Few people are lucky enough to have a Denver park named after them. 

Only one is unlucky enough to have Denver’s worst park named after him. 

At Phil Milstein Park, the only amenity is a lonely metal picnic table, which is often surrounded by trash, spoiled food and overgrown foliage. The deafening rumble of cars from  I-25 overwhelms any sense of peace. A detached bumper of a car hangs precariously from a tree.

The few bikers and runners on the South Platte River Trail hurry along the path and don’t stop to take in the scene. But not Sally Jones, who has been biking past the park for decades.

“It’s so shabby, and I don’t ever recall it being a nice park where you really want to come and recreate,” said Jones. “Part of it, of course, is the nearness to the highway. It’s not pleasant, no grass, no nothing.”

She wanted to know — is there any hope for Phil Milstein Park? 

And she’s not the only one. For some in Denver, including one city council member, the shabby condition of this riverine stretch is an insult to a man who shaped the modern city. 

Who was Phil Milstein? 

Milstein, born in 1907, was renowned for his contributions to Denver’s downtown. 

An engineer by trade, Milstein emerged in Denver’s politics scene in 1958, when he was appointed to the council due to a vacancy. His tenure was short — he lost his reelection campaign — but it was just the start of his influential public career. 

After his council tenure, he served on “dozens of boards, committees and task forces over the years,” according to the Rocky Mountain News, and was revered by several mayors. He was described as a key figure in the controversial development of the Auraria Campus, the beautification of the South Platte River and more. 

Image source: Colorado Historic Newspapers Collection

He was most associated with the redevelopment of downtown and 16th Street. Milstein was a founding member of Downtown Denver Inc., which eventually turned into the Downtown Denver Partnership. He was such a strong advocate for the creation of the 16th Street Mall that he was regularly cited as the “father of the mall” in newspapers. 

“If the heart of downtown Denver is Civic Center, then certainly its soul must be Philip Milstein, engineer, architect, preservationist, city planner, educator and volunteer core-city caretaker,” wrote one Rocky Mountain News reporter in 1991.

Even among downtown’s towering buildings, he paid attention to the small things. 

“Milstein has been known to stop strangers on downtown streets and ask them to pick up wrappers they’ve discarded,” wrote Rocky Mountain News reporter Suzanne Weiss in 1987.

After he turned 80, he earned a PhD in public administration at the University of Colorado Denver. He was given the unique honor of being designated an honorary Denver landmark by Denver City Council in 1984 — the first living being to be given the designation. 

When he died at the age of 85 in 1993, his service at Temple Emanuel was attended by hundreds. They honored a lifetime of achievements.

And then there was the park.

A local nonprofit dedicated the park. 

Mayor William H. McNichols had the downtown civic center building named after him. The Rose Medical Center was named for World War II hero General Maurice Rose. James A. Bible, once the head of the parks and recreation department, was honored with one of southeast Denver’s largest parks. 

Milstein’s reward for his service was the humble patch of land along the Platte. 

Milstein was a board member of the Platte River Greenway Foundation, which has worked to open new parks and plazas along the river. 

McKenzie Lange/CPR News

One of those parks was what later became Phil Milstein Park. On July 27, 1988 — several years before Milstein’s death — the Greenway Foundation dedicated its newest park to Milstein, dubbing it Milstein Grove.  

In a photo of the ceremony, Milstein and his wife, Elisabeth Milstein, pose in front of several newly planted trees and patches of grass at the park. 

“Milstein Grove promises to be one of the Greenway’s most beautiful parks, honoring a very special and valued Friend of the River,” the Foundation wrote in a 1988 newsletter.

The park hasn’t lived up to its promise. 

“Come here if you’re depressed and want to be, like, super depressed,” said one Google reviewer. 

Surrounded by a busy highway on one side and industrial buildings on the other, Phil Milstein Park isn’t accessible to anyone in particular. The nearest parking lot is a mile away at Frog Hollow Park. Google Maps is less than helpful, advising users to exit their vehicles at the onramp and hoof it downhill.

After Jones did more research about Milstein, she remarked that it was sad to see someone who had done so much for Denver “get so quickly forgotten.”

District 2 Councilmember Kevin Flynn knew Milstein during Flynn’s journalism career at the now-defunct Rocky Mountain News. He described him as a “real gentleman” whose love for the city was apparent. 

He first visited Phil Milstein Park about 15 years ago, when he was biking from Littleton to dinner downtown. When he came across the park’s sign, he was shocked. 

