{"id":2696,"date":"2013-05-19T10:58:50","date_gmt":"2013-05-19T16:58:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/?p=2696"},"modified":"2013-06-13T08:01:04","modified_gmt":"2013-06-13T14:01:04","slug":"better-block-five-points-denver","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/?p=2696","title":{"rendered":"Imagining a Better Block: Five Points, Denver"},"content":{"rendered":"

A week ago the Better Block<\/a> project came to the Five Points<\/a> neighborhood in Denver. Five Points is one of the city\u2019s oldest and most colorful areas\u2014both literally and figuratively.<\/p>\n

\"1.<\/a>

“Imagine a Great Community” (D. Saitta)<\/p><\/div>\n

Five Points is a historically black neighborhood.\u00a0 With a vibrant jazz and black culture scene it became known in the 1930s as the \u201cHarlem of the West.\u201d\u00a0 The last half of the 20th<\/sup> century brought economic ups and downs\u2014mostly downs. \u00a0In 2009 an effort to invigorate the local business economy\u00a0 began with formation of the Five Points Business District<\/a>. \u00a0A light rail line was established.\u00a0 Coffee shops\u2014what else?\u2014were opened.\u00a0 The Blair-Caldwell African American Research Library<\/a> had opened a few years earlier as a way to preserve the area\u2019s rich history.\u00a0 Today the neighborhood’s old residences\u2014which include a mix of mansions, row houses, and bungalows that bear testimony to the longstanding economic diversity of the area\u2014are being re-habbed and new apartments are being constructed.<\/p>\n

\""Downtown"<\/a>

“Downtown” Five Points. The Blair-Caldwell African American Research Library is at left-center. Sonny Lawson Park is to the left. The light rail line is to the right (D. Saitta)<\/p><\/div>\n

The neighborhood\u2019s Sonny Lawson Park and adjacent baseball field are also being spruced up. Patty Calhoun at Westword<\/i><\/a> locates the park and ball field in Five Points history:<\/p>\n

Baseball has always been big in this part of Five Points; in <\/i>On the Road<\/em><\/a>, Jack Kerouac describes going to a game on Welton Street one night, among “all humanity, the lot.”\u00a0<\/i>The park at 24th and Welton streets was the first ball field in Denver to host Negro League games. And on August 9, 1972, it became the first park in the city dedicated to an African American: Sonny Lawson. Lawson was a Denver native who started the Radio Pharmacy at 2601 Welton Street and ran it for more than fifty years; he was also the district executive for the Democratic Party in east Denver for more than two dozen years.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"3<\/a>

Ball Field at Sonny Lawson Park. Lawson Park is in background left. New apartments are in background right (D. Saitta)<\/p><\/div>\n

Not surprisingly, the improvements begun in 2009 have ushered in significant demographic change. Today the black population is greatly reduced, down to 15 percent compared to 33% in 2009. The white population is up to 57 percent from only 9% in 2009. Latinos come in at around 23%.<\/p>\n

The Denver Post<\/em> has the Better Block story<\/a> as well as a photo gallery<\/a>.\u00a0 Below are some other pictures of the Better Block event, including the white boards that solicited citizen suggestions for neighborhood improvement. Citizens suggest a farmer’s market, new street side seating (represented by hay bales in the pictures), food trucks (24th<\/sup> Street is the perfect place for them), a kid-friendly water fountain, and more street art. \u00a0At the same time, there are critics. One person suggests\u2014not without reason\u2014that the concept of Better Block is \u201celitist.\u201d\u00a0 Another suggests that the light rail line is actually keeping people from using Sonny Lawson Park, thereby serving as a de facto gate (in her Westword<\/em> piece Patty Calhoun notes that Kerouac\u2019s ball field had, until renovations began earlier this year, been surrounded by a twenty foot high fence and padlocked gate\u2014something that Calhoun suggests is similarly non-conducive to \u201cbuilding a better block\u201d).\u00a0 Someone urges NO GENTRIFICATION in big block letters.\u00a0 That ship seems to have already sailed, but it may not be too late to bring it back to port. Only time will tell.<\/p>\n

\"4<\/a>

Food Trucks on 24th Street (D. Saitta)<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Street<\/a>

24th Street Art and Vendors (D. Saitta)<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Seating<\/a>

Makeshift Seating Area (D. Saitta)<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Welton<\/a>

Welton Street Light Rail. Entrance to Sonny Lawson Park is to the lower left (D. Saitta)<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Citizen<\/a>

Citizen Comments (D. Saitta)<\/p><\/div>\n

\""No<\/a>

“No Gentrification!!” (D. Saitta)<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A week ago the Better Block project came to the Five Points neighborhood in Denver. Five Points is one of the city\u2019s oldest and most colorful areas\u2014both literally and figuratively. Five Points is a historically black neighborhood.\u00a0 With a vibrant […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[6,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2696","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-denver-urbanism","category-new-urbanism"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1H2bI-Hu","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2696","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2696"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2696\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2727,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2696\/revisions\/2727"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}