said that keeping commercial interests out of parks was one of the most recurring problems that she and her husband had while being commissioners. Only a citizenry on alert can watch for the sometime small, yet inappropriate encroachments. Commercial interests are always ready to profit from being in or around a public place.

Another problem was balancing park usage among groups. A manager must deny special treatment to organized groups at the expense of disorganized groups. You might not notice that soccer, rugby and Little League are by their very nature organized, demanding fields, lights, bleachers and denying use to others during their game times; while joggers, baby strollers, picnickers and Sunday park-goers are unorganized but deserve the park usage just as much. Each type has to be considered when managing a park.

The tour saw the twenty-three acre Denver Botanic Garden arranged into “rooms” with appropriate art and plants in each.

The tour group got out at Cheesman Park bordering the Capital Hill neighborhood. This park and its nearby wide boulevard streets was mandated by a former Denver mayor (our guide compared him to Robert Moses) during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century in the Beautiful City era. This movement was characterized by designs featuring broad, tree-lined boulevards, carefully chosen plantings, entry gates into designated areas, and large, urban parks often with lakes, in the middle of the neighborhood. Denver has had the advantage of having several eminent city planners who have laid out such neighborhoods and parks.

Many older neighborhoods in Denver have been at least partially preserved, making for an interesting city. These older neighborhoods range from very expensive to lower middle class. Denver seemed to have a lot of older, but very well-preserved housing stock. To a viewer accustomed to Houston or Dallas, where whole neighborhoods seem to disappear in just a few years, Denver seemed to have a lot of older housing. But Mrs. Etter said many of them had lost 50% of their older housing stock in the last ten years. She said the newly chosen style seems to be the “Tuscan village.” That is very reminisant of Dallas’ northern suburbs, or the close-in and expensive Park cities in Dallas where zero lot building is common. I was reminded of a visiting friend, an architect, who was sunning in her mother’s backyard in University Park and looked up to see her neighbor waving from his Tuscan tower twenty feet up and away.

Several times Mrs. Etter said that the overriding issue in the United States today is land use: Who owns what. What can be done with the land you own. Does anyone but the owner have rights concerning the land you own. Who has any rights on public land? And only an alert citizenry can assure that the common good is maintained.

We drove through the Highlands neighborhood north of downtown. It was less affluent than the others, but still very interesting. Mrs. Etter pointed out how, on the major street we were traveling, a wide boulevard had once swept, been torn down for increased traffic flow, then partially rebuilt for beauty’s sake, but was still not wide enough to be graceful and lovely---a perfect example of competing uses and how changing the original plan seldom works better.

Our last stop in Highlands neighborhood was Lookout Point, a high, small piece of public land that was chosen by Frederick Law Olmstead, Jr., riding horseback, to be left as a vista for all time. The park at the Point was not landscaped, but left with native plants, rocks and bare spots like the nearby Rockies. At its end we could see for miles around. Olmstead had even designated certain areas below the park, inaccessible by car, to be as they were always so no building or development could interfere with this magnificent view.

Denver compares very favorably with most cities in beauty and livability. Instead of just growing randomly, or letting developers make all the location and design decisions, in leaving a lot of land for public use, its early citizens showed great foresight. With all of this coming at a time when the land seemed endless, her park planners seem especially prescient.