News

A new lending institution, which some suspect is nothing but a novel way to lure personal-injury clients to hungry attorneys, has several local lawyers crying foul. Even Franklin D. Azar, the personal-injury attorney whose shameless television commercials have made him a household word, disapproves. “Somebody’s going to be in a…

If you are sixteen-year-old child-prodigy gardener Jonah Bradley on your day off, think polite reserve. Otherwise, just as you begin loading your cart with white petunias and nicotiana–and maybe the strange lime-green nicotiana known as “Starship,” which you have been thinking about privately all winter–some old lady will come up…

LoDo lowdown: On Tuesday, Lower Downtown District Inc. released its much-blabbed-about neighborhood plan charting LoDo’s aesthetic future. The draft document, yet to be approved by the city council, calls for a 100-foot height limit on new buildings in most of LoDo and a 100-foot puke limit for restaurateurs and bar…

Is the man who attacked you on the night of April 12, 1993, in this courtroom?” Heather Smith hesitated for a moment before taking her eyes off Denver Deputy District Attorney Doug Jackson. Everything she had been through in the past three years–the pain, the nightmares, the self-doubts–hinged on this…

Child’s Pay Michelle Dally Johnston’s April 25 story, “Adopting an Attitude,” was disconcerting to read, for three reasons: 1. If not for private adoption agencies, some of which are highly ethical and caring agencies, the only options left for Coloradans would be Social Services adoptions or attorney-led private adoptions. Social…

The skeletons of two large greenhouses stand at the back of Roy Obluda’s property. “I’ve been a little slow tearing them down,” he says. “Reluctant, I guess.” When they are gone, so will be the last physical reminder of 36 years in the flower business. Thirty-six years of growing carnations…

Prologue: It all started when a group of women in the Denver city treasurer’s office began going out to lunch together. In the end, all that was left was an $80,000 check and a receipt from Hooters. Laura R. Fisher sued the city after quitting her job as a senior…

The sun refused to appear last Thursday morning at the Regional Transportation District’s light-rail station at I-25 and Broadway, but nobody seemed to mind. There were plenty of other dignitaries on hand, and this was clearly Ben Klein’s moment to shine. Klein, the chairman of RTD’s elected board of directors,…

Paramedic Rick Stolte liked practical jokes. So did his co-workers at the Platte Valley Medical Center in Brighton. During almost six years of working there, Stolte saw or participated in everything from snowball fights to cars stuffed with shredded paper to colleagues fooling around in the hospital’s computer system. Neither…

Time is about to run out on Colorado’s most irascible political entity. But the tiny Moffat Tunnel Commission is going down swinging. State legislators last week abolished the commission, an obscure state agency whose political monkey-wrenching in the past four years has drawn the wrath of some of Colorado’s most…

Unreal estate: Seems like only yesterday that Denver megadeveloper Larry A. Mizel, last week dubbed “dean” of real estate at the University of Denver’s Daniels College of Business, was just another rich kid in Tulsa. Eventually, of course, he became George Bush’s mightiest fundraiser (he collected $1 million for the…

This is Historic Denver Week, which neatly overlaps with National Historic Preservation Week. And so on Thursday, Mayor Wellington Webb is scheduled to speak on the “importance of preserving, renovating and reusing Denver’s historic structures.” He will do so at the newly refurbished Holtze Executive Place on 17th Street. No…

Rest in Piss Regarding Patricia Calhoun’s May 9 column, “Disturbing the Piss”: Although it is probably a waste of time to dispute the opinion of anyone who would use such a vulgarism in the title of her article, I feel I must try. Perhaps Ms. Calhoun does not mind “letting…

Legislators like to give the impression that they are part of a sacred mission. Working in dark-paneled chambers filled with high-minded speechifying, they create the laws that drive social policy, behavior and morality, all for the greater public good. Right. In reality, legislators can get awfully personal. So can their…

We help injured people…that’s our job!” “I know how to handle insurance companies; I used to be their attorney!” “I will fight for your rights!” “Been in an accident? Got your check yet?” On the tube there’s the guy in the tank who runs over a car, the woman in…

It’s one hell of a way to get ahold of somebody. But more than twenty years after US West assigned a devilish prefix to telephone users in the towns of Louisville and Lafayette, the communities are still getting their kicks dialing 666. Over the years, the numerical sequence has inspired…

That’s rich! Now that the Rocky Mountain News has cut back on its distribution area, it’s not as much fun to compare the two dailies’ creative-writing efforts that “interpret” the latest figures from the Audit Bureau of Circulation. Not surprisingly, both the News and the Denver Post found something to…

Students left out in the cold when Barnes Business College closed its doors last August may find their student loans forgiven by the state. Colorado taxpayers may not be so forgiving: Since the school’s owner declared bankruptcy, they’re the ones who will have to foot the bill. According to C…

The metro area’s startling growth rate has alarmed Coloradans the past few years, as new subdivisions and mini-marts crowd valleys and hillsides from Longmont to Castle Rock. But a little-noticed effort by local cities to constrain urban sprawl–by drawing a line around Denver and daring developers to step across it–may…