Visitors to City Park will soon be able to explore the long-awaited, $7.9 million playground that simulates the box canyons, beaver dams and other wild features of Colorado.

The Nature Play project, which is scheduled to open later this year, has been a construction fence fixture at the park ever since it broke ground in January 2023 — 20 months ago.

Project leaders at the time said it would open in late 2024, but about eight months ago, a Denver Museum of Nature & Science (DMNS) staffer mistakenly shared a notice saying it would be open this summer, prompting DMNS leaders to publicly reassert the original timeline.

“We always said it would open in fall 2024, so at the moment we still have to close out permits and are in the process of making sure all the plants we selected are going in,” said Jacqueline Altreuter, director of strategic planning at DMNS, and leader of Nature Play.

“When I saw that (false opening date) over the holidays I was like, ‘Oh no!’ so we tried to take that down pretty quickly,” she added.

Nature Play is a complex project that digs much deeper than the grassy expanses typically seen at Denver’s largest park. Its goal is to simulate miniature versions of the alpine tundra, grassland prairies, wetlands and other distinct environments that cover the state.

One of the templates was set 75 years ago, when Denver Botanic Gardens first opened in City Park. “Some of the areas in the southeast part were theirs before they moved to York Street, so there are lots of leftover plant species still growing,” Altreuter said. “Restoring those waterways, which were originally designed by Dutch architect Saco Rienk DeBoer to mimic mountain streams, is a big part of this.”

Nature Play brings together Denver Parks & Recreation and the DMNS for a project that’s been six years in the making. Situated just outside the museum, the 4-acre, gently hilly strip offers interactive chances for kids and students to learn how they work. That includes the process of carefully restoring natural ecosystems, museum officials said.

“Since Nature Play will be landscaped with native Colorado plants, we are hoping that we will see a return of insect species that aren’t currently found in City Park right now,” said John Demboski, senior vice president of science at the DMNS, in a statement.

Animal footprints from Colorado wildlife lead visitors into different areas, whether it’s a wooden swing set or the path of the waterway that connects the mini-ecosystems.

“When we asked people to tell us about experiences they had in nature that were memorable and meaningful and really lasted for them, 98% described something with water,” Altreuter said. “Now, we’re in an arid state, but we’re all connected by and reliant on water, so we wanted that to be a big component.”

As such, the project was designed to amplify the sounds of splashing water by narrowing the restored waterway at points and adding rocks to create the illusion of a larger stream or river. Nature Play uses very little water, however, and is fed by a diverted storm drain. The same water source irrigates Washington Park and feeds City Park’s Ferrill Lake, and it all eventually filters into the South Platte River, according to Denver Parks & Recreation.

So far, the only Nature Play impression for visitors has been the construction fences concealing the playground, plus a new, winding sidewalk that’s meant to discourage cyclists from barreling down a pedestrian path. But inside, they’ll soon see hundreds of new trees and plants, a 20-foot-tall Bighorn Sheep sculpture and play structure (it’s Colorado’s official state animal), a slide, climbable beaver dam, native pollinators, carven-wood benches, and tableaus inspired by the museum’s dozens of dioramas in its Explore Colorado gallery.

Many of the features in the playground spring from the 800 people surveyed about it in 2021, and crews had to change gears at times, as when researchers discovered a native bee colony they didn’t want to disrupt or move. Staying nimble through the project, which broke ground last year, has allowed designer Dig Studios to adapt to changing conditions, officials said.

About 70% of the space featured existing trees, which they needed to work around, but only one tree was removed,  Altreuter said (and that’s because it was dead). Seeing squirrels, falcons, foxes, and bunnies frequent the construction site reassured workers at ECI Site Construction that they hadn’t disrupted the habitat — at least not too much.

“There’s a lot of thoughtfulness and artistry inside the space,” Altreuter said, noting that the Loveland artist known as Chainsaw Mama created custom wooden benches for the project. “We want to connect the museum and its mission to the park, and this brings together so many ways to do that.”

Originally Published: August 15, 2024 at 6:31 a.m.

DENVER — Denver District Attorney Beth McCann on Wednesday explained her decision not to file criminal charges against three officers who shot and killed a person in June.

Around 11:44 a.m. on June 16, officers were called out to Broadway and Lawrence Street for a report of a person holding a knife in the intersection. Denver Police Chief Ron Thomas said officers confronted the person and gave them commands to drop the knife, but they refused and began advancing toward the officers.

After at least two tasing attempts, three officers opened fire and fatally struck the person, according to Thomas.

The person who was killed was identified as 52-year-old Miguel Tapia. Previously, the person was identified by Denver police as a woman and during a following press briefing was described as a transgender person. In her decision letter, McCann said Tapia “presented as a female at the time of this incident but the medical examiner identified him as a male.”

