Park Hill Character: Gentleman Cowboy
Shane Sutherland Takes The Reins Of GPHC, Inc.
Story and photo by Cara DeGette
GPHN Editor
Shane Sutherland probably gets his knack for telling a good story from his dad, a newspaperman who also got himself elected four times as assessor in one of the most Republican counties in Wyoming. As a Democrat.
“My father could be charming, but he could be gruff,” Sutherland says.
One time his dad got interviewed for a big spread in Sports Illustrated about the Casper Classic, one of the biggest bicycling races in the country. The senior Sutherland was quoted saying that he loved that city, with its fresh air, and how you could get anywhere you needed to get in 20 minutes. The only thing wrong with Casper was there were too many damn Republicans.
“My father always said he was misquoted — that he actually said there were too many goddamned Republicans,” Sutherland says. “My father swore like a sailor. He was a Marine. He worked in profanity like Michelangelo worked in stone … it was his true medium.”
Sutherland’s mom, he said, was even more of a character; standing a diminutive 5’2” tall and “the strongest person I’ve ever known.”
You had me at hello
At the turn of this century, after Sutherland and his wife were married, they started looking for a house. When they saw the bungalow at 25th and Clermont in the north section of Park Hill it was love at first sight. “This was the first house the realtor showed us,” Sutherland says. “I grew up in a wooden tract home, and I’ve always loved brick buildings. You know the old saying, ‘You had me at hello’ — that’s how Park Hill had me, at hello.”
Not long after moving in, there was a knock on his door. It was Helen Wolcott from down the street, inviting Sutherland and his wife to a block party. Wolcott was one of the original organizers of the Park Hill Action Committee in the 1960s, working to integrate the neighborhood, battling prejudice and fighting for social justice. Helen Wolcott is Sutherland’s Park Hill hero.
Sutherland’s own activism was inspired by his desire to preserve the old homes of Park Hill. Flashing red lights went off in his brain when he saw, in just a short timeframe, five small homes on his block pop-topped or scraped entirely and replaced with million-dollar houses nearly three times the size of what had been there.
“I’m not saying [the new houses] are bad, but it changes the dynamic of the neighborhood,” he says. “It’s a shame we’re tearing down — I hate to say affordable because they aren’t really for many people — but what they are being replaced with something that is even less affordable. And, it’s a shame the city hasn’t done anything to protect this older stock.”
How do we preserve Park Hill?
When Sutherland first moved to Denver in 1986, the east Washington Park neighborhood was full of old bungalows. Drive through the area now and you’re lucky to see five or six of them remaining on a block. The rest are multi-million dollar mansions. Sutherland does not want that to happen in Park Hill, which has the same zoning.
“How do we preserve Park Hill as Park Hill? The real answer is to lobby, to get the city to agree to preserve the stock of smaller homes,” he says. Other cities have programs in place — he cites Portland, Ore., for example, that require structures that are torn down to be deconstructed and the materials recycled, and that only similar-sized homes can be built as replacements.
“It goes deeper than preservation, it’s also about sustainability,” Sutherland says. “When you tear down a 1,200 to 1,400 square-foot bungalow you take between 50 to 65 tons [of debris.]”
Considering that only about 15 percent of trash is recycled in the Denver metro area, that means a lot of old homes end up in the landfill. “There’s very little recycling [in industry] because we haven’t had leadership at the city level to do it. This is well beyond Park Hill.”
Equity at the top of the list
Last month, Sutherland became the chair of Greater Park Hill Community, Inc., taking over from Tracey MacDermott, who was elected an at-large board member of the organization. The two share a passion for sustainability, and they expect to continue to work closely on new and ongoing projects. What happens at the Park Hill Golf Course, at the old Johnson & Wales campus, the evolution of the city-approved East Area Plan — all are ongoing and critical issues facing the neighborhood.
At the top of Sutherland’s list of priorities is equity. As longtime Park Hillians know, the city divides the neighborhood into three separate entities— South Park Hill, North Park Hill and Northeast Park Hill. For years, the tradition for community advocates has been to insist there is just one Park Hill — Greater Park Hill. However, just as there are many more trees in the wealthier part of the neighborhood to the south, there are currently more active GPHC, Inc. members living in the southern portion of the neighborhood.
Over the coming months, Sutherland says, he will be working with other board members to ramp up the focus on the northeast sector of the neighborhood in various ways, to make sure all residents have their voices heard.
“Having a strong neighborhood requires constant vigilance, and monitoring what the city is doing,” he says.