That was part of that effort is to not do it so often that they tune it out.

And why don't we do that with these alerts on the cell phone?

Because to me that feels more real than just a ping on my phone.

Sorry, then I'll be done. Thank you.

Well, we do. So we do a live test of the cell phone alerts once a year.

We do that in September.

I mean, when there's an incident.

It depends on what the incident is.

So, for example, Denver 911 actually is using wireless emergency alerts now

when they have scenarios such as lockdowns and barricaded suspects,

they are starting to use that that we alert.

And the other one is for only weather.

For the sirens?

Yeah.

For that, we can use that for weather-related events,

but we don't use it for things like lockdown or things like that.

Part of the reason is that when people hear the sirens, your action should be?

Go into the basement.

Get in your house and take shelter.

If you have a scenario where you want people to evacuate,

you may not want to sound the sirens.

So part of it is we can't communicate written information via the sirens.

So often we'll use them in tandem.

Thank you.

Great.

Thank you.

Well, we have an executive session.

So before we get into that, I want to just thank you so much.

I will say I lived through September 11th in Washington, D.C., September 11, 2001.

And I watched the 1% happen in real time and felt the fear.

And, you know, in D.C., there's only a few exits, right, over bridges.

And so the transportation piece, I know this is something Councilwoman Gilmore is very concerned about as well,

because her district is right next to the arsenal and really Penny Boulevard is the only way out.

And so if there's updated information or plans that we can share with our community,

I know the Lowry community is very concerned about the open space right across the street from their homes.

We've already seen parties happen there where firecrackers have started fires.

You know, it's concerning to our residents.

So even though it is a 1% chance of happening, which feels so small and unrealistic,

I think as much as we can help you share out the information for what the plans are, how things are addressed,

we're here to do that because it is something that our constituents are really concerned about.

So thanks for your time. Thank you. Yeah, absolutely. So we have an executive session.

I'm about to read the language, but before we do that, I want to just flag for everyone,

after executive session, I will come back and adjourn the meeting. But there are a few items

on consent that have not been called off that we'll just move forward. So with that,

I have to put on my reading glasses, you guys.

I know that's why I'm not sure.

100%.

I will now entertain a motion to move us into executive session pursuant to DRMC 2-34A3M7 for the purpose of discussing ongoing litigation in which the city is a party and privileged advice related thereto.

A two thirds vote of members present is required to enter to executive session.

May I have a motion?

Great. Seeing no objection, we are in executive session.

We're still on air.

Yeah.

All right.

I see that we're back on air, but I don't see anything on the screen.

Are we good to go?

Okay, great. Thank you so much.

We're back from executive session and we're adjourned.

Have a great day.

All right, I'm Emily.

For those of you who don't know me, she, her.

And I'm here at the museum as a postdoc.

And I was brought here because, as Tyler says, I'm the croc guy.

So for my dissertation work, which I'll talk to you some about that today,

I studied reptile sensory evolution with a focus on crocs.

And then here I'm studying some fossil crocs from corral bluffs.

And I brought a bunch of things with me.

And I'd rather you interrupt me in the middle if you have any questions,

but you can also ask them at the end.

So here we go.

Let's see.

When you think of crocs, you probably think of living crocs, and they're pretty sweet.

There's, depending on who you ask, 23 to 27 species.

This changes all the time, and these fall into the groups known as alligatorids, crocodilids, and then gavialids.

Alligatorids are these broad, blunt-snouted things.

Generally, crocodilids are long-snouted things.

closed, you can't see its teeth when a crocodile has its mouth closed. You can't see its teeth.

I like to tell them that if it's chasing you, it's a crocodile, and if you're chasing it,

it's probably an alligator. Alligators tend to be pretty nice. And then gabiallids are these really

long snouted things. They generally just eat fish. You probably won't come across them in the wild

because they don't live here.

And I'm talking about crocodilians here,

and to me that word means more than just those guys,

and I'll take you through that.

And I'm going to share several things with you today.

I'm going to share how they use their nerves

to maximize navigation of a semi-anquatic environment,

how they develop to get to the point where they can do that,

and then my work here is how you as a croc

and your friends can survive a mass extinction event just fine.

Scientists are people, so this is me.

I wanted to be a veterinarian, and then I thought about it a lot.

And I was like, no, never mind.

Vets have owners.

I don't want to work with owners.

So I was a biology major and then a geology major,

and then people took me out to the fields and showed me the dirt and the mud.

And yeah, that's me today.

I've gotten to do a lot of fun things

I get to go to museums

I get to photograph really really big crocs

I get to put my hands inside of crocodilians

saw their faces off

play with embryos

this one's fun

I'm at the field museum

and they gave me these forceps

and in that tank down there

there's like full crocs

I get to talk to kids

I get to work with CT scans and all sorts of imaging stuff, and I get to go out in the field.

This is what got me into crocodilians and croc fossils to begin with.

I had a summer internship out at Petrified Forest National Park, which you might know for its petrified wood.

But actually, this is a very, very, very rich fossil site from the Triassic period.

and the Triassic period is when the croc ancestors start to take over.

So animals that are found in petrified forests include all these things,

and the majority of them are crocodilian ancestors.

They, at this time, pretty much anything that any dinosaur you can think of

had a crocodilian analog, and these are small, they're large, they're spiky.

Some of them, like these guys, look just like crocs from today, but they're actually the most distantly related things that we still consider more closely related to crocodilians than birds.

The landscape at the time of the Triassic looked like this in petrified forests.

So it was this big river environment.

All these creatures were running around.

And almost everything you see here is a crocodilian ancestor.

There's some dinosaurs and mammalian precursors in there as well, but they aren't as cool.

So again, you might think of these, and I want to talk to you about where these fit evolutionarily in a phylogeny in a tree.

So if you think about all these animals up here, hopefully, is anyone very unfamiliar with something like this?

That's great.

All right, so the common ancestor of all these things had jaws, right?

So we're going to work our way up to archosaurs, the best fossils,

and then Pseudasuchians, the even better best fossils.

All these things had jaws.

Then they got legs, which is great.

Then they got eggs, which is even cooler.

So then they were able to inhabit land,

and then we've got this group, crocodilians and birds.

And that group is called archosauria,

and it includes crocs, birds, and all their common ancestors,

which is these fossils up here, and all those pictures I showed you, and dinosaurs.

Dinosaurs.

These take a number of forms.

So here's where they diverge, down here.

So the early archosaurs were like lizard-y looking things,

and then they got pretty crazy with their body plants.

And unfortunately, all we were left with was this one,

because I would like to see some of these, I think.

The features that make an archosaur are largely up here in the skull.

So they have an antorbital fenestra, they have a mandibular fenestra,

so those are just holes in the jaws which allow for muscle attachments.

And then the difference between the groups that split into birds and crocs

are largely the ankle joint.

So the pseudosuchians, which is what the crocodilian lineage is called,

and when I'm talking about crocs and croc fossils,

I'm talking about pseudosuchia.

They have this curotarsal ankle joint.

So sometimes they're called curotarsens.

And the hinge is here.

And then that's Ornithodira is the dinosaur line, the bird line.

And their hinge is just in a little bit of a different place.

In the Triassic period, so here's the Triassic period.

Right about 228 million years ago is when archosaurs started to really, really explode.

And this was largely those, it says curatarsens, so the Tsuchian fossils, the croc fossils.

During the Triassic, they were all over the place.

They took a huge number of body forms until the Jurassic period, this end Triassic extinction.

So here's the end Triassic extinction.

What you can see here, these are all members of the croc family.

They do extend all the way up to the KPG boundary, so that's when the asteroid hit.

They seem to do just fine. There's lots and lots of these animals.

And if you look after the boundary up there, only a couple make it through.

The ones that are around between the two extinction events were super diverse too.

your friendly neighborhood Zimasukas, which hopefully all of you recognize, was one of these

guys. It falls into this Notasukian group, which is a super diverse group of land crocs.

Yeah, land crocs. They could be in the water and on land. So I spent a lot of time looking at these

animals and looking at these trees, and something caught my eye about these. So here's the croc tree,

and in green, you've got the terrestrial crocs.

In blue is marine, and in black is freshwater.

So hopefully you notice that right there, something happens.

So in the mid-Jurassic period,

though there are a bunch of these animals that continue to live on land,

there's a big transition,

and then a lot of them start to inhabit these freshwater environments.

So that caught my eye, and I became pretty interested in that.

So if you look at living crocs, what you're seeing here is they're dropping a pellet of food into the water.

And this is a completely dark room.

They didn't give it earplugs, but the spoiler is they don't use their ears for this.

It's able to orient itself to that little pellet without any visual input.

So it's using solely tactile input, and all living crocs can do this.

There's a cooler video next. I became really interested in when

evolutionarily they would have been able to do this. It seems like a

specialization for a semi-aquatic environment. So that's why that

transition on that tree was really interesting. Did they get this ability

before they went into the environment? This is with water droplets. So next time

you go in a pool, have your friend stand on the other side and drop some water in and

tell me if you can feel it with your face. You can't. So they do this sweeping thing.

So the ball moves a little bit and it's sensing the rebound of the waves coming back from

the ball. I don't know why it wants to eat the ball though.

Anyway, that's neat.

All right, so that was my dissertation.

I decided that I wanted to figure out

when evolutionarily they could figure this out.

So again, all crocodilians can use their faces

to detect movements in the water,

and they did transition to an aquatic environment

at some point.

So were they able to do this as a means

to use the water very effectively, or what?

The way they're doing this is through a nerve called the trigeminal nerve.

So if you touch your face, your trigeminal nerve is sending the signals back into your brain.

So we've got one of these.

All vertebrates have one of these.

So we're all doing this the same way.

And that mediates the sense of touch in the face and also controls the jaw musculature,

which the rest of my lab worked on.

They worked on musculature and I did nerves.

All the signals go back to this trigeminal ganglion up near the brain.

And there's three divisions.

One does the upper face, one does the upper lip, and one does the lower face.

Surprise, reptiles have this too, so I'll demonstrate this to you in a crock.

So in blue is the brain, and in yellow is the nerves.

There's that ganglion up there.

If we take a slice through the skull of the crock and we turn it towards you,

there's that big ganglion down there in yellow.

They've got an ophthalmic division to their eyes, maxillary to their maxilla or upper jaws,

and mandibular to their mandible and lower jaws. I decided to focus on this mandibular division

because if you look back here, all this is doing is it's going to the jaw muscles,

and then it's simply going into the lower jaw, and that's it. These divisions, there's like a ton

of sinus up there. There's eyeballs in the way. So it's just a pretty complicated system. It shoots

off a lot of branches that aren't necessarily going to those receptors in the face. So I decided

to ignore them. And here, across a bunch of different reptiles, some birds, a snake, a crock,

and an iguana, I started to look into how these nerves pass through the lower jaw bones and get

out to the face. In all of these animals, they terminate in receptors. So if you take a look

at any living croc or recently dead crocs, probably safer, they've got those little pigmented dots.

And those are the actual receptors that the nerve goes to. Those are the things that are picking up

the signal from the environment and allowing them to do those cool things and catch their food and

find each other. Luckily, in reptiles, the nerves and soft tissues leave bony correlates. So the

ganglion passes out a really nice hole in the brain case of the crock, sets a measurable feature.

The third division of the nerve passes through a hole into the lower jaw, and then it also passes

out a whole bunch of holes in the lower jaw before going to those receptors. Unfortunately,

in things like whiskered animals, which also use their trigeminal nerve for their whiskers,

they don't have that system. So it's a little bit trickier to study, and reptiles make a pretty

good group to study this feature in. Let's see. You can notice similarities between crocodilians

and other animals that also are highly tactile. So if you've ever watched a duck feeding,

it's doing this thing with its beak,

and it's actually using a highly packed end of its beak.

They have these little blue things or nerves

that pass through these holes out to the rampotheca

to filter out tiny particles from the water.

So exploring these, you notice there might be some similarities.

And then using CT imaging,

which I'll give you a little walkthrough in a second,

It was a lot easier to look at these than this clearing and staining method,

because it's a lot easier to rotate things in 3D,

and I couldn't get the nerves out of my jaws when I was studying them this way.

So here's more examples of CT imaging.

It lets you take slices through things as well.

And then CT imaging was also useful because I could image the canals of fossil animals.

So you're looking at the bottom of Cimasugus' chin right there.

And there's a Tyrannosaurus.

I should have taken all the dinosaurs out, but it's a nice image.

So most of my CT scanning for this project was done at University of Texas,

and some of it at University of Missouri,

and then I borrowed some scans for some other people.

So they have this really cool scanner that's the size of from here to here.

And you can go in there, and you can put giant things in there,

like crock skulls. And then usually what a CT image generates is something like this.

You get your image of your animal and then the bone. But since I was using living animals

to validate some of these things, I use this method called DICT. So you take your

recently dead animal, and you dunk

into a bunch of iodine,

and

please hold.

When you do that,

the iodine bonds to anything with a lipid

in it, so all these soft tissue

structures, so we're going down through the

skull of an alligator right now.

This is its brain.

These are its eyeballs that are about to come in.

All this is jaw muscles.

We got to go back to the nerves. Hold on.

They're the coolest.

Then these are what I'm after.

So these are the nerves going to the lower jaws and they pop really bright.

So using this DICT method on a variety of reptiles,

I was able to explore those.

And then this could be applied to the fossils too.

So the fossils do both scan like this.

You'll see the outline of the dirt or the matrix or whatever's in it and then the bone.

If you've seen CT scans in our lab, they're really, really bad examples of what this might look at

because our fossils here are way harder to work with

than the fossils I was working with.

So there is hope for everyone.

So I wanted to develop a method

to explore how these nerves pass through the lower jaws.

And to do this, I took these CAT scans of these animals

and I made these ball and stick models of the nerves

as they pass through in those crazy branch patterns.

And I assigned a bunch of numbers to them.

this technique is called ordering

and I didn't develop it myself

but I adapted it

to quantify these structures

it was pretty tedious

but kind of fun

and it's actually used

by geography folks

and people who study rivers and streams

to quantify waterways

I'm going to share one of these methods

with you today

there's a bunch of different ways to number these

but this one is the most fun

to look at the results of.

So if you haven't picked it up yourself,

you start at the beginning.

So this is where the nerve goes into the lower jaw.

And at each split, you go up a number

until you get to the end.

So then you have this set of numbers.

What do we do with numbers?

We graph them.

OK.

So what you're seeing on this axis on the bottom

is where along the canal the branches come off.

And then this axis is how many of those there are.

So this peak up here, that's sixes.

There's a lot of sixes.

So a lot of these branches come off six-sevenths along the length of the canal.

How does everyone feel about that?

