Denver, CO
In Denver sports, Broncos are back of the pack
Over the weekend, the University of Denver sealed the deal on their 10th NCAA hockey championship, the most in college hockey history. The Denver Nuggets are the reigning NBA champions. The Avalanche are poised to make a serious run in the playoffs this year after winning it all in 2022. Then there are the Broncos and the Rockies.
For as long as I have been alive, the Denver Broncos have sat atop the mile high mountain as the cream of the crop franchise in Denver. Now, they are right there with one of the biggest jokes in professional sports, the Colorado Rockies. How did the Broncos come to find themselves keeping company with a team that has no desire to win or field a team that has any hope to compete?
While the billionaire owners raise ticket prices on season ticket holders after their 9th consecutive season without appearing in the playoffs, it’s a play right out of the Monfort playbook to shake as much cash out of the fans for a beyond sub-standard product. In lieu of improving the team, both the Walton-Penners and the Monforts choose to invest in material upgrades like party decks and ridiculous exclusive bars like Club 1977. While the new scoreboard at Mile High is nice, when everybody leaves in the third quarter because of another blowout, what does it matter?
Stadium upgrades and new uniforms are nice, but what ownership needs to get intimately involved with is the product on the field. It’s entirely possible that Broncos Country will endure a decade of losing since Super Bowl 50. Let’s focus on winning and less on all the outside stuff, like porking the fans for more money for a sub-standard product.
With so much sports success in Colorado these days, the attention span and patience for ineptitude isn’t what it was during the 1960’s and early 1970’s, the last time they were consistently this bad. Basketball, hockey, and college hockey have all grown up around the decaying mess that is the Broncos. Competition for eyeballs is hotter than it’s ever been before. If the Broncos don’t become more team and fan focused, they are right there in the running to join the Rockies as a laughingstock of professional sports. Heck, we may already be there.
HEADLINES
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NFL Draft 2024 needs for Broncos, Raiders, Chiefs, and Chargers in AFC West, plus pick breakdown – SBNation.com
The 2024 NFL Draft is days away. What do the teams in the AFC West need?
J.J. McCarthy is in New England, meeting with Patriots – NBC Sports
Michigan quarterback J.J.
Jared Goff calls trade to Lions the “greatest thing that ever happened to me” – NBC Sports
Three years ago, the Rams decided to move on from quarterback Jared Goff.
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George Kittle thinks the 49ers’ offensive continuity can help them be even better in 2024.
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Rice has been working out with QB Patrick Mahomes in Texas.
Joe Burrow: I think Bengals are built to beat the Chiefs – NBC Sports
The Chiefs made it to the Super Bowl for the fourth time in the last five seasons earlier this year, but their trip to the championship was a bit different than in previous years.
Aaron Rodgers arrives at start of Jets’ voluntary offseason program – NBC Sports
The Jets are among the 25 teams opening their voluntary offseason programs today, and Aaron Rodgers is voluntarily attending.
2024 NFL Draft: Brock Bowers headlines 6 first-round wild cards; what is Michael Penix Jr.’s ceiling/floor?
Brock Bowers is widely viewed as one of the most talented prospects available in the 2024 NFL Draft. So why is he being mocked all over the board? Bucky Brooks takes a closer look at the Georgia tight end. Plus, five more first-round wild cards.
Bengals WR Tee Higgins expects to play for Cincinnati in 2024 after requesting trade
Wide receiver Tee Higgins revealed he anticipates playing for the Bengals in 2024 despite a trade request last month.
Twenty-five NFL teams kick off voluntary offseason workout program today
The NFL’s voluntary offseason program kicks off on Monday for the 25 clubs with returning head coaches.
Colts agree to two-year, $46 million contract extension with DT DeForest Buckner
The Indianapolis Colts have agreed to a two-year, $46 million contract extension with three-time Pro Bowl defensive tackle DeForest Buckner, NFL Network Insider Ian Rapoport reported.
Bengals QB Joe Burrow wants to see the NFL change this rule that currently results in a 15-yard penalty – CBSSports.com
Burrow makes it clear he’s ‘pro taunting’
2024 NFL Draft: Von Miller appears to want the Bills to trade up for a Stefon Diggs replacement – CBSSports.com
Could Buffalo move up in the first round?
DENVER — Dr. Justina Ford’s name adorns plaques and statues across Denver, where she delivered more than 7,000 babies as the city’s first licensed Black woman physician. Now, an affordable housing building in Five Points, the neighborhood where she lived and worked for 50 years, bears her name.
The newly christened Justina at Five Points, formerly Brunetti Lofts, offers a rare commodity in Denver’s housing market: family-sized affordable housing units.The 23-unit building, built in 2005, has 19 three-bedroom units. Rents range from $840 to $1,893 per month. Residents must make between 30% and 60% of Denver’s area median income, and specific income requirements vary depending on the unit.
