I read in the Denver Post that the folks who were snookered into buying overpriced condos and or paying exorbitant rents for puny apartments down along the railroad tracks are “concerned” that the railroads are transporting lots of tanker cars filled with crude oil and “other flammable liquids.”
Duhhh… What did these folks think the railroads were going to be hauling down the tracks? Gold ore from Central City and silver ore from Leadville?
If you’re DUMB enough to buy an overpriced condo that looks like a lego block from some giant’s toy box, and this over-sized lego condo is along side a railroad track that have been there since before you or your parents, or very likely your grandparents, were born — Too Bad, So Sad.
Here’s a plan for Mayor Hancock’s working group on the safety concerns relevant to building things along side railroad tracks that shouldn’t be built along side railroad tracks: Use the city’s power of eminent domain, buy up all those tacky boxes and bulldoze them. Replace them with a green space of buffalo grass and other drought tolerant indigenous wildflowers (aka weeds). That way, should there be some sort unfortunate incident involving a train hauling crude oil or some other flammable fluid or toxic fluids emergency responders won’t be hindered by flaming boxes of tickey-tackey with hysterical residents gullible enough to buy a shoddy looking condo next to a railroad track.
Granted, those of us who may live down wind from the wreck, will need to be concerned about the toxic fumes blowing our way on the wind, but hey that’s been a problem for people since our ancestors learned to harness fire.
Denver and the suburbs could benefit from a wide green belt of buffalo grasses and sunflowers and rabbit weed along side the tracks. Such a green belt would benefit cyclist and walker and joggers and runners and skateboarders and roller-bladders and anyone else whose waistbands and blood sugar levels need a nice wide green belt in which to burn calories.
The dispossessed of Riverfront Park and Central Platte Valley and other affected areas should be encouraged to buy from developers offering housing that would be built along Colfax. Too much of Colfax is in desperate need of some sort of “urban renewal” even if it is drab colored blocks stacked up along a once thriving thoroughfare.
If Mayor Hancock had half the vision of albeit corrupt Mayor Ben Stapleton, he would find a way to run a street car down the middle of Colfax so the residents of the lego-condos could commute with ease to their downtown offices and to the green belt along side the railroad tracks where they could, walk, bike, jog, skateboard, roller-blade or just sit and watch the rabbits that would inevitably take up residence in such an urban “wilderness.”
If I were a sculptor and or creator of large works of “public” art, I would have to admit that the following was self-serving, but I’m not, so it will only benefit some acquaintances: The railroad green belt could also become a sculpture garden. Now I grant you that in the event of some accident involving the derailing of railroad cars large works of art could encumber firefighters, but it’s a hazard I believe worth taking.
Expensive? Maybe so, but quality is never cheap. And yes, hopefully existing neighborhood associations along Colfax would refuse to allow developers to construct the tawdry lego box buildings that would be removed from alongside the railroad tracks.
But the city gets a much needed and long overdo remake of Colfax, particularly East Colfax, which would hopefully continue east into Aurora. And it gets a safer railroad corridor thru the city, which can provide a place in which calories can be burned all year round and a unique location for public art can be established.