Good? Okay.

All right, so in a simple creature, not all of them branch the same.

So something like an iguana, it's got this canal that has these six branches.

well, seven branches come off, and they're incremental along the length of the canal,

one at a time, no complex branching. It's going to look like that. And then something like a croc,

it's got all these branches coming off, and some of those branches branch, and some of those

branches branch. It's going to look something like that. It has a lot of branches, and they come off

all over. So I applied this to a bunch of animals across the reptile tree, and most of these were

living animals because to really understand behaviors in fossil animals, we have to validate

them in what we see in the world around us. So thinking about the, we've got lizards, we've got

a bunch of birds, and we've got crocs. And the reason I did these animals is because within them,

we know that these crocs are extremely tactile animals. They're using this trigeminal system to

do a lot of things. And then there are examples of birds. Probing birds do this to search for food.

Ducks dabble in search of food. And then parrots. If you've ever watched a parrot,

it's using its beak as another hand. So their trigeminal system is also super large and

complicated. And then also there's examples of animals that aren't tactile, aren't using this

trigeminal nerve for this purpose.

And what this does is it creates a really good bracket

for the fossil crocs that I was interested in.

So those are here.

We've got tactile animals on this side,

and we've got tactile and non-tactile animals on this side,

all representing the common ancestor.

So what this is called is an extant phylogenetic bracket

to study the fossil animals.

All right.

So I already showed you the lizards.

That's what a non-tactile animal would look like.

And this is what all the crocodilians look like.

The birds are a mix.

Some of them are pretty simple.

I think this is a pheasant canal, and then this is a duck canal.

So a lot of their nerve tips are concentrated on the end.

An archosauromorph, so an early ancestor of both crocs and birds,

Looks like that.

So it's a little more complex than a lizard,

but way less than anything else.

And then, unfortunately, there's dinosaurs in here.

But you can see looking at this pink line,

there is some complexity there.

It is much more than these lizards and that early member,

that pre-archosaur.

So quantifying this, using some statistics,

basically I took this and I binned them in a series of 10

to determine where along the canal the complexity was,

and I compared this and dropped it into a tree.

So remember, I'm looking mid-Jurassic.

I'm trying to figure out if right here is the time that this happened

or before or after.

Okay, so here, there's mid-Jurassic.

And the colors here, the animals we know are tactile,

the crocodilians, the extant crocodilians, are down here.

They're really, really, really bright colors.

And then using these statistics on those plots that I showed you earlier,

I got a predicted value for how tactile these animals were

in comparison with the birds, the lizards, and the living crocs.

So dark colors are these non-tactile animals.

The point that it... I did this in percentages,

So the point where it jumped from 0 to 50 was right about there.

And then what you can see is the colors do go from that non-tactile dark to that tactile light.

So we are seeing an increase in tactile senses as we get closer and closer to our extant animals.

What's interesting is that this jump right here, all these animals that come after it,

This one, this one, this one, this one, this one, they're all terrestrial.

So all these terrestrial animals did have some sort of predicted increase in ability to use that nerve

before that transition to the aquatic environment.

People always ask me to tell them why, and I always say no.

So the only explanation I can come up with, like there are terrestrial animals that do use their faces.

Basically, it's just those probing birds.

The only thing I can think of is that their faces are in contact with the ground a lot.

Maybe it has to do with some grubbing behavior.

But it could also just have happened.

Plenty of evolutionary things just happen, and then animals capitalize on them.

So it might be that the groups that led up to the living crocodilians just capitalized on this extreme amount of nerves in their faces.

All right.

Any questions on that?

Yeah, star-nosed.

You see, my head's in reptile land.

So, yeah, there are plenty of mammals that are using this nerve to do things.

So rats do that whisking thing, and they sense width of what they're traveling through.

They're using the nerve.

Star-nosed moles can sense vibrations of earthworms and insects underground.

There's a tentacled snake.

No, that's in the water.

Anyway, yeah.

All right.

So no evolutionary story is complete without understanding the development of a system.

This was a really complex thing, so I just have a couple of slides on this to talk to you about development

and how these animals developed the system.

So ontogeny is the study of development, and you might wonder why would we ever study development

when we're thinking about fossils.

There are two reasons.

One of these is that development can show us

if structures appear for an animal at all,

and it can also tell us when those might appear.

So...

This is a lizard and a snake.

This one's the snake.

I don't know why they don't have its body in this image.

I didn't make it, but it's a lovely paper.

And this is an example I like to use when talking about why studying development.

So maybe you know that lizards and snakes are very closely related.

Holger knows.

And when we talk about the group squamates, it includes snakes right in the middle.

So snakes are lizards that lost their legs, to put it simply.

And by studying development, these people figured out that these structures in red, they developed a lot slower in these animals.

And what that did is it resulted in that squished face and reduced limbs, which led to snakes.

So I hope to find something when I was studying crocodilians that would cue me in on something like this.

Again, I was interested in that.

I was interested in this question.

So what I did was I drove down to Louisiana,

slept, woke up,

went to the Rockefeller Wildlife Refuge.

They said, here's three crates of eggs.

They terminated some alligators for us.

We put them in the car.

The eggs were in these cages,

like this big, with hay.

We rented a minivan.

We drove 15 hours straight back to Missouri

because these guys needed to get into an incubator.

At that point, they were all like,

I think they were all about eight days post-laying.

And we put them in an incubator.

And then through the next, what is that?

63 days, we terminated them.

And here they are.

They're really cute.

And the stars are the ones that I collected for this project.

And then I used the same imaging processes.

These animals are really small, so the stain goes into them really super well.

But they're also very susceptible to chemicals.

So the first one I put in, it turned into a little pancake.

It just completely compressed and became flat.

And then I figured out if you embed them in a gel, they stay nice and fluffy.

And then I got some really cool things like this. So here I'm going to show you the brain

and the trigeminal nerve. I actually worked, I have models of all of the cranial nerves and all

of the musculature associated with them, which is super cool. You can see as the animal, this is

chronological, as the animals grow, their brain elongates, their nerves start really big and stay

really big and they elongate. So a lot of this is just nothing new, it's just a response of

the growing skull of the animal. All right, so this is a comparison of all of the cranial nerves.

Oddly, the fifth one, the trigeminal nerve, is this pink one. So what they do is they just start

off with a really big nerve. The second they're born, or the second they are laid, they have a

really big nerve. And it also shows the highest growth rate. So if we look at the slope of these

lines, only a couple other nerves have similar slopes. So it starts really large, and it grows

much faster than the others. That's all. There's a lot of really complicated things that have to do

with how the skull grows around the nerve in response to this high growth rate that just

really isn't worth standing up here and talking to you about. All right, so next I'm going to bring

you to the work that I'm working on here. So luckily, this trigeminal system is part of what

allows these animals to survive the mass extinction event. So that's a nice transition for you.

All right. So when we think about the extinction, as Tyler would say, single worst day in history

for all life on earth. It wasn't the single worst day in history for all life on earth

because these guys did just fine, right? And Tyler's favorite. So we got turtles that make

get through this extinction. We got crocs, we got lizards, we got birds, and we got mammals.

All right, there's the extinction. And if you look at this, you might say, hey, but what about all

these groups? In the grand scheme of things, there was actually just a decline in diversity

before the extinction. So a lot of these groups were on their way to going extinct.

so it's a no big deal. The crocodilian groups that I've got up here today, they made it through

that boundary with no impact. What they didn't do is they didn't experience that huge radiation

that the crocs did in the Triassic-Jurassic boundary where they like exploded in diversity

and we see all these landforms. Instead, by that point, except for these groups,

everything's becoming that low semi-aquatic terrestrial crock that we're familiar with today.

And they do diversify a little bit after the extinction.

We're going to talk about animals right there.

But first, how do you make it through an asteroid impact?

Just in case, everyone.

The first thing that's going to happen is it's going to get really hot,

and there's going to be an infrared blast.

So when it hits, you've got to get underwater, or you can hunker down in some brush, or you've got to go into a hole.

Crocs are really good at that. They do that.

The other things that happen afterwards is the temperature goes up and down.

It's a pretty crazy time.

But I was reading about this, and it wasn't much more than temperatures fluctuate today.

and crocs can actually do weird things like hang out underwater under ice with their snouts up

and not eat for a long time and they are pretty tolerant to changing conditions.

They can also not eat for three years in extreme examples and I think not drink for nine months so

they were just fine. They also eat a lot of things so when there's food scarcity

they can pick up anything and be fine with it.

The crocks from here are from the Denver Basin.

Maybe you've seen this before.

So Denver's up here.

We go down to Corral Bluffs down here,

and that's where these fossils are from.

And it's a lot of outcrop, and it represents a million years

right after the asteroid hit.

So it's a super unique place to study how these animals made it

through that boundary.

We find these concretions out here.

Luckily, Tyler cracked the code.

And we have really nice prepared fossils.

Not the easiest.

This is a cool video.

This fossil's up here.

It's not up here.

One very close to this fossil is up here.

And you can look at it at the end if you want.

Boop.

OK.

So from this site, we have two different types of these crocs.

We got this one.

And we got this one.

So come look at them after.

We can hold them carefully together.

The first one I showed you, there's only a couple of them.

And it comes from 65 and a half million years ago.

The third one, there's a whole bunch of them.

and they come from right, anywhere from right after the extinction to across the whole outcrop.

There's no reason to expect that the first one only comes from then.

We just haven't found it yet.

And from the tree, if you're interested in trees, here's where one comes from

and the other is part of this group that it's a mess.

It's kind of a fun puzzle.

So this is what that one looks like.

His name is Borealisuchus.

we got a couple fossils from there

and that's where they would fit

and I get to do fun things

like figure out what every single skull bone looks like

and how it differs from every other known borealisuchus

and I do that both through investigating the actual fossils

and then using CT scans of them

so some things in this image

either are too difficult to prepare out

not worth preparing out if we know we can scan them

Or this is really crumbly if you look at it in person,

but the CT scan shows that below the surface there's some preserved structures.

The spoiler, this is an animal called Borealisuchus sternbergii probably.

And the green represents our animal.

So right here is the asteroid.

And what our animal does is it extends the range of this animal across that extinction event.

So another species that we know made it through.

As far as location, before the extinction is these two colors.

They're located all up and down the seaway,

and then they kind of maintain that pattern afterwards.

And the one that we have fills in a gap between the southernmost and all the others.

So it's likely there are more, probably from New Mexico too.

All right, this other animal is a button-tooth croc,

and I'm not going to give you a name for it because I haven't decided.

But when I talk about button teeth,

they have these really, really round globe teeth in the backs of their mouths.

We have a lot of these.

We have full bodies of these.

I can't pick that one up safely, so come look at that one too.

That's the one on the corner.

And this poses a fun problem that I'm going to run through really fast

because it's fun to do that way.

So in 1921, this guy named this group of crocs with these button teeth

Alanathusuchus, and in 1930, they found this one

and decided to call it Alanathusuchus mukai.

In 1942, they found this one, Navajosuchus novomexicanus,

and in 1982, they found this one named Wanaganasuchus brachymanus.

Got it?

Okay, then in 1992, wait, this one's really cute.

This is from Harvard. They mailed it to me.

They found this guy.

And they decided that it was also an Alanathusukas mukai.

Then in 2004, this guy who knows a lot about these decided that these three were the same animal.

And since Alanathosuchus was a name given to like 15 species across 15 million years,

we should just call all of those Navajosuchus mukai instead.

And I came along and I decided that these are the same and the one in the middle is different.

So I don't know what to call it.

But that'll get figured out later.

This one's different.

All right.

Anyway, we have the earliest recorded example of this animal.

They've only been found after the extinction event, and we have one that is right up to the extinction event, so that's pretty neat.

And then we also, again, we're filling a range gap, so our animal falls out here.

It's pretty neat.

And then this got me thinking, ignore the colors here, they don't match across.

This got me thinking, what's up with this?

So we got this Borealisuchus, the first one I showed you, and we have this other animal in the same place at the same time over millions of years.

So how do different animals that, how do very similar animals occupy the same space at the same time?

And if we look at how all of our living crocs are distributed across the world, it turns out that actually up to six species can live in the same place at the same time, which is pretty neat.

And they do this in a couple different ways.

So I've been looking at these, trying to figure out how ours might do it.

All right, one way is that some might burrow and some might not.

But remember, to survive an extinction event, burrowing is pretty useful.

So when we think about burrowers and crocodilians, usually alligator does it.

It's got a broad snout.

It's got a scooped snout, and they use that to dig into the dirt.

And this no-name croc has that same form, and there's one in a burrow.

If you go searching, you can find these burrows down south.

Animals that are long-snouted, like the borealisuchus and crocodilians,

or crocodilus, aren't typically thought to engage in burrowing behavior,

but actually they can. This is a fun story of how these kids were playing in this watering hole,

and then one day one of the neighbors was like, there's something in there. So they had to

evacuate this watering hole, and this is like, I don't know, like a 13-foot crocodile that had

just been hanging out in there with these children. It's gone now. I think it went to a sanctuary.

But regardless of whether these animals were, some of them were burrows or some weren't, we do have burrows from the site.

So I got to go out with an iconologist who studies trace fossils, and we found this muddy layer and this sandy layer.

And in it are these fossilized burrows.

So what happened was the ground was all mud, the animals dug into the mud, and then some sort of storm or higher energy event brought all this sand in and infilled those burrows once the animals were gone, unfortunately, because it'd be sick to find one in there.

So we do have evidence of burrowing of croc-sized animals at the site.

Another thing they might be doing, some of them might be living on land more, and some of them might be in the water more.

Typically people look at eye orientation on skulls, but looking at the most terrestrial living croc, Crocodilus rhombifer over there, I don't know.

I just really don't know.

Another thing is nocturnal versus diurnal, so maybe some of these were feeding in the daytime and some of them were feeding in the nighttime, but I haven't found a way to look into that.

Again, with the living on land versus the living in the water thing, we can look at limbs.

You'd think if you were on land, you'd have your limbs more under you.

They'd be more robust and pretty thick.

So this is the button-tooth crock.

And the other one with the long snout, if its leg were to be this length, it would probably be half as wide.

so they have these really, really, really slender...

This is a thigh bone, ephemera.

However, unfortunately, this group, the three on the left,

they just tend to have really thick legs,

regardless if they're on land or not,

so it's kind of obscuring what's actually happening.

It's just something that has happened in their evolutionary history.

Rude.

Another thing is the teeth.

We look at the...

You've got the button teeth in the one,

and then the other croc has all these sharp teeth.

So maybe you might think one of these is a specialist

and one of these is a generalist,

but when I think about it,

it's probably more like one of them is a generalist

and one of them is a super generalist.