“I do believe that in the last, five, ten years, maybe a little longer, housing here in Colorado has just gone crazy. I mean, I have a little two-bedroom townhouse, and I can’t afford to move back in the neighborhood I grew up in because of the pricing. And it’s just crazy,” said Daphne Rice-Allen, chair of the board at the Black American West Museum and Heritage Center, which is housed in Ford’s historic home in Five Points.
Rice-Allen grew up in Clayton, which is northeast of Five Points. This cluster of neighborhoods in north Denver — Five Points, Cole, Whittier and Clayton — were among the areas deemed “hazardous” and “definitely declining” on the city’s 1938 “Residential Security Map,” which redlined neighborhoods with Black, Mexican and lower-income residents.
At that time, Five Points flourished as a cultural and entertainment hub, known as “the Harlem of the West” and serving as “the seat of Denver’s African American community.” Black social clubs, such as the Owl Club, emerged. And Ford, who arrived in Denver in 1902 and was not allowed to work in a hospital, continued to provide medical care out of her house and deliver babies at her patients’ homes.
“This was a family neighborhood, Rice-Allen said about Five Points during that period.
“There were a lot of families that lived in the area and lived in the neighborhood.”
But Five Points’ demographics have changed a lot since Ford died in 1952. About 30% of households in the neighborhood were families in 2020. By 2024, that percentage dropped to about 20%.
The neighborhood experienced a drastic shift in racial demographics as well. In 2000, about 27% of the residents were white, 26% Black and 43% Hispanic. The 2020 census told a different story: 64% white, 10% Black and 17% Hispanic.
What was once a Black cultural hub is now a majority-white neighborhood, which raises concerns about gentrification and displacement of long-time residents. Despite the large supply of affordable housing units in the area — 2,796 in 2024 — about half of renters in Five Points are cost-burdened, meaning they spent more than 30% of their income on housing.
For most food manufacturers, it makes more financial sense to bake, brew, cook or create their product somewhere where the square footage is a little less expensive, like a business park, and to sell it where the rent – and the foot traffic – is higher.
Kent Beidel, who owns a string of mountain-town ice cream parlors called Sundae, did the opposite when he opened his newest and, by far, his biggest location in downtown Denver.
“We wanted to be right in front of people and hear them say, ‘Oh my god, they make the ice cream right here,’” he explained. “It’s backward … it’s hard. But it’s unique, and it’s really cool.”
Sundae opened in early June in a 5,100-square-foot space that includes a retail shop, a waffle cone-making “theater” where people can watch the staff turn out fresh cones, a pint-mixing classroom and a commercial kitchen – visible to customers on three sides through glass windows – that could one day supply multiple stores around Denver.
Beidel is betting those attributes will help the business stand apart from the competition in Denver, where there are already several big names making and selling scoops in multiple locations.
But that’s not the only gamble he took. Sundae is located on Sixteenth Street, the 44-year-old pedestrian mall that has become both a symbol of the city’s urban decay since the pandemic and a beacon of hope for its future after a $175 million renovation.
“Sixteenth Street is interesting,” said Beidel, who has watched it change over the past year since he first signed his lease at 1600 Glenarm Place. “It’s coming back. It still has a way to go, but we are seeing momentum start to build. Even in the last month, the foot traffic and the feeling downtown has perked up. … We are getting great feedback.”
To help, the Denver Downtown Development Authority — as part of a much larger business incentive plan — loaned Sundae $750,000. “It’s a loan,” he said. “We have to pay it back. … But we couldn’t have done this location without that support.”
Beidel has been in the food business for 22 years. Before ice cream, he was the founder of Loaded Joe’s, a restaurant and coffee shop staple in Vail. But in 2016, he sold Loaded Joe’s and took over two former Marble Slab Creamery locations in Vail and Edwards, rebranding them as Sundae. In 2020, he opened a third shop in Glenwood Springs.
“That was our first chance to build from scratch and decide what it should look like,” he explained, adding that Glenwood, which includes a kitchen, eventually began making ice cream for Sundae’s next two locations in Basalt and Snowmass.
To make the ice cream, Beidel said he employs five pastry chefs to create recipes. So, rather than using cheesecake flavoring, for instance, for cheesecake ice cream, Sundae uses all the same ingredients you would use to make real cheesecake.
The cheesecake, by the way, is among Beidel’s favorite flavors, but Salted Cookies & Cream and Caramelized Banana are two of the most popular with customers. Classic chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry are also top sellers – “and always will be,” he added.
Next month, Beidel hopes to open the classroom, where people can learn how to make ice cream and then whip up some of their own flavors to take home. And down the road, he plans to open more locations.
But in the meantime, he’s focused on downtown. “Let’s say Denver does really become vibrant again. We have a great product and a great following in the mountains. So, it’s just a matter of time down here.”
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