“I literally had to stop and I started choking up. I had tears in my eyes,” Flynn said. “I had no idea that there was a Phil Milstein Park, but I further had no idea that they honored him by placing this little patch of woebegone, overgrown grass and weeds under some ramps on the Sixth Avenue-I-25 interchange.”

Is there any hope for Phil Milstein Park?

Jones said that with millions of dollars being poured into other Denver parks, including tens of millions for the sprawling new Park Hill Park, she’d like to see more attention paid to Phil Milstein Park. 

But that appears unlikely for now.

While the city plans to invest millions into renovating the surrounding South Platte River Trail — namely pulling parts of it farther away from I-25 — construction will stop just short of Phil Milstein Park. 

Flynn floated the idea of renaming the three-block-long Skyline Park in downtown after Milstein, due to his involvement in the Skyline Urban Renewal Project. The project, which resulted in the displacement of 1,600 people, was a major part of the reinvention of downtown Denver in the 1960s.

McKenzie Lange/CPR News

“It just struck me that Skyline Park would be the best place,” Flynn said. “It’s the most appropriate because it’s at the intersection of some of his major initiatives.”

It wouldn’t be the first time a Denver park has been renamed. In 2020, a grassroots movement led the department to ask Denver City Council to approve a name change for what is now La Raza Park in Sunnyside. The park had previously been named after Christopher Columbus, the Italian explorer whose legacy has been reexamined in the 21st century. But we don’t know of a time that a name was ever moved from one park to another.

At the very least, Flynn hopes that the city can improve the area so it lives up to its initial promise. 

“Make it a grove, make it what it was supposed to be when it was first established,” Flynn said. “That’s the least that we ought to be able to do.”

Professional women’s hockey took center stage at Denver’s Ball Arena on Sunday, and many fans are hoping to see more.

The Minnesota Frost and New York Sirens both hit the road to show the City of Denver just what women’s hockey can be. This is a groundswell moment, and there’s been a lot of talk about whether Denver would be a good place for the PWHL to expand. The crowd that showed up on Sunday is a good indication that they would be well supported.

Hockey fan Ali Butler told CBSColorado, “Yeah, just kinda gives you goosebumps. It’s super exciting!”

The fans in the stands on Sunday had no place they’d rather be than cheering on the women playing at a professional level at Ball Arena; the stands were packed.

“One hundred percent. I mean, when I was playing in college, we didn’t have the stadium full, so it’s awesome to come here today and see the whole arena sold out,” said Butler.

Colorado already has an avid hockey fanbase thanks to the Colorado Avalanche.

“Ever since the Avs won the Stanley Cup, it’s clear we’re a hockey city,” said hockey fan Mitchell Curley. “So, you know the Avs, with DU being competitive, with CU being a great hockey team too, I think the next logical step is to have a women’s hockey team here.”

Some fans shared how excited they were to support sports teams who may not feel like they’re getting a fair shot.

“It was just fun to support women’s sports. I’m a former college athlete [in] women’s sports, and it’s just any time I get a chance, I want to come out and support them,” said Butler.

As the Frost and the Sirens pushed each other to greatness, those with big dreams said their struggle inspires young girls.

“I want to be one of them too, when I grow up,” one young fan shared excitedly.

Another added, “It means a lot. It feels good that there can be girls, too, who can play instead of the boys.”

That’s ultimately what it’s all about. Anyone can compete; they just have to want it. And many hope that tonight’s game could ultimately lead to talks about a women’s team in the Mile High City.

LOS ANGELES — It’s been a Murphy’s Law kind of season for the Nuggets at the end of games. They outdid themselves in Los Angeles, getting caught on the wrong end of perhaps the wildest play of the NBA season.

Protecting a 118-115 lead, Denver intentionally fouled Austin Reaves with 5.2 seconds left in regulation Saturday night. It was properly executed, a low-risk foul while Reaves’ back was to the basket so that he couldn’t feasibly go into a shooting motion. The Lakers guard stepped to the line for only two free throws — decidedly not enough to tie the game. Or so the Nuggets thought.

The one thing that could go wrong did go wrong.

“That’s one in 100 in the NBA,” coach David Adelman said after a 127-125 overtime loss. “It happened. You give them credit.”

Reaves made the first free throw then intentionally missed the second, launching a bullet off the front of the rim. The ball caromed to the left, beyond the reach of Denver’s two players stationed on the low blocks, and Reaves chased down his own rebound. Collecting the ball in stride, he buried a game-tying baseline runner with 1.9 seconds left to force overtime and eventually steal the season series from Denver.