So long-snatted animals are thought to,

long-snatted crocs are thought to generally eat fish,

but it turns out alligators are short-snatted

and they do it just as well.

They can actually eat whatever they want,

whenever they want, including fruit.

and then what the long snatted one with the thin teeth couldn't do though is it couldn't eat

turtles sorry Tyler but if you do look back here the back teeth of living alligators are kind of

rounded they aren't as rounded as these ones but that means that that one croc could eat foods that

it had to crush so what that makes it is probably what I call a super generalist so it could eat

everything and turtles and crayfish and stuff.

A final thing I like to think about

is maybe they're behaviorally different,

which allows them to occupy the space at the same time.

And using CT scans,

we can look inside of the skulls of these animals.

So this is a slice down the back of the skull.

If you look at this shape in here,

and I sit there for hours and I color it in,

that's where the brain would sit.

And it allows us to make these nice 3D models

of the brains of these animals.

So comparing the two,

we've got Borealisuchus,

and we have the other one.

They're not that different.

And that's all.

If we look at evolutionarily,

how these fit,

this Navausuchus,

whatever it's called, animal,

would fit in with this group up here.

You can tell that it is kind of stretched out

in comparison to those.

and this one is kind of tall

and it would be the ancestral to all the ones up there.

But in general, the trends aren't that different

and what we're finding is the ear shape and the skull shape,

I mean the ear shape and the brain shape

kind of just respond to the skull shape

so the brains aren't actually telling us very much

about how they might be thinking,

which is a bummer, but that's okay.

All right.

With all that, here's my plug.

They're a really good group to study a lot of things.

I'm keen to sensory systems and then also anatomy.

So because they have a really good extant record and a really good fossil record,

Crocs are a really good group to study all of these.

And there's not a lot of people studying them because I don't know why.

They're also really fun outreach tools too.

So I get to do a lot of outreach and you can't tell who's more excited,

me or that guy.

We're talking about what they might need

to live underwater.

So I'm showing him that his eyes are on the top of his head

so it can scope the room.

I've got a lot of people to thank.

There's two little slides of it.

And thanks for listening.

it's time for this.

And please come up and look at them.

Does anybody have any questions?

Oh, God.

Could you potentially go back to the slide

where you have the gradients of where they're found

along north-south in the U.S.?

Because it kind of seemed like there might be

a north-south distribution of that known.

Definitely it's borealisuchus and the unknown.

what crack is this? Are there any gradients and features that you see that you're finding along

like a latitudinal gradient? Are they kind of, do they ever see just slightly different features

and that's what they've been mistaken at each other before or anything like that?

Yeah, kind of. All these borealisuchuses used to be called, similar problem, they used to be called

Lydiosuchus and that's still being deconstructed because there is an animal called Lydiosuchus

and there are all these borealosuchuses.

I guess it's more between, like,

is it one againosuchus, the W1 up top,

and all of the Nova, the new ones at the bottom.

I mean, I think they're the same,

but we've got to leave it to the phylogeny.

I haven't run the phylogeny on that one yet.

You've got to throw it to Nicholas.

No, it's recording.

You're not allowed.

I'm afraid of this.

It's soft.

That's the whole point of the cube, right?

Sarah told me no.

Is there a difference between the, like, amount of sense, like, that?

Is there a difference between the sensory nerve and the three main extant groups?

like is one of them more sensitive than the others?

Not that I could detect from this.

There have been some actual experiments where people test them

and they all seem to be pretty on a pretty extreme level.

Because I was interested in like do the more terrestrial crocs

versus the more aquatic crocs differ?

But not something that I could detect with mine

and then the people who have done experimentation

have detected with their studies.

Which is your favorite?

just if like any crocodilian ever,

what's your favorite one?

Jesus.

I mean, I named one once.

That's pretty neat.

It's called Viverone.

Nice.

Thank you for using Ornithodira.

Ethodira. You're welcome. I know you don't like dinosaurs. I mean, they're fine. They're just

not as good. Have you considered using your techniques with Spinosaurus? You see,

the people who study Spinosaurus are very protective, and they won't necessarily give

you the data you need to study Spinosaurus. So they keep asking the question and making the

claims, but they won't share. But yes, I have. I've done this with five theropods, and I'll just

tell you that any paper you read that says that a tyrannosaur could use its face like a weather

vane to sense the wind direction is wrong. Anything that you might read that says that they were using

their faces to rub on each other for courtship is wrong. They don't have very complex sensory

systems. They look a lot like the lizards do. But Spinosaurus, I don't know. I do think

it might be more complex than everything else, and I would like to look at it, but I got

to get my hands on it.

Same.

Let's see.

Yeah.

Were you able to do your topology study on your ontological specimens?

Were the nerves sufficiently well developed that you could follow them and check the branching numbers?

Great question.

It's something I want to do, not with the imaging method I showed you.

There's some cool stacked microscopy methods that you can do that with.

So essentially you stay in the nerves and you take like a CT image but with a microscope.

And it would be super easy just to apply it to that.

But I don't have the machinery I need yet.

When you look at other clades that show higher diversity and extent in terms of tactile versus not,

is there a lot of mixing?

Is it mostly that it'll show subclades that are all tactile or all not tactile?

Or does it mix in such a way that it suggests that

because this is all soft tissue stuff and ontology,

that in fact this is a trait that can appear and disappear rather quickly in the fossil record?

Yeah, so I can only speak to extants, you know.

But across all of birds, it has happened independently numerous times.

so parrots are a good one probing birds are another one and then

and seriforms duck things can do it too so it does appear on its own and whether

archosaurs tend to be better at it I don't know probably

okay let's go if you want to come look at the fossils I'll talk about them up here

Thanks for coming.

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It's a perfect sunny day.

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Stepping multicolor pics.

I'ma tell you what's up.

Feeling good?

That's right.

Perfect sunny day.

A civil rights victory from 1939 right here in Colorado.

Also, keeping a city beautiful.

Behind the scenes at a holiday tradition and making learning more fun.

We'll take a look at some enduring stories on this edition of Connected Colorado.

Hello everyone, I'm Gary Shapiro.

Speaking of enduring, how about 100 million year old dinosaur tracks?

We're at Dinosaur Ridge, just west of Denver, and we're going to learn more about this fascinating

place coming up in just a bit.

But first, back in 1939, Maddie Lyle, a black woman from Fort Collins, was denied access

to the state theater.

She sued the theater and she won.

That was a rarity back then.

Recently, Maddie's granddaughter visited Fort Collins to learn about her grandmother's legacy.

Hi, I'm Maren Bizdek, Historic Preservation Manager for the City of Fort Collins.

Here in our downtown, we walk past buildings all the time that contain hidden stories from

our community's past.

This building to my right was the site of the State Theater in 1939.

While it no longer looks like a theater today, it's the site of a really important local

civil rights story that unfolded here 85 years ago and still ripples through time today.

Maddie Lyle, a 36-year-old black woman who was one of a small group of local black residents

living in Fort Collins in the 1930s, arrived with her daughter and a friend to enjoy a

film.

The state theater owner, Elsie Snyder, denied them full access to the venue.

Maddie sued Snyder for discrimination in Larimer County Court, won the case, and was awarded damages.

Let's hear more about it from Maddie's granddaughter, Sharon, and her husband, David,

who learned about this chapter in Maddie's life from a collaborative effort

with the City of Fort Collins Historic Preservation Division and the Fort Collins Museum of Discovery.

I think the story of Maddie's lawsuit for discrimination is valuable to us and I think should be valuable to the people of Fort Collins in that she was in a position where she was apparently wronged.

And she decided to stand up and not just take it, even though taking it was probably the safer way to go.

I think, for me, it kind of changes the dynamics of my family for me.

My father has always been on the sort of activist side and equal rights and that side.

And I grew up with that.

I never in my whole life dreamed that my grandmother did something, you know, radical.

So, for me, it almost kind of gives balance to each side of my family.

The house behind me at 312 North Meldrum Street is where Maddie Lyle was living with her husband, William Lyle, and their daughter, Joyce, at the time of the state theater incident in 1939.

This was the heart of the early black neighborhood of Fort Collins.

And the Lyle family lived here until they moved to Seattle during World War II.

Maddie's granddaughter, Sharon, and her family marveled at seeing the family home for the first time.

I think probably one of the best feelings, kind of heartfelt feelings, was actually seeing the house.

And that brought back, my mom actually lived there.

Because you see the pictures and they do something for you.

But when you stand in front of the house where somebody grew up, that means a lot.

You stand on the yard where you know they played and stand in places where you know photos were taken.

And you can see William shoveling the sidewalk and your great grandfather standing in front of the house.

And all of those things, they just come to life when you're actually there.

Yeah. Yeah.

The first we heard of it was when Maren contacted me through Ancestry because she found Maddie in our family tree.

And, you know, we've been impressed.

We've come here partly because of the connection we've made through family history.

And we've learned a lot of really good things about Fort Collins.

And one of the valuable things about Fort Collins is that there does feel like there's a preservation of important things going on here.

Probably the other cool thing is the people that we talk to and have kind of discussed different things that we know and they know and watching their faces when they discover something they never knew, like the bird whistles being the first visitors when my mom was born.

So I want to mention again how much gratitude I have for the city of Fort Collins.

And I think it's a good investment by the city of Fort Collins to pay attention to not just black history, but history of marginalized people and not necessarily old history.

Some of it may be current.

And the value to Fort Collins is not just feel good.

the emotions and what are the sounds

and where are things in relation to each other,

not just looking at a map,

but walking from one place to another

and seeing where your ancestors walked and played.

That just adds so much.

I really enjoyed it here.

I agree.

It's nice to look at that.

hopefully the past that everyone's gone through has helped build it to what it

is today and that it can continue to grow and be a better place for all people.

Maddie's story didn't end with the resolution of her civil rights case

against the State Theater or when the family moved away from Fort Collins. Her

fight against injustice is an inspiration for us here today and we have

many more stories of early Fort Collins residents to uncover.

We are here with Amy Atwater, the director of paleontology at Dinosaur Ridge.

Thanks for inviting us.

Thank you for coming out.

So you're going to give us a little tour of the place?

Yes, I'm looking forward to it.

All right, let's do it.

Okay, here we go.

We're traveling in style at Dinosaur Ridge.

Hey, Amy, tell me a little bit about this place.

Oh, absolutely.

So Dinosaur Bridge is a paleontological site here in Morrison, Colorado.

We have incredible examples of both paleontology and geology.

We're also a national natural landmark, which is a division of the National Park Service,

which really is to say we have really cool fossils here for Coloradans and visitors from

around the world to come see and experience, including our trackway, which is the number

one dinosaur track site in the entire country.

It is amazing to me and a lot of others, I'm sure, that you look out there and millions of years ago, there were dinosaurs all over the place here.

There certainly were.

And what's really wild to wrap your head around is that the Rocky Mountains were not here at that time.

When the dinosaurs were leaving their tracks that we're about to see, it was a tidal flat beach environment.

We actually had a seaway that was lapping up against parts of Colorado when the dinosaurs were here.

and they were migrating along those beaches in large family groups and no mountains in sight.

That is just so amazing. So, Amy, what are we looking at here?

Here we are looking at an ancient beach where dinosaurs used to walk across this tidal flat environment in large family groups.

These are big duckbill dinosaur tracks here in my shadow.

That's the back leg of these big dinosaurs.

And you can watch one of these individuals who walked across this ancient landscape.

right here 100 million years ago when this was an ancient beach.

We also, if you look and see those thin-toed tracks right there,

that's from a meat-eating dinosaur called Ornithomimid.

We have all sorts of different dinosaur tracks here,

and it was all uplifted when the Rocky Mountains came up

after the extinction of the dinosaurs.

Pretty amazing.

So how many different dinosaurs may have walked up here?

We know that there are over 300 dinosaur tracks on this surface alone.

And this, again, was only exposed in 1937.

So this entire ridge, the Dakota Hogback that we drive past every day,

has these tracks buried underneath waiting to be found.

And that's what makes Dinosaur Ridge so special is it's a place where the tracks can be seen by the public,

can be studied by scientists, and can be this community gem.

I mean, it's easy to say that these are millions of years old because they are.

Is there any way to tell really how old they are?

Yeah, sure. That's a great question.

We know that our dinosaur track site is from the Cretaceous time period

and they're about 100 million years old.

Now, we know that for a couple different reasons

because we look at all the different rocks and can use a relative system.

But now we can also date rocks as well and get ages by studying the mineral composition

and some of the elements like uranium and lead to get a precise age.

So we do know that the track site is to right about 100 million years old.

So it's incredible to look at all these footprints.

But unfortunately, I mean, the rock is crumbling in a lot of places.

And maybe someday they'll go away, right?

One day they will go away.

I hope that's not for a very, very, very long time.

I hope it's here for generations to come.

I hope my kid brings his kids here.

However, yes, when you are at a big, steep angle in Colorado that gets very hot and very cold

and has plants growing on the surfaces.

Those are things that causes rocks to erode.

So we do a lot of work along with our partners

who own the land, Jefferson County Open Space,

who do incredible work with preserving our fossil resources.

And we also work closely with the state of Colorado

to do our best to preserve the tracks

so that as many people can see them

for as many years as possible.

I hope they stay a long time too.

So this is where we actually see bones in the rock, right?

That's right.

Dinosaur Ridge, we also have dinosaur bones in the rock.

These are slightly older than our track site.

These are from the Jurassic and are about 150 million years old and still have.

This whole site is just teeming with dinosaur bones.

And what kind of bones are they?

I mean, what kind of dinosaurs were living here?

Sure.

So the Jurassic produced some of our most iconic dinosaurs of all time, including Stegosaurus.

The first ever Stegosaurus fossils were found right here where we're standing right now.

Yeah, that's right.

It's seen all over the world.

It came from this spot in Colorado first.

And we had other big dinosaurs like Diplodocus and the meat-eating Allosaurus.

A lot of these classic dinosaurs were first found here in Colorado and especially right here at Dinosaur Ridge.

So you can go into certain museums, Denver Museum of Nature and Science, for instance, and see dinosaur bones.

How do they decide what bones to leave in the rock and what bones to take out and put in a museum?

Sure, that's a great question.

So this site was first excavated in the 1870s by a guy named Arthur Lakes who worked at what is now School of Mines.

And he was working with Marsh, a paleontologist who was in the Bone Wars feud with Cope.

And they were excavating everything that they could because they needed to beat each other.

And ever since their excavations kind of died down, we haven't been doing any more active excavation of this site.

But what happens is sometimes we lose boulders here and those boulders have bones in it and those will go to Morrison Natural History Museum right down the road or DM&S and be prepared there.

