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.”