The Unexpected and Sudden Demise of City Park Golf Course

COMMENTARY

‘Coincidences’ Don’t Add Up With Interstate 70 Widening Project and Proposed Destruction of Golf Course

By Dick Young, Special to the GPHN

Everybody knows that water runs downhill, not uphill. And many know that in Denver, water flows from the south to the north. Certainly the Colorado Department of Transportation knows this. So do Denver officials.

So why are we just now finding out that “maybe” – because of CDOT and Denver’s long announced plans to put part of I-70 below ground as it runs east to west across the northern part of Denver – that the City Park Golf Club must be demolished? Specifically, many of the golf course trees will be cut down, and a whole bunch of acres of the golf course will be turned into a huge unattractive hole in the ground.

That is required, they now say, to hold runoff water during a 100-year flood that currently can’t flow north fast enough.

For years, runoff from floods has flowed north, most notably to join the Platte River, on the other side of Interstate 70. So why all of a sudden is the City planning for a 100-year flood – particularly when most of Denver is not protected from a 100-year flood, only a 10-year flood?

Could this be because of Denver’s version of the “Big Dig,” the long-planned infamous I-70 widening project? And if so, was this brought out by the government officials while they were selling the Big Dig on how great it would be?

Why the sudden urgency for Denver, which now claims that there is “absolutely” no connection between the Big Dig and the need to effectively destroy the City Park Golf Course as it has existed for years, and at quite an expense to the taxpayers? Could it have anything to do with Denver’s plans to totally rebuild the Denver stockyard area, which is just on the north side of the soon to be started I-70 construction?

Isn’t it ironic?

Forget the fact that this “Big Dig” project is extremely expensive. Forget the fact that I-70 and surrounding streets will be horribly torn up for years. Forget the fact that instead of moving the through traffic currently on I-70 to go around Denver, the Department of Transportation wants it added to the already crowded I-70 Denver traffic.

And isn’t it ironic that the Colorado Department of Transportation, which years ago caused the dividing of the Elyria-Swansea community northwest of Park Hill, is now trying to put it back together by moving it further apart?

But all of this planning for the demise of the City Park Golf Course is based on how to handle a 100-year flood. So why now, in northeast Denver, that area just south of the I-70 Big Dig, has the city decided that I, ahead of all other parts of the city, needs to be protected from a 100-year flood?

I’m not sure any City official has ever explained that perhaps the reason is that the Colorado Department of Transportation has to have that “protection” in order to move forward with its plan to dig down some 40 feet for the I-70 project running from Broadway to Colorado Boulevard.

If the highway isn’t lowered, all the potentially serious drainage problems from the south just might not actually exist. If this is true, have we ever been told this?

Simply formalities

But the one thing we cannot forget: it is the fact that just now we are learning of the effect of the Big Dig on many Denver neighborhoods.

Did the Department of Transportation and the City of Denver deliberately and intentionally hide the fact of the demise of the City Park Golf Course from the public? And yes, I can already hear the denials. “Of course we didn’t hide anything from the public.”

The Colorado Transportation Department held “hearings” to get public input on this huge construction project. They’ve replicated the process that other large highway projects built in other cities have done – like Boston, site of the original “Big Dig” project.

But I am not sure the CDOT officials have listened. Their hearing aides were turned off. It appears to many that the hearings were simply formalities, so they could mark a check in a little box that the public was informed and given a chance to be heard. Check that box. Move on.

Did they know?

But there must be an answer to the question, why are we just now learning that the City  Park Golf Course clubhouse must be torn down? Why are we just learning that more than 150 trees will be cut down, that acres of the golf course will be turned into a big ugly unusable hole to hold temporarily water from a 100-year flood? Park Hill is not the only neighborhood that will be adversely affected – other residents in the Clayton, Cole, and Elyria-Swansea neighborhoods will be too.

So the question becomes this: As CDOT is part of our government and we elect the government deciders, did our elected government officials know about this devastating effect on the City Park Golf Course?

For if our elected officials did know and didn’t apprise the voters who elected them into office when they first found this out, (which must have been some time ago), they need to explain why they kept it quiet and hidden from us.

And if it was hidden from them by their planners as well, they should fire some people at the Colorado Department of Transportation, and insist that the Department take a closer look at the alternatives that a number of people have been espousing now for several years. Yes, several years!

Dick Young was one of the founders of the Park Hill Action Committee in 1960, now expanded and flourishing as the Greater Park Hill Community, Inc. Young served as ithe organization’s second chairman, until he was picked by then-Mayor Tom Currigan to be chair of Denver’s Human Relations Commission. He and his family still live in the home they bought in 1960, at 2345 Elm St. Both he and his wife, Lorie, have remained active in many things during the last 55 years in Park Hill. The views expressed here are his own.