So at this point, it will only be excavated if it does us the duty of falling off of the rock face in the first place.

I am amazed by the bone wars.

I mean, talk a little bit more about that.

These guys were in competition.

They were absolutely in competition. So this is the day and age where dinosaurs were first capturing the public's imagination and curiosity.

You know, the idea of extinction was still relatively new at this time.

So the idea that giant hulking beasts like dinosaurs walked where we had gold miners hanging out was just really hard for the world to wrap its head around.

And so it spurned kind of this own gold rush, bone rush sort of phenomenon where a lot of folks out east with money were funding fieldwork here to get the biggest and the best and the coolest specimens so that they could have those on display at their museums, bring in a lot of crowds.

Maybe they got to name everything and got the glory of naming things.

So it was really this kind of bonanza of bones, if you will.

And a lot of it happened right here in Colorado.

The bone wars, who knew?

So people may not think of dinosaurs off the top of their head when they think of Colorado,

but you do get a lot of tourists out here.

We absolutely do.

Luckily, we're right next to Red Rocks Amphitheater, so that helps us.

But a lot of folks are seeking out our dinosaurs,

and we have almost a quarter million visitors every single year,

and we also serve around 15,000 Colorado school kids on field trips.

If people want to come out here, what should they do?

Oh, well, we've got something for everybody.

So the road is now closed to all traffic except for our tour buses.

So most folks walk or bike the Ridge.

That's free of charge.

If you want to come on one of our tours and have a ranger experience and learn all of the things that we've talked about today and more, then you can get a bus tour from us.

We've got summer camp programs and camps throughout other parts of the year and a really fun preschool activity that we call Triceratots, which is the best.

DinoRidge.org. You can find all of our programming and even more. We've got special events going on,

really fun things happening. It's a fun community to be a part of.

So geographically, we're very near to Red Rocks, but historically, they formed at different times, right?

Yep, that's right. So Red Rocks is made up of rocks that are from the fountain formation,

which are about 300 million years old. That means they are older than the dinosaurs.

Our first dinosaur fossils in this area are ours that are about 150 million.

So there's 150 million years of time between Red Rocks and our rocks, but now you can see them in one day.

I love that.

So why is it so important to have places like Dinosaur Edge?

That's one of my favorite questions.

And I think it's important because it makes things like paleontology, geology, and science come alive and come out of the classroom.

Just the wonder and curiosity when they see our dinosaur track site or you tell them the first stegosaurus was found here

Is this amazing moment and all scientists start off as curious kids and we really want to foster this next generation of stewards and

Scientists to take care of these places so we can learn more and celebrate it in our communities

So I love that you have nicknamed this the what dinosaur dance party. Yes, exactly our dinosaur dance floor here

We have evidence that dinosaurs here were practicing this nest-making behavior called lecking that you can see here in these two shallow bowls with those scrape marks down the middle running parallel.

Now, they were doing this display to kind of show off to the ladies that they would be a good choice for a mate.

And we have evidence of that behavior right here at Dino Ridge.

It's pretty new research.

Well, Amy, thank you so much for the tour.

I hope a lot of people come out here and see this.

We appreciate it so much.

Thank you so much for coming out.

Dinosaur Ridge is a fantastic place for everybody

and I hope you enjoyed your time here.

Meet my buddy, the Allosaurus here at Dinosaur Ridge.

This is such a cool place.

Coming up next, a program in Aurora

that teaches parents how to work with their little ones

to succeed in life and in school.

And it's both in English and Spanish.

I want to play in the arena and hide.

Three-year-old Penelope Rosas is having fun learning.

She's sitting in on her mom Gloria's lesson.

This, that is a boy.

It's all part of a program called HIPPY.

It stands for Home Instruction for Parents of Preschool Youngsters.

HIPPY started in Israel in 1969.

Hillary Clinton then helped bring it to the U.S. when she was the First Lady of Arkansas.

It's now available in 15 countries, as well as every state in the U.S. in several different languages.

Mile High United Way offers a unique version of it here.

We are the only hippie program in Aurora right now, giving the program in English and Spanish.

And the goal? To teach parents through role-playing how to help prepare their kids for kindergarten and beyond.

It's a very good way to have quality time with your kid.

Like you're the primary teacher for your kid.

You're the primary educator.

They love it.

Penny is even eager to take part in her mom's lesson as she learns how to teach her daughter

everything from reading to shapes and colors, letters and counting.

But it was much different for the family before they signed up for Hippie.

I was very scared.

She was very behind.

She wasn't talking.

I was asking questions or I was, you know, doing like small commands like, give me your toy, give me your doll.

She wouldn't understand anything.

And Gloria had another reason to worry too.

She recently learned that she herself had undiagnosed ADHD.

The school experience for me was traumatic and I didn't want that experience for my daughter.

Fortunately, it's already much better for Penny.

Once we started the program, I noticed a big difference within the first two months.

And that progress continues two years later.

Carolina Gonzalez understands firsthand.

She's the director of home visitation for Mile High United Way.

I started with the hippie program about 19 years ago as a parent with my son.

And at that time, I didn't know the importance of early childhood education.

So I remember when I started in the program, me saying to myself,

my son would not pay attention if I read a book.

He's too young for that.

Catalina's oldest son and daughter went through the program,

and now her youngest child is too.

And in addition to learning the basics, she says they've all gained a lot of confidence, including her.

She's earned her GED and both an associate's and bachelor's degree in early childhood education since starting with Hippie.

Catalina hopes the program continues to grow and make a difference in young lives,

as it has for her and her kids, Gloria and Penelope.

I'm very happy to hear her just telling me, I want to do homework.

into being excited about learning.

For Roar Now, I'm Yasmeen Marino.

So.

Okay.

Uh-huh.

You know, it takes thousands of flowers

to fill the gardens at all the city parks in Denver.

At City Park Greenhouse,

they work year-round to grow those flowers

to be enjoyed by both residents and tourists.

Here's how they do it.

Plants in urban spaces have such a significant impact on the community that I don't think it's

realized all the time. I mean, they bring a lot of different insects and interesting animals.

They bring a lot of smells that you wouldn't have otherwise.

And I think just in general, the color green is really soothing.

It's a small thing that I think really goes a long way.

Right now we're in City Park Greenhouse, located in the City Park off the 23rd and York Street.

and we grow and distribute all the plants for the city of Denver.

We grow 250,000 plants a year,

and those are everything from annuals to native perennials

to regular perennials to our poinsettia crop.

One of my favorite things is coming in,

walking the greenhouses first thing in the morning

and knowing that these plants are going to be going out

and making a beautiful day for people soon

and also to drive around the city and look at what we're adding to beautify the city,

but also make the city just a wonderful place for people to live.

I'm always grateful that I get to have this job and be here and get to be a part of that.

All of the plants that you see out in any of the city parks, I probably touched at some point.

They all came from us.

Everybody at the greenhouse is a rock star.

I mean, truly, it's an incredible feat to be able to grow such a large amount of plants for such a diverse park system.

The greenhouse is key in being able to implement public gardens that are accessible and beautiful for the public.

So a typical day is in the springtime anyway.

As soon as the sun comes out, we water.

We'll immediately start transplanting or seeding stuff for the week.

We'll start filling up flats with soil.

At City Park Greenhouse, we grow under 36,000 square feet of space.

We have three full-time horticulture growers and an operations supervisor that's very much boots on the ground.

We also use a lot of volunteers from our CSU Master Gardeners, from Denver Botanic Gardens,

and a couple other large projects where we bring in help from our field, from our horticultural staff that are in the districts.

Every plant that you see here starts as a seed.

It's like a couple of weeks of just like letting the roots grow, letting them kind of establish a little bit.

Because they all are started in these really small cells.

There's 288 cells in the flat and there's one seed in every single cell.

Our horticulturalists will come pick it up.

At the city of Denver, we have around 40 horticulturists out in the field and we are grow to order for them.

They make their order and we grow the plants that they need for their spaces.

From there on, they go out into the world to all the parks in the city of Denver

to be smelled and stepped on and, you know, looked at and enjoyed and cut back

and, you know, everything else that Colorado, specifically Denver, has to offer.

When we first get our plants, I always say that it's Christmas morning for us horticulturists.

it really feels like the most special gift to be able to be given all these beautiful plants and

flowers that you're able to incorporate into the garden and then share with the public as well.

I love being able to have people walk through the garden and see things that maybe they've

never seen before that they can then take the idea of bring home and incorporate in their own gardens.

I think that it's also a great way to get children and youth involved in gardening and involved in public spaces and very grateful for the ability to contribute to that.

City Park Greenhouse is a seven day a week, full year operation, and we are working hard every day to make sure that your city is beautiful.

And there are many people out there in the field working really hard every day to keep these plants alive and move them around the city and keep them beautiful.

And we love when we get to have that satisfaction of seeing people enjoy our work.

We are here at the Visitor's Center at Dinosaur Ridge, where you can learn all kinds of things about all kinds of dinosaurs.

You know, in Brighton, they are marking 30 years for the city's Festival of Lights parade.

It takes a lot of collaboration between several city departments and the dedication of lots of volunteers to make the city's most beloved event happen.

Baselines amongst people have somebody at one.

We start planning the Festival of Lights really in August.

And really when we start meeting with all of the people who help make this happen, we do that in November.

And it's all in coordination with special events, police department, fire department and ad com.

We do break it down into four sections to make it easier for the guys to shut down the streets.

When it comes to police department planning, we'll assign officers intersections throughout the city along the parade route so that we can keep the public safe.

My favorite part is the planning for the police department.

I thoroughly enjoy reaching out to all the other agencies involved, whether it be the meteorologists with the National Weather Service,

the train operators for Union Pacific as they come through the parade route.

We have volunteers from the community that help with things such as directing traffic and announcing the entries along the parade route.

We have communities and organizations from Brighton and outside of Brighton that put a ton of work into decorating their floats, their vehicles themselves to make this a beautiful and bright night.

So we want to make sure that citizens can be comfortable, relax and just enjoy the evening.

It's also kind of a surreal feeling to see Bridge Street at a standstill and see kids running out in Bridge Street.

And what you've been waiting for, kids? There's Santa.

Mainly Santa, I guess. I'm looking forward to looking at him, checking him out.

Without the community, this event would be nothing of what it is.

Now, from the past to a glimpse of the future in Wheat Ridge.

A 20-year plan that reflects the values and voices of the residents.

Decisions that will be made on housing, transportation, growth, and more.

Hi, I'm Wheat Ridge Mayor Bud Starker.

One of the things that makes Wheat Ridge such a special place is how we come together to shape our future.

And today, I'm excited to share an update on one of the most collaborative efforts we've ever undertaken, our new city plan.

After a full year of robust community engagement, the first draft of our city's updated comprehensive plan will be available online later this summer.

This plan is our community's roadmap for the next 20 years, and it's been shaped by the voices of the people who know our city best, and that's you.

Through four phases of outreach, over 500 residents attended open houses, and more than 1,000 participated online through surveys and interactive tools.

Whether in person or virtually, Wheat Ridge showed up, and your feedback has guided this process every step of the way.

We started by asking what you love about our community and what could be improved.

From then, we drafted core values and principles, which you helped to refine.

We looked at how we move through the city, our mobility framework, and how we welcome growth while preserving what makes each neighborhood unique.

In the final phase, we asked for your input on tools the city can use to support smart growth and investment and where they should be applied.

This has all helped shape a thoughtful, forward-looking plan grounded in shared values.

Once finalized, the city plan will help guide decisions on housing, transportation, land use, economic development, and more.

It's a vital tool, and I'm incredibly proud that it reflects such thoughtful, inclusive input from our residents.

Thank you for your continued engagement and commitment to our city's future.

To follow the process and review the draft when it's released, visit what's up wheatridge.com forward slash city plan.

Together, we're building a strong, vibrant future, one rooted in community, collaboration, and shared vision.

Thanks again to Dinosaur Edge for having us and to all of our cities for sharing their

enduring stories.

We'll see you next time on Connected Colorado.

On this episode of Restaurants Near Me, we're on East Colfax.

This is the longest continuously paved road in all of America.

I'm going to take you to five restaurants in five hours because they're all under massive construction.

We've got to do our part to save these restaurants.

Let's eat.

It's our first time ever at Achiba Hut.

And why are we at Achiba Hut?

Well, we're on East Colfax location.

And Achiba Hut started in Arizona.

And yeah, it's a chain, but we're supporting all the businesses along East Colfax.

Their corporate headquarters actually here.

And this unit, along with many others, are locally owned.

So it fits the bill.

So that's why I can do it.

Chiba Hut, of course, famous for their munchies, for their sandwiches.

Everything's oven-toasted sandwiches.

Let's get into the drinks first, though.

They know me.

They know I like to get my buzz on early in the day.

So this is a hash can.

and some rum, tequila, gin, vodka, blue curacao,

and Red Bull on top.

That'll get your day going right.

Food-wise, today they brought us their legendary pretzel nugs.

This dipping sauce is money.

We got this cheese bread here with a little garlic

and marinara and ranch served with it.

For those people who like salads, not me,

it's a little house salad.

Sandwiches-wise, today they brought us the Apollo 13,

which is their Greek chicken,

and then this one here is the Cali Mist.

Got bacon, tomato, avocado, chipotle, mayo on it.

Of course, you can't be a Chiba Hut and not have munchy desserts.

Beautiful, fruity, pebble cereal bar here.

Chocolate chip cookie.

That's how you do it.

Chewy.

What could go better with this besides this cocktail?

Some Kool-Aid.

To me, every sub better toasted.

Like, who doesn't want their sub toasted?

Always, it just adds to it.

Let's eat.

Mmm.

So we got feta, black olives, red onion, tomato,

and there's chicken on here.

Fantastic sandwich.

It's like a Greek salad on a sandwich.

I would absolutely get this again.

If you've never been to Chiba Hut,

this is what you can expect.

Some of the best sandwiches in all of Colorado,

and they're toasted.

I went a little bit of extra time,

And I saw we were right across the street from Bourbon Grill.

So I said to Tyler, we got to sneak them in.

We got to figure out a way to get them in.

Bourbon Grill is such a legendary part of V.S. Colpax.

It used to be further up the street and it was just a takeout window.

Then they opened this one a few years ago.

Full sit-down restaurant.

Total mom-and-pop restaurant.

Last time I was here, mom-and-pop were actually cooking, serving the food.

You get a ton of food for the dollar.

That's definitely like the vibe here.

This plate right here, 17 bucks.

This is for two people.

Like, no one person can eat all this.

And you come here, of course, for the bourbon chicken.

So it's going to be, you know, you got the nice char on it.

It's going to be tangy, a little bit sweet, super moist.

And then you pick whatever sides you want.

