Olde Town Arvada Is Awesome

Olde Town Arvada is the perfect example of why I started this blog. There is so much to see and do in the Denver Metro area, that I just have to journal about it. Seriously, y'all are missing out.

McIlvoy House sits at the south end of McIlvoy Park in the Historic District of Olde Town Arvada. The land was donated to the City of Arvada in 1916 by Clemency McIlvoy for use as a park. When a tree branch fell on the McIlvoy house, instead of getting rid of the tree completely, someone had the novel idea of carving a statue of her in the wood instead.

That's what Arvada is like. They don't get rid of the past when it gets run down and weathered, they restore it in often creative and nifty ways.

Nancy Young, of SaveArvadaNow, is fighting to keep it that way. She was generous enough to give me a tour of downtown, telling me so many interesting stories about its history. I saw all of the homes, many of them over a century old, most of which are restored to its original look. And the view from Grandview east of Old Wadsworth is breathtaking. 

And yet what brought me to this place is a story I'm researching, the depths of which I still have yet to fully fathom. The story is Transportation-oriented Development (TOD), and it is the reason why this sort of novel approach to restoring the past may itself become a thing of the past.

TOD is the practice of building high-density housing in close proximity to public transit. Arvada leadership is pursuing, rather aggressively, high-density housing structures in preparation for The Gold Line - the arm of RTD's Fastracks lightrail plan that will pass through Arvada. Arvada leadership is tripping over itself to make way for these developments, and they couldn't be happier to accomadate the developers.

I wrote a short article about two months ago, knowing that a full investigation of the greater scope of the issue would take weeks, if not months. And it has. Partly because I've been so busy with the newsletter and with work, but also because every new discovery I make uncovers another disgusting layer of the story.

I'm learning so much about municipal politics, and after looking at the systems in place for appraisal, zoning, dirty little tricks like tax-increment financing (TIF) and many others, I've come to the conclusion that no one's flying the plane. No one has a clue how cities work, and the ones who stand to gain like it that way. It's how they get away with murder.

In some cases, if they want your property, they can just declare it 'blighted' and you're screwed. After that, your home is of no more use to you than undocumented 'illegal' dwellings in Africa, homes which also cannot be mortgaged to pay for a startup because they have no 'legal' value.

In other cases, as one appraiser friend has already said is all too common, your house could burn down, and if the land it sits on is zoned differently (i.e. your house was only 'legal' because it was grandfathered in), then there's a strong chance the city won't let you rebuild unless you build an apartment complex. Yeah, it's pretty messed up.

But even if you get past the stench of cronyism and corruption like this, that still leaves the question that is perhaps even more vexing than this cesspool of municipal dealings: what makes a city great? Is it the density? Mobility? Quality of life? Character?

I could write a book and still not answer that question, but I'm starting to see that it's a question we're all going to need to start thinking more about, and soon, lest we allow careerist politicians and opportunistic developers run roughshod over our neighborhoods.

But even if it was for a good cause - and no one's saying development is always bad - what breaks my heart the most is how casually these progressives in Arvada's City Council and Urban Renewal board talk about 'the future', at the expense of the past.

There is a right way to do TOD. Then there is the wrong way.

Fortunately, Nancy has found a strategy that may actually work, and it involves saving the Masonic Lodge from being destroyed.

Because the Masonic lodge has historical significance, a review is required by the Colorado Historic Society before it can happen. To make a long story short, the process may delay developers to the point their contractors may drop out, and they might not even be able meet the deadline required to be operational when the Gold Line is finished. So they super-duper want this process to end soon (and in their favor).

Oh, and did I mention the government shut down the other day? Yeah, that might take a while. :)