The district attorney said in her letter, “Because we do not know how the individual preferred to be identified or addressed, we refer to Tapia as “he/him.””

During the news conference, Denver Police Department Commander Matt Clark said the incident began with several motorists reporting a person standing in the intersection.

“One caller advised the subject was yelling at passing motorists ’to kill them,’” said Clark.

He said a nearby Denver Park Ranger saw Tapia and alerted police dispatchers that “the subject had a knife with an eight-inch blade in a bag.”

“When officers arrived, the subject was carrying several bags but did not have a weapon in their hand,” said Clark. “The officers could see the handle of what appeared to be a large knife in a bag that the person was wearing over their shoulder.”

Clark said officers attempted to de-escalate the situation by speaking in both English and Spanish.

“An officer also visually demonstrated that he wanted the person to put their hands on their head,” said Clark. “The subject did not comply with the officer’s direction and instead retrieved the large knife for the over-the-shoulder bag they were wearing. The subject held the knife in their right hand while pointing it — the point of the knife — directly at officers.”

The department released body camera video showing the sequence leading up to the fatal shots.

On Wednesday, McCann told reporters that officers were justified in using deadly force against Tapia.

“I found it reasonable for the officers to believe that Mr. Tapia was about to commit assault with the knife, or even worse actually,” said McCann.

McCann believed the officers were in imminent danger of being killed or wounded.

“After the tasers were not effective, they did not have time to do anything other than to use deadly physical force,” she said.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz joked about his “interesting” first week as Kamala Harris’ running mate on the Democratic presidential ticket and criticized Donald Trump’s background on Wednesday during a Denver fundraiser that collected $3 million for the campaign.

“This week has been interesting,” Walz told roughly 150 attendees in the backyard of the 33,000-square-foot Phipps Mansion, owned by Democratic megadonor Tim Gill. “That’s a Minnesota word, ‘interesting’ — so you Minnesotans know, it has multiple meanings.”

He recounted being selected by Harris last week and then soon being put on a plane to a rally in Philadelphia — where he was told: “Here, you’ve got 45 minutes to read this speech off the teleprompter.”

“Perhaps I neglected to tell you,” Walz recounted to laughs and cheers, “I’ve never used a teleprompter in my life.”

The fundraiser was part of Walz’s first solo trip since joining the Harris ticket, a three-day, five-state swing. During his 15-minute in Denver in the early afternoon, Walz praised Harris’ “politics of kindness” and joked with Gov. Jared Polis, his former congressional counterpart and baseball teammate.

He also criticized Trump, the Republican nominee, drawing a contrast between Harris’ background — both as a prosecutor and as a former McDonald’s employee — and the former president’s.

Walz said he recently asked labor leaders in California if they could see Trump making a McFlurry. He paraphrased a Harris rally line, saying the vice president had gone after “fraudsters” and “predators,” adding: “We know who that might be.”

He said there was “no safety net” when speaking in front of the large crowds that are common on a presidential campaign trail.

Polis, who’d introduced him, chimed in: “Are you saying they’re not all AI?”

That was a reference to a false claim Trump made in recent days — that the Harris campaign had used artificial intelligence to inflate crowd sizes in a picture from a recent campaign stop in Michigan.

“I assure you, in Detroit, that wasn’t AI, and I’ll also assure you that every one of the ballots they’re going to cast will not be AI,” Walz replied, to cheers.

Trump was recently in Colorado, making a stop in Aspen Saturday during a multistate Mountain West swing that he said raised $28 million. Since Harris picked Walz, Republicans have focused their attacks most heavily on aspects of his more than two decades of National Guard service, but little was said about the topic at the Denver fundraiser.

The $3 million raised for the Harris Victory Fund on Wednesday was announced by Gill. Also in attendance were former U.S. Reps. John Salazar and Ed Perlmutter, current U.S. Rep. Joe Neguse, Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, former Denver Mayor Wellington Webb and former state House Speaker Alec Garnett, now Polis’ chief of staff.

Walz spoke broadly about Democratic priorities and ideals — like supporting “common-sense gun legislation” and addressing climate change and poverty — though he provided few specific policy proposals.

Polis said he’d told Walz not to spend any campaign cash on winning Colorado, which has turned reliably blue in recent years and went for Biden by 13.5 percentage points over Trump in 2020. Polis said Harris and Walz’s presence on the ticket would be enough to support Democrats’ down-ballot efforts, meaning to preserve a state House supermajority and win a similar margin in the state Senate.

Still, Walz urged attendees to keep working in the 83 days that remained until Election Day.

“Sleep when you’re dead,” he said.

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Originally Published: August 14, 2024 at 4:26 p.m.