We got green beans today, mac and cheese, and then there's white rice underneath there.

Whatever sides you want.

Really simple concept.

These are people that definitely deserve your support.

If you've never been to Bourbon Grill, this is the time to come.

There's plenty of parking.

Just come on these side streets.

Let's eat.

I've been eating it for years. This place never lets me down. There's so much in this town where

you're like, I paid a lot of money and didn't get a lot of food and I'm still hungry and if we're

little is that great, you won't have that problem. Bourbon Grill, money every time, ton of food,

super flavorful, really juicy chicken. You will thank me later.

We're at Brews Off Facts here, right off Colfax and York.

And what do they do here?

This is a Belgian-style brewery.

The brewery is actually on 67th and Pecos, and then this is the tasting room.

Open seven days a week.

If you're coming here, you're drinking, so you should be Ubering.

But they've got a little parking lot right next door.

I've actually parked there.

So food wise today, what they brought us, they're making Rocky Mountain Pizza, actually a really good looking pizza right here.

This one's got pepperoni and sausage.

We also have a choice of tinned fish, which is smoked salmon.

They're getting the pretzel from Lodo Bakery, my friend Jan, downtown just by the milk market.

And then more friends, Denver Chip Company, Dylan and Connor, love those guys.

And then Kettlehead Popcorn, I think that's local too, actually.

What beers did they bring us today?

So this is a Dom Blanche.

This is a Ploot Saison.

Beer de Gord.

So this one's got pumpkin in it.

This is a double and this is a triple.

I think if we start on this side, it would make sense to me.

Let's drink.

That's a patio beer right there.

That is a porch pounder.

Let's go Ploot.

Oh, that tastes like a sour, actually.

That's got plum and apricot in it.

And then this is going to be our pumpkin.

Oh, that's interesting.

We have some nutmeg and ginger in there.

That really goes great with the pumpkin.

This is the now we're getting a little stronger.

That reminds me a lot of like a Newcastle Brown.

And then a triple.

I think I'm gonna be pretty drunk.

So they did all they all went up in alcohol content.

So obviously single double triple quad goes up in alcohol content.

But I found it really drinkable.

It's like, all right, let's try some pizza.

Think about after having a double triple in a quad.

gonna love this pizza. Let's eat. Shockingly good. So if you're into

Belgian beers, even if you're not, you can't be bruised off facts. They got this

great courtyard out here. Something happening every day. Food's really good

and the drinks are exceptional. This is some of the best beer I've had this year.

Did you know there's a crazy mountain tap room on East Colfax and Ogden?

I didn't, and I kind of like know these things.

So it's just a teeny bit off East Colfax, right by the Ogden Theater.

And if you're going to a concert at the Ogden Theater the day of,

show your ticket here, buy one, get one free beers.

Pretty good deal.

We're here on a Thursday because they do barbecue Thursday, Friday, Saturday.

It's Barbecue Daddy.

There's a little kitchen in the back of the tap room, and they're smoking their barbecue down in Castle Rock and then driving it up here.

So Thursdays and Fridays, 4 to 8, Saturdays, 12 to 8.

Great sampling.

We'll get into the barbecue, but first they need a drink.

Crazy Mountain is famous for their PokeBob.

That's their American IPA.

Let's start with that.

Yeah, I can see why they're famous for that.

This is their Take It Easy Mexican Lager.

This is the Colfax Pal-El.

You got an amber.

Old Riley Stout.

Honey bear cider.

Somebody called me a cab.

Yeah, they brew all these beers here, but they're actually bringing in seltzers and ciders from other companies.

So if you don't drink beer, there are other things to drink here.

Live music as well, Thursday, Friday, Saturday night.

So I think that's the time to come.

Get this amazing barbecue, some live music,

go to a concert maybe.

Food and why we're doing brisket and pulled pork.

So here's some brisket, there's the pulled pork.

Four different sauces to choose from,

Carolina White, Bugs Barbecue, Carolina Gold,

and Smokin' Joe's.

We have a pulled pork sandwich here,

brisket sandwich here, mac and cheese.

These baked beans are really good.

And this is the best coleslaw I've ever had.

You know why?

I put blue cheese in it.

I had one bite of it.

I'm like, what is going on here?

Blue cheese.

Some people don't like blue cheese.

I'm a huge blue cheese guy.

I'm gonna put this coleslaw on one of these sandwiches.

They call this the Mac Daddy.

Mac and cheese, they add whatever protein you want

between the brisket and the pulled pork.

And then for dessert, you gotta have banana pudding, right?

At a barbecue place, sorry if you don't have that.

I'm not lying, I'm putting that coleslaw on this sandwich.

You know, coleslaw and pulled pork, right?

Bun feels really good, nice potato bun.

Let's eat.

I couldn't be happier.

That's such a beautiful combination.

That meat is so tender and flavorful.

Got just the right amount of smoke to it.

And the blue cheese coleslaw doesn't overpower it.

Compliments it great.

Phah, wait for it, nominal.

Good Yaya's Mediterranean Grill and Pastries here

on East Colfax and Gaylord.

Hey, Lord, family business, parking in the back.

How do I support these businesses on East Colfax?

Where do I park?

They've got parking.

What else do they have?

Reasonably priced food, all homemade.

They do a lunch special Tuesday through Friday for $14.95.

Drinks-wise, what did they bring me today?

They brought me a Turkish coffee because the owner originally is from Turkey, then Iraq, then Texas.

You know, it makes a lot of sense.

Perfect.

Like, that's the way everybody goes in life.

And then on to Colorado, where they worked in other Mediterranean restaurants before opening up their own place.

Let's run through the food real quick.

We have some tabbouleh over here, so parsley and tomatoes, fried cauliflower.

I've never seen anything like this.

They're calling these cheese rolls.

We've got feta and fresh mozzarella in there, great for cheese pulls.

Grape leaves or dolmos.

Ready to try the baba ganoush.

Phenomenal.

Got a nice lemon flavor.

So baba ganoush is a ground eggplant.

Lentil soup.

Pistachio baklava.

The mom's making all the desserts.

Beautiful display of all the different flavored baklavas they have.

And this is what I'm going to be having for my meal today.

This is the meat lovers combo.

So some beautiful rice, beautiful hummus.

We have some ground beef, chicken kebab, and lamb kebab.

Instead of croutons, I got peanut chips right here.

Housemade for the lentil soup.

Lentil soup actually has some sumac in it.

That's something you hear every day.

All right, I'm gonna try all these kebabs.

What are we gonna start with?

Well, chicken's in front of me.

I'll start with the chicken.

Let's eat.

Cooked perfectly.

I mean, you could see the char in there,

but yet not dry at all.

Super moist, tons of flavor.

They got a great marinade on it.

As much as I love the chicken,

it's getting better with the lamb.

Onto the ground beef.

This is gonna be my favorite.

I can tell already.

Oh yeah, that's a 10.

This is like the best hummus I've ever had,

which I'm picky about my hummus.

Me and Tyler were talking about how much we love this place

and how much we'd love to have one down by us.

Lone Tree, Parker area.

If you're thinking about expanding,

we don't have anything like this.

Certainly not of this quality,

and we love supporting a mom and pop business.

We're at the tight end here on East Colfax and Humboldt.

The tight end is Denver's only gay sports bar.

They have a pizzeria in here called Il Pizzaiolo.

So we're here for a little bit of booze.

Let's start with the booze.

This is a deep Eddie Gatorade shot during any game.

If you're wearing that team's jersey,

they score a touchdown, you get a free shot.

So in other words, the Broncos score,

you're wearing a Broncos jersey, chin chin.

Yeah, I can do about a dozen of those.

Hopefully the Broncos score about a dozen touchdowns.

Then they do a house-made pickle shot.

Might regret this one.

Whew, and the chaser.

This is called an apple pie cocktail

with crown apple in it.

Oh man, I feel a lot better.

So the food in here, El Pizzaiolo.

He's doing wings, sandwiches, pastas.

So this is a chicken Alfredo.

Got some desserts, tiramisu, salads, appetizers.

This is a beautiful burrata.

These tomatoes are incredible.

I don't know where he's getting these.

Probably like his own garden.

And then pizza wise, he's doing New York style.

Got the deck oven.

So we got me a half and a half.

This half margarita, this half pepperoni,

two different types.

got the cupping pepperonis and then the bigger ones.

They got something going on here every day.

They got trivia.

They got karaoke.

They got bingo.

They got poker.

Place is a blast if you've never been here.

Let's eat.

I'm so happy.

I still have an appetite.

This pizza is freaking delish.

Probably one of the funnest places you can think of to watch sports.

And then you add this great pizza, pasta, burrata.

This has got to be your game day headquarters.

We just wrapped up filming in what was supposed to be five restaurants in five hours,

but I threw in an extra one because I'm trying to help as many as possible.

So you're going to see six on this episode.

I couldn't be any more full, couldn't be any more satisfied.

Food was incredible.

Support all these businesses on East Colfax before they're gone.

We're at the Gaylord Rockies Resort and Convention Center.

I'm going to take you to five restaurants in the next few hours,

highlighting what they have to offer here.

Some amazing restaurants in this beautiful property.

We're at Mountain Pass Sports Bar.

This place is huge.

seats 600 people and you know me go big or go home. So they gave me the single serving beer.

Don't mind if I do. And then full bar. So we have a non-alcoholic berry citrus breeze.

And then a strawberry ginger margarita. We have a 75-foot screen behind me. The largest screen in

Colorado. If you're ever wondering where to watch sports, I don't care where you live in Colorado.

This is the place to come. And then the food's exceptional. We have their new taco salad right

here with guajillo chicken, pickled red onion, some house made ranch. But this is what we're

here for today. This is the star of the show. This is the High Plains beef sandwich. What

makes it special? Shaved prime rib, right? House made jardineau, house made au jus. They're

even making the bread here. Maldon salt, caraway seed, gorgeous bun. That's what makes a great

Italian beef is basically what this is, right? This is like a Chicago beef sandwich. Just

Dunkin' in that au jus.

Let's eat.

This is not your typical sports bar food.

Absolutely, they got gourmet chefs here.

This is elevated.

The chicken on this was a 10.

That bread and this sandwich was a 10.

This is just stop one of five.

Can't wait to see what else this place has to offer.

Drinking a snake bite at the Fortune Prospector here at the Gaylord.

It's an English pub, and it's got a great feeling here.

I love the vibe of the place.

What I just learned is you can get a local pass and get 10% off at any of the restaurants here.

Or you can even get free parking up to four hours.

Even if you're just coming to the restaurants, you don't even need the pass.

You can come and they'll validate your parking.

So just check in with the hostess and they can help you out at any of their restaurants.

So what's more English than fish and chips?

I've been told these are the best fish and chips in the world.

The other Gaylords come here to learn the recipe and you get the same exact fish and chips anywhere.

using fresh Icelandic cod that they're brining,

which I hadn't heard of before.

The fish has got no flavor to it otherwise.

So by brining, you get a little saltiness in there.

Beautiful beer batter using local beer,

a little fat tire and just gorgeous.

I mean, I've had a few fish and chips.

I don't know if I've seen anything better than that.

So you think this is just regular tartar sauce?

No, we're in Colorado.

That's hatch chili tartar sauce.

I haven't seen that before.

Beautiful looking coleslaw.

I'm a creamy coleslaw guy.

Some people like vinegar, even the chips.

That's how you do chips.

Let's give it a try.

I'm so excited.

Let's eat.

So if you're looking for some of the best fish and chips in all of Colorado,

you've got to check out the Fortune Prospector.

Hi-oh, silver.

Away.

Why did I say that?

I'm drinking a lone ranger here at Gardening Grain.

So this is their healthy concept here at the Gaylord.

And clean lines, right?

That's what this vibe gives me in here.

like clean lines, clean food, no GMOs in the food.

It's a long ranger.

It has Lalo Blanco tequila, sparkling rosé wine,

simple syrup and lemon juice.

It is delightfully refreshing.

And then they're known for their pizza here.

That's the best-selling item.

But they also come here for the healthy stuff.

So the menu changes seasonally.

You have greens and grains, a fresh start section,

and seasonal picks.

I, of course, don't want the healthy stuff.

So they brought me a Calabresi pizza,

a San Marzano tomatoes,

Italian mozzarella imported weekly pickled chilies, spicy salami and hot honey.

The dough is made by the pastry chef.

Cold proof the day before.

Beautiful.

I mean, look at that undercarriage right there.

It's getting a nice little char on there.

So for me, it's always about the fold.

The fold without the cracking.

That's a good pizza right there.

Let's eat.

That's freaking incredible.

That's a 10.

That's some of the better pizza I've had this year.

Got the perfect chew.

That Italian imported mozzarella really adds to it.

Got a little kick to it.

You can handle it though.

They called like a seven on the heat level.

I'm gonna finish this sucker.

Right, we're at the stunning copper table.

This is their breakfast, lunch, and dinner concept here at the Gaylord.

And so this is Colorado Fair and Colorado Cocktails.

So these both have Breckenridge in them.

This is the Palisade Old Fashioned with Breckenridge bourbon.

And this is the Breakfast Espresso Martini with Red Rocks Vodka Local

and Espresso Vodka from Breckenridge.

And so local, so you're like, all right, how is Duck Local?

Well, this is their duck mole, and it actually has Pueblo hash chilies in the mole,

and then the tortillas that they serve with it from my boy, Little Rich Racolitas.

And to be honest with you, I've had bites of everything on the table already.

Phenomenal.

This duck confit leg right here, just disintegrated, just melts in your mouth.

Makes a phenomenal taco.

And then this is their elote right here.

So the sweet corn elote skillet.

Again, more Little Rich right here with his chips.

It's just a lotte I'll put up against anybody's in the city.

But I'm going to have another bite for you guys for the camera.

They also, so breakfast, lunch, and dinner, right?

Every hotel has to have it.

For breakfast, they do the buffet.

It's about $30.

Exquisite buffet.

You need an omelet station, waffle station, all your great stuff.

Sausages, bacon.

And then on weekends, they step it up a notch.

It's more brunchy and get some of the lunch items as well as the breakfast items.

What's funny is I wouldn't ordinarily order duck,

but I'm kind of happy they brought it for me

because it's insanely good.

Pickled red onions right here with this mole.

This will make you a duck fan.

Let's eat!

Those of you who think about mole and you think chocolate,

you think it's going to be sweet.

Well, it's unsweetened chocolate in a mole.

And this dish is a tiny bit sweet,

but it doesn't taste like chocolate.

So if you've never tried mole, never tried duck,

get this right here.

You will absolutely thank me later.

Saving the best for last here at the Gaylord at Old Hickory Steakhouse.