“I mean, it’s a really good play. A perfect bounce,” a frustrated Nikola Jokic told The Denver Post. “He got the ball off his rebound. He made a floater.”

In the NBA, teams can only have three players inside the perimeter for an opponent’s free throw. Spencer Jones was the third in this case, but he was on the right side of the lane, while Jokic and Aaron Gordon were down low. Reaves had a step on Jones, if he could engineer the perfect miss into the empty space.

“JJ (Redick) told me to tell AR to miss right,” Luka Doncic said. “So, he missed left.”

“When I had kind of relayed instructions, it was to miss it to the right side because that was the single side at the time,” said Redick, the second-year coach of the Lakers. “It ended up being the left side was the single side, so they all gave me crap in the locker room. But AR made the right play. He missed it on the single side. It’s a hell of a basketball play.”

From the Nuggets’ vantage point, it was half cruel serendipity, half self-inflicted wound to not box out Reaves more urgently.

“He’s a really skilled player,” Aaron Gordon said. “He’s a talented guy. So it’s just in the flow of the game. It worked out for him. So tip your cap.”

“It’s a tough thing to do, to execute that like they did,” Cam Johnson said. “For us, it’s just, we’ve gotta kind of get a body on everybody and make it a little bit more murky. And that includes the shooter. So it’s a really tough play to make, but we gave it up.”

The Lakers could have chosen to make the free throw and extend the game with another foul; it would have guaranteed them one more opportunity to hoist a potential game-tying shot before the buzzer, down by three at worst. But they were out of timeouts at 5.2 seconds to go, which would’ve prevented them from advancing the ball and drawing up a play. They would’ve had to go the length of the floor, with the looming risk of another intentional foul by Denver.

What they did instead by intentionally missing was a play call itself, with multiple moving parts. Lakers center Deandre Ayton was on the left block. He allowed Jokic to get into ideal box-out position between him and the basket, then pushed the three-time MVP farther into the paint, clearing space on the left side for Reaves to pursue the rebound. Johnson and Jamal Murray were outside the 3-point line, trying to prevent LeBron James and Marcus Smart from crashing the glass.

The element of surprise on the intentional miss wasn’t a factor, according to Adelman, who pointed out that Smart’s lack of rebound attempt took another Nugget out of the play.

“We were expecting them to miss it,” he said. “We could see them saying ‘miss it.’ That’s why Spence came in. Spence is our best free-throw third rebounder. Had AG, had Nikola down there. Cam was dealing with LeBron coming from half-court, so he’s gotta stand him up. I think Jamal thought Marcus Smart was gonna crash, and he held, which gave Reaves an angle. And obviously, Ayton screened it in. … A wild play to force overtime.”

Jones made his initial motion toward the basket, a split-second decision that cost him the ability to get in front of Reaves and deny him the ball. Reaves was beelining for it as soon as it touched the rim.

“That’s a tough one, especially when we’re loaded up on the other side,” Jones told The Post, “and he’s able to get it off the rim to the opposite side where he might have a little bit of an advantage getting to it. … He put it in the right place where he had the best chance of getting it, and he got it.”

When asked if Doncic’s “miss right” instruction to Reaves threw anything off for Denver, Jones said no, noting that “either way, if we wind up on the (left) side, he would’ve tried to miss the other way.”

In a season of missed opportunities and clutch conundrums, this might’ve been Denver’s most painful stinger yet. Players were openly frustrated with defensive inconsistencies in the locker room after blowing a 106-98 lead with 5:13 to play. The end of regulation also included a missed free throw by Gordon with 9.9 seconds left that would’ve extended the lead to four.

Instead, it set up a stunning sequence that doubled as a fitting encapsulation of both teams’ seasons. Denver fell below .500 in games involving clutch time. Los Angeles improved its NBA-best clutch record to 18-6.

The Nuggets fell back into sixth place in the West. With a win, they would’ve been alone in third . Now if they finish the season in a two-way tie with the Lakers, the higher seed will belong to Los Angeles by virtue of head-to-head advantage.

“There are just so many ways we could have won the game tonight,” Johnson said. “We were in the driver’s seat for a lot of that fourth quarter. So for us, it’s just about closing games more effectively. And come playoff time, that’s really what it is. Playoff time is all about fourth-quarter execution. So we just have to be better.”