Opinion & Commentary

Mayor Michael Hancock’s cabinet is finally complete. Late last week, he announced that he had hired a planning director to fill the slot that Peter Park left in mid-2011: Rocky Piro, a native of Denver who’s been working in Washington State. And one of the first things Piro should plan…

President Barack Obama took Friday off from the campaign trail — but he didn’t put all politicking on hold. He did a number of interviews, including a big one with MTV and satellite chats with a handful of local reporters from toss-up states, including 9News’ Kyle Clark, who definitely came…

The first Denver Startup Week got off to a roaring start, with Mayor Michael Hancock telling a packed luncheon that “we’re going to knock out Silicon Valley…. We’re going to become Silicon Mountain.” To help in that effort, he announced the launch of Denver Capital Matrix, a resource directory of…

Jesse Morreale has decided he can’t fight city hall on two fronts. And so after last call on Saturday, he’ll close Rockbar, the hipster hangout he opened six years ago. The other front? First Avenue Hotel at 101 Broadway, which could have a date with destiny next Thursday if the…

The McNichols Building, which will be launched this morning as a cultural and event space, got its start as a Carnegie Library — the biggest one in Colorado. But it was far from the only one. Over two decades at the turn of the last century, the Carnegie Corporation of…

You didn’t need to listen to all the pundits dissect the presidential debate to know that Colorado is still a swing state. Just check traffic reports: Today, Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan will hold a rally at Red Rocks — accompanied by Kid Rock. (This might be the only way…

The news that George McGovern, now ninety, is in hospice care stirred memories — not just of his campaign for president, but of a night in Ovando, Montana. I was at Trixi’s Antler Saloon when I started seeing familiar faces passing by: a man who looked like Dick Lamm, a…

Doug Campbell knows just how important third-party candidacies can be (and how often they’re ignored). After all, it was Tom Tancredo’s run for governor in 2010 as the American Constitution Party candidate that elevated that group to major-party status here in Colorado, even though Tancredo has since returned to the…

Back in 2007, Denver residents voted for an alphabet soup of nine civic improvements. While almost all of those bond-backed Better Denver projects are done (with signs to prove it), much of the money from G and H, earmarked for maintenance and construction of cultural facilities, including an update of…

This is National Wildlife Refuge Week, and the feds are encouraging you to “see what wildlife refuges are doing to conserve America’s wildlife heritage.” But when I asked if I could see Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge, the regional U.S. Fish & Wildlife office declined that request, and instead suggested…

If Mitt Romney comes back to Colorado before election day on November 6 — and he will, since this state is still in play — he has an invitation for a “family meal” with the Aguirres at Rosa Linda’s Mexican Cafe. But if he accepts this invitation, he can leave…

Every party has a pooper, and in the case of the 16th Street Mall’s thirtieth anniversary party, that would be the New York Times, which published an article on Tuesday’s celebration — both online and in print — that some boosters think made the event look a lot like Mayberry,…

When I stopped by Rosa Linda’s Mexican Cafe last week for lunch, the restaurant was empty. When I returned this past Monday, it was jammed. The Colorado Forward Obama campaign RV was just pulling away — with a lot of Rosa Linda’s to-go food and Governor John Hickenlooper inside the…

The celebration started late yesterday afternoon in the neighborhoods around Ninth Avenue and Colorado Boulevard, as news spread that Walmart had pulled out of the project that Jeff Fuqua plans to put in the old University of Colorado Health Sciences Center. If the timing had been a little different, they…

One of my great guilty pleasures, How the West Was Won, came on very early Sunday morning. I first saw this star-studded blockbuster as a kid at a drive-in movie in northern Illinois, and its Cinerama scenery fueled an early obsession with the West. Fifty years after its release, much…

Colorado was the first state to make Columbus Day an official holiday, in 1907. And today, state offices will be closed to mark what remains a holiday — and was celebrated with a Columbus Day Parade Saturday. But that parade didn’t inspire the protests that have been regular sights over…

The 16th Street Mall turned thirty yesterday, and it’s looking better than it has in years, with the best yet to come as work continues on the Union Station project. The mall’s official birthday celebration will be Tuesday at Skyline Park — but some critics won’t be coming to the…

In the crazed build-up to the presidential debate, I stopped by one of my favorite neighborhood spots for food and fellowship: Rosa Linda’s Mexican Cafe. Turns out, I missed the news right under my nose. Back at the office, we were reporting that Mitt Romney had lunched at Chipotle –…