So I want to thank Chef Stephen Garza, who's the chef for the whole thing, put this whole thing together.

Come on in, Stephen, and tell us what I'm going to be eating here.

Awesome. Yeah, so thank you guys so much for joining us, first and foremost.

I just want to talk a little bit about our dry aging program.

We do our own 18-day dryage New York strips.

We do our own dry-aged tenderloins as well.

You have the last of the prime ribeye.

So we've got a little 45-day dry-aged prime ribeye for you.

We also do some local Superior Farms Colorado lamb.

And kind of the piece de resistance is Snake River Farms Wagyu Tomahawk.

So hopefully you enjoy.

Look at the marbling on that.

It's insane.

Insane.

And then what's this guy?

So this is one of our new chefs created a butternut squash puree.

But we do a little different.

We brulee it.

So it's got a little maple sugar and some sugar in the raw on the top.

It's been an amazing day of eating.

ambient service. Thank you so much, Jeff. Appreciate you. Thank you very much.

I mean, what goes better in a steakhouse than a smoked old-fashioned? Don't mind if I do.

Phenomenal. Shocking. I gotta be honest with you. They've changed the game for hotel restaurants.

You know, for those of us out there who are like, eh, I don't know about a hotel restaurant.

Yeah, I've been to five hotel restaurants today, and they're all exceptional. Let's eat.

So 45 day dry aging, I was worried it was going to be really funky.

It's very mild actually, but it does concentrate it.

It's definitely a richer steak, creamier.

If you've never had dry aged meat before, come to Old Hickory.

This is the place to get it.

I don't care where you live in the metro area.

You got to check out these restaurants.

Absolutely worth the trip here.

They got that locals discount, save 10% and free parking.

The Gaylord, these five restaurants, exceptional.

All right, I'm embarrassed to say it's my first time ever at working class.

I know, I know.

They've been here 10 years, and I really didn't understand the concept.

And now that I'm here, it's a great concept.

So it's Southern food.

I know, right?

Meets Latin American food.

somehow it works. So it's brought to you by Dana Rodriguez. You might know her as loca.

She's also behind Casa Bonita and she started Super Mega Bien and has carne, which we filmed,

is amazing. So the way they do with the meats here is you order by the quarter pound, half pound,

full pound, and it's meant to be family style, meant to be shared. It was just me today,

so they brought me little portions of everything. So we have a hickory roasted steak picanha,

Colorado lamb with locust green chili.

So that's in the meat area.

Oh, and then we also have the beautiful pork loin with a mustard sauce.

So those are the meats.

I think this would be great to share with two people.

And then some more sharing stuff, some of the sides.

And we have tuna sopes right here.

Beautiful shrimp and grits.

Green chili mac and cheese.

So that's definitely like an amalgamation of two cultures.

Plantain empanadas.

So normally empanadas, the outside is made from corn, but here the outside is actually made from plantains.

This salad right here is crazy too. Massive attack salad.

It's got tempura, broccoli, asparagus, avocado, spinach, cucumbers, parmesan, and preserved lemon vinaigrette.

So this is a side of cilantro, rice, and beans.

I think I got all the food. Obviously great cocktails as well.

Really interesting. So this is a seasonal.

This is an ube spritz. So that seasonal rotates.

We have Kentucky Madre.

So again, we're mixing cultures here, right?

Kentucky and Madre.

This is really unique too on the drinks.

So they have four different mixes that they make in-house.

And this one's pomegranate ginger thyme.

And then you add whatever alcohol you want to it.

This one today has tequila.

Better go great with vodka, go great with gin.

This place is so busy right when they open at 5 o'clock

because they have a great happy hour.

They're open Wednesday through Sunday.

Happy hours from 5 to 6.

Every table is eating chicken and waffles, and somehow it's gluten-free.

So the chicken is made.

She's got this special breading that she invented, and she uses that same breading on Sundays.

They do fried chicken only on Sundays.

Fried chicken, and you can do that with champagne.

Wine Wednesday is 20% off.

They do industry night 9 to 10 on Thursdays, and then that fried chicken on Sundays is $40.

Fried chicken and champagne.

I've already had a bite of almost everything on here because I couldn't wait.

I'm an idiot for never coming here before.

It's spectacular.

She's super talented.

And if you've never met Dana, she's super sweet.

She came from nothing to this.

Been nominated for like six James Beard Awards,

Michelin Awards, and still the sweetest lady, very humble.

All right, the only thing I haven't tried yet is a steak,

and it looks so good.

I can't wait.

Cooked perfectly, let's eat.

I mean, you can go to a steakhouse.

You won't get a steak nearly this good.

Seasoned perfectly, cooked perfectly, juicy.

So don't be an idiot like me.

If you've never been to work in class, get here ASAP.

All right, so you're wondering where are we?

Because this doesn't look like a restaurant, right?

It isn't.

We're in my home kitchen here in Lone Tree, Colorado.

I'm doing something supporting local.

You know, that's my mission.

But instead of a restaurant today,

we're talking about a local product.

So in Colorado, we're known for peaches, right?

We got some amazing melon.

And today we're talking about Olathe sweet corn.

So Olathe comes from a little town in Colorado called Olathe.

And it only has a short window.

We're in prime season right now.

So today we're going to make a recipe that I learned from my mother-in-law.

She made this for me a few weeks ago.

So now I'm going to make it for you guys.

Colorado is renowned for producing some of the finest sweet corn in the United States.

Olathe sweet corn is grown on the western slope with the ideal temperature,

growing conditions and access to water from Rocky Mountains to help create a sweeter, more flavorful

here of corn. Colorado Sweet Corn is in season through early October, so now is the time to stock

up and enjoy this classic Colorado ingredient. I used to do this for my mom when I was a kid.

I think we had good corn on Long Island too, and she'd make me do it outside because, you know,

the hair gets all over the kitchen otherwise.

That ends always a good idea and you could cook it however you like.

You like to boil it, you like to grill it, but I like to season it however I do it.

It takes about 20 minutes on the grill.

If you wrap it up in aluminum foil, that's always a good method.

You put a little butter or salt and pepper in.

You can make your risotto vegetarian.

I like to grill up some beautiful shrimp.

You could grill steak, chicken.

Shoot, you could even put lobster in this risotto.

Why not?

So again, get your grill really nice and hot.

Season everything.

I'm a big seasoned guy.

It should take just a couple minutes per side.

And when they change colors, they're ready.

And you want to leave your risotto a little bit wet.

You don't want it to be completely dry at this point

because it's still soaking up that water into your risotto.

And risotto is made generally from a boreal rice.

You want it to be a little bit al dente at this point

because we're still gonna add some more ingredients to it.

Corn was on the grill for 20 minutes.

I took it off about 10 minutes ago,

let it cool down before you cut it.

Otherwise, you definitely burn your fingers.

Yeah, we're starting to get that good pink color going.

Time for a little flipping.

Mix in your corn.

So we don't put salt in our risotto

because we're adding all this salt

from the Parmesan cheese.

I do add pepper though.

Now your risotto has absorbed all the liquid.

So it's gotten tighter.

And then we're gonna put our shrimp around the outside here

and then a little greenery on the scenery.

You can use chive.

Today we're using green onion.

Voila.

Everybody's always afraid to cook for me

because they think I eat all the greatest food all the time.

But home cooked food, you can't beat

because then you're tasting people's love

and their family and traditions.

I haven't had a good home cooked meal in a while.

Let's eat.

So good.

That's a 10.

What's your favorite way to enjoy local sweet corn?

Oh, my God.

We're about to do a 10-mile ruck.

So I'm just going to pick it up, and then it tells you the weight.

Ugh.

This is important.

I had no idea going to college.

It was such a leap of faith.

Didn't know what I was going to major in, if I was even competitive enough to do ROTC,

how I was going to pay for it.

ROTC was a huge part of what provided structure in college for me.

We're working in unison and I have a team behind me and the military's mission at the end of the

day I feel like it is going to be successful.

Turnaround point. Oh I'm feeling good. Feeling a lot better than normal actually I feel like.

I wish I brought a snack.

It makes the biggest difference, actually.

Just a little bit of candy, yeah.

It's getting real very fast,

and everything that we're training for

is becoming a definite possibility.

I have faith in the military's ability

to help kind of deter what's going on right now.

That's kind of what's provided me the most reassurance in this time of year.

Feels good. Now we got to run back. Now we're getting everybody who fell behind a little bit.

We finished together.

I'm the company.

Fall in.

You solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States.

I would love to go back and tell my high school self, like, it really all worked out.

I always knew I wanted to go to college too.

I swear, like, I just, I had a feeling like it.

No one really told me, like, you should go to college or like, you should join the military.

It was like I genuinely don't know where it came from, but I was like I know I'm gonna do this.

You're talking a little bit about your major. What's that like being a first-gen student?

They call me Mad Dog because during PT in the mornings, I'm never fully awake, so I'm

always like, I got this smug look on me.

They also call me Mad Dog because they say that I just go at everything like 100%.

That's what I'm talking about.

It's such a steep learning curve, I feel like, as a first-generation student.

I've just felt like a lost puppy a lot of the time.

You just have no idea what to expect.

You don't know any of it.

All of it's foreign.

That's condensation.

Once you're over that curve, in retrospect, you're like, I'm so glad I just stuck it out

for a little bit longer and held on and made it through.

Ready?

Begin.

Bang, bang, bang.

Bang, bang, bang, bang.

Enemy, two enemies, 12 o'clock, 500 meters.

Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang.

My parents advised me against joining ROTC

because they thought it was too much

to handle my freshman year.

They hadn't been to college.

I wasn't gonna join the program.

I only signed up for one class.

Once I did that, everything sort of just started

to fall into place.

I either want to be a physical therapist

for the Army or do aviation.

I need that.

I need that in my life.

I need like a challenger, like high stake.

I could definitely see myself.

Like, I would love to fly a helicopter.

Yeah, I think you'd be really good at that.

That was a good catch.

That was a good catch.

Ready, go.

Today, the command and close of the Ram Battalion

will be passed from the outgoing commander,

Cadet Michael Ozmai,

to the incoming commander, Cadet Ashley McGee.

battalion commander officially.

Let's go!

Get online!

Let's go!

Hustle up!

Get online!

Get online!

Hustle up!

Let's go!

Exercise!

One, two, three!

One!

One, two, three!

Two!

One, two, three!

Three!

You guys are about to become leaders in the world's foremost

fighting force.

Cadet McGee, congratulations.

And like I said, you will have an immense role to fill,

and you are going to do great things for this battalion.

Together, we are a group of the very few people

in this nation willing to take an oath

to protect our Constitution.

And I have felt so lucky to just be surrounded

by people with that capacity.

And so I cannot tell you how honored I feel

to say I get to lead you all.

That's okay.

So once we push through.

In ROTC, you know, you're forced to work together

so often and you're in the same space all the time

and it's like you have to be cohesive

and your beliefs and your ideas or it won't work.

I just kind of apply that to everywhere else in my life

where it's like even though we might be different,

like we could get along and yeah,

it does feel like we're a big family.

Push through, push through, push through.

Bang, bang, bang!

Bang, bang, bang, bang!

You're a kid!

Do you solemnly swear that I will support and defend

the Constitution of the United States

against all enemies

foreign and domestic

The future of the battalion really resides in our hands.

I cannot wait for this upcoming semester.

A very exciting future starts now.

So, ramped up and at ease.

Thank you.

I'm going to give you the question today.

Which car fire are you today?

This is the hardest one.

This is the hardest one.

That's a Lambo at number four.

DeLorean at number one.

I don't know if you know DeLorean.

Back to the Future.

Back to the Future car.

Probably five.

One of the things I had to learn as I transitioned

into college was that I needed to ask questions.

Is it just this?

So that's what we're looking at on that.

What value that flattens out at it.

It was something my math teacher always said,

especially since he teaches dual enrollment calculus.

And he was like, the professor isn't always gonna,

you know, come to you and make sure you're okay.

You need to ask questions on your own.

And I think that's something that I started doing this year.

Good job, Rebecca.

When I think of a first-generation student, I think of it as a person who is ready to achieve dreams that their past generations haven't.

I think I am going to miss high school just because of like the people I'm friends with.

Like I've known Angel since elementary and then Jackie since middle school.

I've always considered college, at least for me, as like a second chance, like a fresh slate.

to just start over, meet new people.

I think it's important for me to go to college just because I would say my parents,

it's not like they forced me to go, but, you know, especially for my mom,

like her being an immigrant, she never had, like, the chances to go along with my older brother.

Yeah, I'm also going to college for my mom.

Ever since I was little, she's always wanted me to go because none of my older brothers went.

It's about the same for me, for at least my family.

I they also are immigrants I mainly want to do it just so to give them what they

were never able to have since they they had us at a very young age so see I

see like that too yeah like essentially just taking care of them first and then

taking care of the plans I have after

Give me ten rows.

Ten.

After I did my internship, it got me more interested into going into a career that involved plants.

So I met Becky in the summer, and she was with the group of interns at CSU Spur,

who were helping in the summer in the farm.

And then I saw her once we started the school year, and she had asked if she could help.

And the whole time I thought she was in college.

And then she said, no, I'm a student here.

In the fall, I will be going to CSU, majoring in landscape architecture.

Money for college has been a bit of a struggle.

I did have a couple of scholarships, but I recently have been awarded the Colorado Garden Foundation scholarship,

which is a full ride, and I am very grateful.

Mr. Gonzalez already knew, and I was like, I was like, what's holding him?

I didn't tell him yet, so.

But yeah, I got the full ride.

So exciting!

Yeah.

Free school.

And they pay for books.

Period.

And everything.

That's a big deal.

And he's going to get a laptop, a new laptop and a backpack.

I'm excited that she gets the chance to go to college without the worry of debt and money

and something that she doesn't have to worry about so she can focus on the things that

she wants to do and that she's passionate about.

CSU Spirit to me is a place of learning, a place of knowledge.

I'm also a CSU SPUR intern working under Jennifer Boussolo.

And I saw a bunch of the pictures from graduation.

Was that your parents?

Um.

A picture of your grandpa?

Yes.

That was like the only picture I cried with.

When I was little he would do yard work.

And I would, my siblings were still babies so I would be around him outside helping him.

Especially with like sunflowers, that's why I like sunflowers, because of that.

That's awesome!

I really like working with Jen, especially because it might sound cheesy, but I kind

of see her as like, not like a celebrity, like a role model since she's a CSU professor.

And she has a lot of knowledge, so I like learning and working with her a lot.

It's fascinating to see what capacity high schoolers have, especially those like Rebecca.

Literally the cherry on top to be able to integrate high school and college education at the same time in a very serious and intensive way.

It's very full.

Excited, proud, sad.

My baby's gonna be not in the house no more.

I feel kind of sad, happy, all that together.

I'm excited for you, big.

Say cheese.

Cheese.

I'm really proud of her.

I mean, she's amazing.

She works really hard.

She is really smart.

I know she's going to be big one day.

Vision is a total spectrum, just like a lot of different physical conditions or mental

conditions.

My partial vision loss happened at 24 years of age.

I'm 29 now.

I had my entire childhood fully sighted, able just to play athletically, you know, get to

explore the world, explore physics through my body, and then from there, losing most of my vision as

an adult, now I can be mindful. So yeah, like what I learned in physics, the equation of how you throw

a ball and where it lands. I can picture that equation, not fully, but for the most part in my

head. Now when I make an error, I can kind of picture that. Okay, here's where my hand needs to

go. But really, I'm only seeing a small degree of where these balls are, and I'm making these

adjustments in my head. Really it's my engineering courses and my interdisciplinary education

that's allowed me to have that kind of viewpoint.

At 13 years old, I was trying to cross the street. Got hit by a car going roughly 45 miles per hour.

That accident resulted in me breaking my right femur, my lower leg, my left arm. I broke with

my head hitting on the windshield actually. Broke eight ribs. I had a two percent chance of walking

after surgery. They told me I would have at least a year and a half of intense recovery,

spending about six months in a wheelchair. I had to leave my baseball career. I had baseball scouts

coming to see my friends and I at 13 years old. I was very likely to come to college depending on

baseball and this completely altered my future. That spurred some self-medicating for quite a few

New Years, mainly drinking, resulted in me losing my vision.

That sedum has a really pretty red to it.

Meeting my wife Adriana was the first time that I really just had the motivation to turn my life around.

She just lit a fire in me that I didn't know I had before.

I saw the classes that she was doing.

I saw just how she lived her life and everything.

And I knew I had, I now had the drive to return to school

now that I had her in my life.

We all have a shame.

We all have fears.

The fact that you were open and honest,

how many people are open and honest

about that sort of thing?

Men especially, we don't talk about mental health like that.

We've come a long way.

And I just, I wanted you to know that this is a big deal.

And we should be talking about students that are first gen.

Like, this is possible.

And it's not an easy road.

There's been times that it's been tough on our marriage at times, but it's been worth

it, that unconditional love.

Those first two years at CSU, being disabled in an engineering program, that was brutal.

This one is actually getting me.

Is that an S or a J?

Uh, S.

That would make more sense.

It's a funky S, but yeah.

So to be legally blind, at least in America with the ADA, you either need to have vision

worse than 20 slash 200, non-correctable, and or less than 20 degrees of vision.

So 20 degrees, I mean, that would be a pretty decent field.

For me, I'm at about five degrees.

So in the classroom and whatnot, that's when my disability really presents itself when

I'm trying to read.

I have probably the biggest screen iPad or tablet on the market right here.

I'm zooming in right now at like probably 400%.

I look for individual little variables.

I highlight them.

That way I don't have to strain so much vision later

once my classmates get here.

I haven't driven since October 7th of 2017.

I now get around via the bus, public transportation,

family, friends, and then all around campus,

mainly walking with my guide dog, Fletcher.

He's my main wheels.

Blackboard.

Blackboard.

Find straight, please.

He's from Leader Dogs for the Blind.

So I'm a presidential ambassador with CSU.

Hey, buddy.

Fletcher has also just opened up so many more doors

than I can even begin to imagine.

Just how he helps me interact on campus.

Fletcher, I know, just takes care of Robert and keeps him safe.

And I couldn't thank Fletcher enough.

He helps me see so much more of the world.

We're a team.

Literally a team.

Look.

Look, boy.

Very good.

Being a student that suffers from vision loss, I have to work sometimes twice the time,

I feel, as a lot of my peers, to keep up, especially in engineering.

College is what you make out of it, just like recovery.

One of my favorite quotes from a friend in recovery is, how free do you want to be?

And that's what I bring to college is how well versed, how rounded do you want to be?

The overall goal of my research is to find a new method of marking mosquitoes with a

protein crystal.

Any live animal that's transmitting pathogens, we should have a way of surveilling their

movement.

To be a first generation student to me means to break the cycle of potential generation

along poverty.

One of my advisors, she made it very clear to me, all of the students that she's seen

come in as first generation, they've broken their family's poverty cycle, not only for them,

but future generations. That's what I'm here to do. I'm like where I am just thriving now.

So yeah, it took a burden on us. But for me, people ask how I'm doing it. And yeah,

just having a good foundation. And my foundation involves having my life and just my love at home.

So that's really all I want to say is thank you and I love you.

I love you. Thanks and I love you.

For real, like, it can be simple, and you make it simple sometimes, so thank you.

It's a good love.

So first generation student, the basic definition is just the first one in your family.

Like, instead of your parents, you are the first one to go to college.

I'm going for my bachelor's in computer information systems, and I'm also going for my master's

in business administration.

You guys are at the cusp of a lot of opportunities.

CIS and computer science and cybersecurity has just taken off.

There's like 500,000 open jobs right now.

Actually protecting U.S. national security is a very patriotic thing.

You guys are doing challenges that are actually threats to our national security.

So you guys are getting firsthand knowledge.

So when you get your first job, you guys are already on it.

We learn how to use these types of softwares and tools so we can combat against hacking.

like softwares or like hackers. So in order to like defend against this, the best approach is

to like be on offense. So this is called a Caesar cipher. And the backstory behind this is that

Julius Caesar, when he was commanding his armies to do things in different places, right? He didn't

want the opposition to know his next move, right? So let's just say, for example, he wanted to

inform his army that we will attack at dawn. What the Caesar cipher does is it shifts all of the

letters in We Attack at Dawn, but it looks like gibberish. You guys are first generation. You guys

are just burning a path and hopefully your brothers, sisters and cousins and everybody

else will say, you know what, if Jesse Vito did it, I can't do it. Then you got to mentor them.

Yeah, I do. My biggest motivating factor was my family. Like I just want to, I just want the best

for them. Your family means a lot to you. Yeah. Who are you closest to in your family?

My mom. Yeah. Tell me about your mom. Oh, she's amazing.

She's the one that gave me life. Like, I hope she deserves the absolute best, and I'm trying.

Everything's for my family.

I was almost a dropout about two and a half years ago, like in the summer.

I was taking summer classes to try and get my head.

But I did not do well.

You're burning out.

It hurt me.

And I just thought about dropping out and just going back to work and just, you know,

to bring my family that way.

So I have at least four or five students a semester.

I'm saying, Dr. Mahinas, I need to drop out of college.

I just can't, don't have the time.

I said, don't drop out, drop back.

And it's like, I never thought about that.

So they're taking 18 credits, working 40 hours a week.

Something's gotta give.

So I said, look, drop back to nine credits.

Well, then it'll take me longer to graduate.

Well, time's gonna pass anyway.

Being Hispanic, being first generation,

like I automatically like relate to you

because that's gonna be me in like 20, 30 years.

Yeah, so like-

Or 40.

Or 40, yeah.

And so you are a big mentor to me.

you got me into an NCO program.

So I gave it all to you.

Here's what's happening in Denver this week.

Get back this year with Denver's Giving Machines.

Find the vending machine at the entrance to the Cherry Creek Holiday Market.

It works just like a vending machine.

Swipe your card and select an item you want to donate.

It can be anything from medical gloves to clean water stations,

head over and give it a try. Settle into the holiday season with a special 35th anniversary

screening of the timeless classic Home Alone, followed by an exclusive live moderated interview

with the one and only Macaulay Culkin. That's right, the star who brought Kevin McAllister to

life will be joining us for a one-of-a-kind event that you won't want to miss. Prius Gonberg,

The singer, trumpeter, and songwriter has been hailed as the shining hope of hot jazz.

Celebrating the release of her new holiday EP, Christmas Is,

Rhea presents her own take on seasonal favorites this December.

Her captivating performances promise to infuse classic tunes with fresh energy,

offering audiences a memorable celebration of the season through the lens of jazz.

Time and Other Materials is a captivating exploration into the minds and hearts of five accomplished artists, each with their unique perspective and medium.

This revealing documentary delves into their collective need to create and connect, not only with each other, but with the broader world and beyond.

John Craigie and Fruition are collaborating on a two-night event at the Ogden Theater.

Portland-based musicians focus on emotionally charged vocals, lively soundscapes, and uncontainable spirit.

They'll be bringing along special guests each night.

See you there.

Get ready for a jolly good time filled with festive performances and delicious brunch options.

Whether you've been naughty or nice, this event is sure to bring some cheer to your holiday season.

Don't miss out on this one-of-a-kind experience.

Shabbat of Cherry Creek invites you to a Hanukkah village

where the streets of Cherry Creek turn into a place of celebration.

There'll be crafts, face painting, cookie decorating, food, hot drinks, and more.

Plus, it's free to attend, so bring the whole family.

Stay up to date with what's happening in Denver by following our socials.

And you can always ask our chatbot, Sunny, online or by text.

Reach new heights with Elevating Denver,

the program dedicated to the people, events, and services in the Mile High City.

In December on Elevating Denver, La Casita shares a holiday tradition with all.

Those have included tamales.

Mountain Park's bison donation fosters community.

It is a way for us to reclaim our identity.

and multiplicity explains 311.

Those stories and more are on the next episode of Elevating Denver.

Note before you decorate this year and make a plan to recycle your tree.

Denver's Tree Cycle Program helps keep thousands of trees out of the landfill

by turning them into mulch.

Tree cycling is easy.

First, remove your ornaments, lights, and tree stand.

Second, drop it off at one of our recycling centers.

Third, pick up your mulch at our giveaway event this spring.

If you don't want to recycle your holiday tree into mulch,

we'll collect it as trash on your scheduled large item pickup day.

Happy holidays, Denver.

Do you have broken, burned out, or impossibly tangled sets of old holiday lights?

Don't throw them out. Recycle them for free.

Visit one of the free drop-off locations for this year's Holiday Lights Recycling Drive.

We accept strings of incandescent LED and icicle lights.

We don't accept bubble or neon lights.

And all lights must be removed from plastic bags and cardboard boxes.

Now it's easier than ever to rid yourself of those pesky old holiday lights and recycle them for free.

Happy holidays, Denver.

It's a perfect Saturday.

Feeling like a million bucks.

Stepping multicolor pics.

I'm going to tell you what's up.

Feeling good?

That's right. Perfect sunny day.

This weekly meeting of the Community Planning and Housing Committee with Denver City Council.

Your Community Planning and Housing Committee starts now.

There we go. We're on air.

Alrighty.

Welcome to Community Planning and Housing.

It is apparently November 18th, 2025.

Early start at 1 p.m. today.

Yeah, we have a packed agenda.

So I will start.

I'm Sarah Parity, Council Member at Large, and I will start on my left.

Oh, hi.

Good afternoon. I always feel like I'm so surprised when I start first. Hi, Diana Romero-Campbell, Southeast Denver, District 4.

Good afternoon. I feel that I'd be the best lucky District 7.

Hi, I'm Amanda Sawyer, District 5. And I don't think we have any council members online today.

Oh, Council Member Flynn, you're just in time to introduce yourself for the people.

Hello, people.

Flynn, Southwest Denver, District 2.

Look at that, the smooth entrance.

All right.

And so since we have so much on the agenda, we'll start out with a presentation on the

Far South Southwest Area Plan from Brian and CPD.

You can introduce yourself and get us rolling.

Thank you so much.

Good afternoon.

Thank you.

My name is Brian Botteo, Senior City Planner with the Department of Community Planning

and Development.

And I'm the Project Manager for the Far Southwest Area Plan.

And I'm pleased to present this to you today for your consideration for background.

Far Southwest plan is the latest plan in the neighborhood planning initiative.

It's comprised of these six neighborhoods you can see on the screen.

Harvey Park, River Park South, College View, Bear Valley, Marston, Fort Logan,

essentially everywhere in the city west of the South Platte River and south of Jewell Avenue.

It's entirely in Council District 2 as well.

And we've been working on this plan really over the course of the past year and

or so gathering community input and we think it really combines the guidance

and comprehensive plan 2040 with Denver with community input and strong

community support so let me give you an outline of the agenda first want to

cover the criteria for adoption of supplements to the comprehensive plan

which this is and then I'll kind of proceed in a narrative fashion so I'll

I'll talk about what we did for our first round of engagement

and how we used that to draft our initial draft of the plan.

And I'll talk about some of the plan contents

and what we heard from the community in response to that.

And then I'll conclude with a staff recommendation

and I'll be open to any questions.

So comprehensive plan 2040 establishes three criteria

for supplements to the comprehensive plan

so that an inclusive community process

has to be followed to develop the plan.

Supplements have to be consistent

with Comprehensive Plan 2040 and Blueprint Denver,

and plans have to demonstrate a long-term view.

So throughout my presentation,

you'll see how the Far Southwest Plan

meets these three criteria.

So I wanna begin with our first round of engagement.

Actually, I wanna talk a little bit about

what we did at the outset of this plan.

So to begin, we reviewed comprehensive plan 2040 in Blueprint Denver and identified which policies and strategies in those plans really required community input and some kind of level of neighborhood specificity.

And then we used that analysis.

We identified those topics.

And then we went to the community beginning summer, you know, from late summer through the fall last year.

together, to get that level of specificity that we needed.

And so I won't go into everything that we did for engagement.

I'll say it was extensive, but we really took kind of a three-pronged approach to it.

So we kind of had our traditional in-person engagement.

So we had a large kickoff meeting.

250 folks attended.

It was far more successful than we expected it to be.

We met with R&Os in the far southwest area.

We had pop-ups at community events.

And then we also had some focused in-person engagement.

And so we partnered with three nonprofits in the far southwest area for community navigator support

to help reach underrepresented communities in far southwest.

And then we also connected engagement with the manufactured housing community in the far southwest area.

And throughout the process, we met with high school students at JFK and Lincoln High Schools.

And then we also had online opportunities for people who preferred to participate online or couldn't participate in person.

So we had surveys as well.

And, you know, this is really specific to the first round, but this is kind of the approach we took throughout the planning process.

And I'll say at the early stage, our engagement was bolstered by the fact that we sent out 30,000 postcards, nearly 30,000 postcards, one to every address of far southwest to make sure that everyone in the area was aware about the plan from the outset.

And so after analyzing what we heard from community members in that first round, we identified six community priorities.

You can see them here, complete commercial centers, quite suburban neighborhoods, local businesses, safer street design, transportation options, and social community spaces.

And as you'll see, I'll go through each one of these sequentially, but some of the associated policies and outcomes with them.

But as you'll see, these are interconnected in many ways and overlapping.

So for complete commercial centers, this refers to what we call those community centers and corridors in Blueprint Denver.

And just to give you some context, in far southwest, these are areas like along Federal Boulevard, Sheridan Boulevard, Wadsworth, Evans.

And today they are essentially entirely automobile oriented and entirely commercial.

A lot of community members spoke about how they felt very transactional.

There are places you go to, you conduct whatever business you go to, you go there for, and you go home.

And there's a strong desire to see really more neighborhood centers.

And so the plan has guidance to balance the needs of drivers and people who walk and take transit and roll and bike.

And to see these, what are commercial centers today, evolve into mixed use centers,

what is entirely privately owned land today to include public spaces.

and to really function as community gathering spaces.

And so this is especially important for Federal Boulevard,

where we're seeing the next BRT line in Denver will be along Federal.

And so this plan includes significant guidance for how Federal Boulevard can evolve

from an automobile-oriented corridor today to a transit-oriented corridor.

And just for your reference, you can see on the map here, the commercial areas I'm really

talking about are outlined in black and colored in maroon. So Federal Boulevard and Evans,

there's two shopping centers on Sheridan Boulevard and then on Wadsworth as well.

And then, you know, the flip side of that is quite suburban neighborhoods. So the

The commercial areas in far southwest have significant capacity for growth.

And so the far southwest plan largely adheres to Blueprint Denver's growth strategy of seeing

most of the growth go to centers and corridors where there's the best access to transit,

access to jobs and amenities and keeps most low residential areas low residential.

There is some exception to that.

You know I mentioned the Federal Boulevard bus rapid transit line in recognition of the

improved transit access there.

This plan has placed some of the low residential on and near Federal Boulevard to low medium

residential. You know we've identified there's community support and opportunity

for housing options like townhouses and duplexes today where there are only

single-unit residential. Another part of this is preserving historic areas like

those in Harvey Park which has a collection of historic mid-century

modern houses and also implementing traffic calming on select neighborhood

streets where folks see speeding and accompanying loud noise.

And so again this is the Denver feature places map.

The low residential areas are kind of the cream color and then you can kind of see outlined

the areas near Federal Boulevard where we're proposing to allow duplexes and townhomes

you know with considerations for design and affordability and anti-displacement.

We also heard there's a strong support for local businesses, to see more local businesses

in far southwest.

So part of this is that complete commercial centers strategy, right?

So having housing where there are businesses can help entrepreneurs in those areas thrive.

So investing in affordable housing in those areas is incredibly important.

One of the top priorities we heard from business owners was that it's difficult to find employees

that can afford to live in the area.

And so investing in affordable housing is critical.

And there's also support for a business incubator in far southwest to see more local businesses.

Safer streets.

So far southwest is entirely within the suburban context.

mostly post-World War II suburban development.

Many of the streets are very automobile oriented.

We expect most people to continue to drive,

but there's opportunities to improve safety,

especially with traffic calming on select streets.

So places like Lowell Boulevard, Sheridan,

several neighborhood streets we've identified in the plan,

areas where residents have said that traffic calming,

improved crossings, and whatnot are necessary.

And related to those transportation options,

so building out the recommended bikeway network,

making transit investments.

You know, you saw the map earlier

where how much opportunity there is for growth

on Wadsworth Boulevard, that was a relatively large area

that is planned for growth.

It is not a transit priority street today.

So if we expect that growth to go,

needs to be accompanied by improved transit access and transit service.

Similarly, many of the neighborhoods are the two neighborhoods south of 285.

Their street network is not necessarily ideal for typical bus service.

There are a lot of loops.

There's only a handful of entrances in and out of subdivisions.

And so we see that as an area where micro transit could be a possibility,

especially in partnership with neighboring jurisdictions.

Area borders seven other jurisdictions.

And so many times people are crossing in and out of Denver on a daily basis.

Another part of this is improving, making desired trail improvements,

turning certain streets into greenways.

And then finally, social community spaces.

So investing in public spaces, especially in those growth areas, right,

where we expect most growth to occur, where commercial activity will take place.

Those are the areas that most lack public spaces and parks today.

And so that growth needs to be coupled with investment in public spaces there.

And this also includes making the South Platte River more of a community asset,

turning South Platte River Drive more into a greenway,

seeing improved landscaping and pedestrian facilities.

And so, you know, that's kind of an overview of what we heard from the community, what

we incorporated into the first draft of the plan.

We went back to the community to ask, okay, this is what we heard is what we put together

that reflect what you think you told us.

And so, you know, we took a similar kind of multi-pronged approach, community navigators,

in-person events, online opportunities to take surveys and review and comment on the

plan.

And what we saw was actually some pretty significant support.

So this is, you don't have to pay attention to necessarily all the numbers,

but what I want to call your attention to, these are all six of the community priorities.

We asked folks, do you support this?

What's your level of support?

And, you know, along with the kind of associated policies and outcomes, right?

And what we saw for each of them was 78% to 88% agreement with community priorities.

That's the kind of denim and forest green color.

The yucky green color is neutral.

And then the other two, the kind of berry and yellow, are people who disagree with the plan.

So we saw a pretty strong level of support for the plan,

which meant that kind of both with this,

after this round of engagement and the next round,

we really only made tweaks to the plan.

There was no major redirection from that first draft.

And so our third round really focused on,

this was what we completed most recently in September, October,

really focused on hearing from folks that were still underrepresented and in answering a few lingering questions.

And so what we found there, and I want to share some of our community navigator feedback because they were very successful in reaching folks

and reaching a broad representation of the community.

And what we heard about key themes and community desires really reflected, I think, what was already in the plan.

And we actually saw a stronger level of support from those surveys that we got from our community navigators and kind of the general population, right?

So the average was 88% agreement, both for people's, what the plan said about people's specific neighborhood, but also the broader far southwest area.

And Brian, I'm going to have another quick time check because you're two-thirds of your, you're about two-thirds of the way through your excellent slides.

Okay.

Most of them are, most, I'm most of the way through my slides.

A lot of it.

No complaints.

And so I just want to actually to conclude the advisory.

There was a community advisory committee that helped craft this plan.

And the members of that committee voted last month unanimously to recommend approval of the plan.

And then the planning board met just two weeks ago to review and discuss the Far Southwest plan.

And they also voted unanimously.

to approve the Far Southwest plan.

There was some discussion at Planning Board

about naturally occurring affordable housing.

I'll say it was probably a bit broader

than the Far Southwest area plan,

whether this was, we're using the right terminology,

what exactly that means,

how should we address that in future plans?

So I think it's probably given us a lot to think about

for our next round of MPI plans,

but they did approve it unanimously.

And so, you know, I think we've pretty extensively covered the community process.

We found that it was developed through an inclusive community process over the course of the past year and a half or so.

You know, we began with comprehensive plan 2040 and blueprint Denver as the basis for all of the plans recommendations.

And if you read the staff report, see how extensively this draws on plan 2040.

And so we believe it's consistent with those two plans.

And it also takes a long-term view.

It has a 2040 planning horizon.

It establishes a community-based vision for land use, built form,

land use, built formability, and quality of life.

And we think it will take many years to achieve the vision of the plan.

So, our recommendation is that the committee for the plan to the full council for consideration.

And with that, I went for any questions.

Thank you.

The innate sense of time of people who present for committee is very impressive.

I welcome council members Lewis, council president Sandoval and customer Cashman to the meeting.

Thank you guys so much.

And then so far I have, of course, Councilmember Flynn first in queue, followed by Alvedrez.

And if anyone else wants in, just let me know.

Councilmember Flynn, I just want to say also, anytime you are in District 2, you are going to see that level of community engagement because they know and love their Councilmember.

So I'm not surprised that the engagement was so high, but it's really impressive.

Thank you.

I've never met anyone in District 2 who doesn't know you.

I think I might run for a fourth term now.

Seriously, though, let me start by, I think first and foremost, I need to thank Brian and Abner who led the process along with the staff.

We kicked this off well before the first public meeting.

The team came down to Southwest Denver.

My office treated them to a lunch.

And then we did a quick tour similar to the one that we gave to you.

and Councilwoman Gonzalez Gutierrez at the beginning.

And they went everywhere.

I think the numbers that were on the engagement and the outreach

belie how much work they really put into it.

Anytime I go out and about in my district,

I couldn't swing a dead cat without running into these guys.

They were at every RNO.

They were at a pop-up of...

Pardon me.

I got PETA on my trail now.

Pop-up events in parks.

And I would go out when the consultant team

was doing the pop-up events in the parks.

I would go out and see who they were engaging,

just people walking along and say,

hey, let us talk about the plan.

If there was a completely unrelated event,

they tabled it.

I think it was just really an incredible result.

And especially, I want to highlight the neighborhood

that I've always been most concerned about in this plan

has been College View.

A little bit with Marley,

which is in the Southwest plan area,

somewhat Brentwood and Harvey Park,

which is in far Southwest,

because I believe these are my most average neighborhoods

for displacement.

And so I really, really appreciate the deep dives

that they did in College View with the Navigators

that produced a lot more input that we wouldn't have

unless we had folks who were intentionally dedicated

to bringing them out.

In my view, this plan is very similar to the very first NPI we did,

which was far northeast, which was districts 11 and 8,

and because mostly it was suburban contact zoning.

I know near southeast, Councilman Cashman has a lot of suburban context,

but I think in terms of Councilman Gilmore's district

and much of Councilman Lewis's district,

suburban contact zoning.

So the realization that Blueprint gives a slightly different guidance for this versus

urban, urban edge, et cetera, the team really got that.

And so I was prepared to say, oh, we can't do this.

We shouldn't do that, whatever.

Every step of the way was positive.

And I'm really pleased by that.

I think they hit the nail on the head. So, we, speaking of engagement, we did our own. I know you all had your newsletter list. People could sign up online and get the CPD planning department newsletter.

But with my age, Stacey Simenet, we established our own NPI newsletter that people who are interested only in that we would give them our own views on it and increase engagement that way.

And so all the way around, I think it went well.

And I guess I have to say I'm surprised because, you know, I was ready for a rough roll and it didn't happen.

The level of agreement that we got was tremendous.

And I think people are ready for this.

They're ready to accept the change that's coming.

we mostly

now it's not included in this plan specifically

but we had the Loretto Heights small area plan

and people had a lot of anxiety over that

because that beautiful open campus

and I am getting so many compliments now

as Loretto Heights

as the housing is opening up bit by bit

there eventually on 70 acres

there eventually will be

about 1400 new housing units

across the spectrum

and twice the amount of open space that the code would have required.

And so I think they saw that and they say, you know what?

We have the capacity to accept the population growth,

the household growth that we're supposed to accept.

If we could work a little bit more on local businesses, that would be great.

Retention, mobility, this plan gets us there.

So I'm happy to support it. Thank you.

Awesome. Thank you.

I assume you don't really have questions because you've been along the ride the whole time.

No, I think I used up all my questions with Brian.

Yeah.

But yes.

All right.

You guys can remove each other from your speed dial now.

I should say I really appreciate the focus on historical properties because I've been telling people downtown here for 10 years now that history in Denver is much more than Molly Brown.

We have the Fort Logan Army Fort down there in the historic homes.

We have Molly Brown in our district.

Molly Brown's Summer Home is in our district

and still preserved and it's open.

There's a restaurant on the backside now.

The Paul Whiteman, Arthur Harvey House in Harvey Park,

the big mansion there.

And the mid-century modern, the Cliff May Homes.

So the focus on those historic properties

is very, very much appreciated.

Thank you.

Thank you for that introduction.

Councilmember Alcadrez.

Thank you.

I just want to share, yeah, urban planning is very scary.

to low-income neighborhoods at risk of displacement.

It's a very serious concern, and I appreciate so much that you represent this area with that level of concern.

And I will say the Salvos area plan has been very stressful for me because of my heart, isn't it?

And my heart is for the people that continue to be displaced from our city.

So thank you for your diligence, and thank you for the team, for the engagement, because it does make all the difference.

I feel like my job has become explaining what zoning is and what a neighborhood plan is.

And all residents here is like another plan.

Like, didn't we just do a plan?

And they don't want to, they don't, in my experience, they don't necessarily want to engage in the Southwest Area Plan.

And although we still have had some engagement, but they don't know if their voices matter a lot of times.

And so it does take door knocking.

We've done, my whole entire staff has been door knocking.

we've been explaining we've been having meetings we've been having we just had a

business fair just to get the businesses out to talk about what their needs could

be so it is a very challenging job but this plan looks really great one of the

things I haven't detailed view I will say but one of my concerns as a Southwest

person is just around school closures was that taken into consideration in the

plan the schools that have closed and reuse of school buildings?

So in far southwest, there's more of a partial school closure with Coons Miller,

which is now, I believe, high school only.

It no longer has an elementary school component, but DPS will continue to use that property.

I guess there is actually a charter school in one of the focus areas at Sheridan and Evans that DPS, I believe, is actually moving to Castro Elementary.

Summit.

Pardon? Summit?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

and we've discussed with DPS what a potential you know future might be for

that site they aren't entirely sure what they would like to do with it but I

think there's lots of opportunities to integrate that with the with the vision

of you know that we have for that Sheridan the South Sheridan commercial

center. Could I clarify that that's not an original DPS building that's an old

King Soopers Credit Union building on the back side of where the old Target

store was on the west side of Evans. But DPS owns it. And then another thing that

has come up around the river has been gas stations going near the river

because of the legislation that was passed. Was that mentioned at all in any

of this? Because I know it's come up in the southwest area. Yeah it that

specifically didn't come up in far southwest the all of the land near the

river in the far southwest area is industrial it's within manufacturing

preservation areas and this plan proposes that it continued to be

industrial that being said we didn't hear much anything my knowledge about

about gas stations in that area.

And then I really appreciated the complete streets part

and attention to tree canopy.

And I want to shout out, I saw on the news the other day

that Parks and Rec has planted more trees this year

than ever before.

And so I'm glad that was part of the plan

and appreciate this area because it is district seven

adjacent part of what I consider my community.

So thank you all for your diligence on this plan.

Great, thank you.

Thank you. In other plans, does this plan go all the way down to the Platte River?

Did you incorporate any language for the Platte River?

We have a language in the Near Northwest Plan, the West Area Plan,

and we just added it to the Downtown Area Plan.

Is there any language specifically that calls out the Platte River?

There is, yeah.

So there's actually a page of the plan that kind of ties together a bunch of disparate

policies and outcomes that relate to the South Platte River because you can find them in the

mobility section, the land use section, or in the College View chapter, for example.

And so I think it's actually the last page of the quality of life chapter that kind of brings all

of that together. So, you know, we have a recommendation for South Platte River Drive