RiNo, Scrape-offs, and Reverence

Denver is a wonderful city, both in it's amenities and in its philosophy. Someone sometime set out to make Denver an attractive place to live and one that preserved the roots and history of the men and women who created Denver and the inherent learnings from history.

We went last weekend to RiNo, River North, running for 40 blocks along Walnut, Larimer and Blake Streets North of the downtown area. Live / work lofts, single studios, clusters of like kinds of art activities, and lots of studios of unique techniques for home renovators dot the area.

We were there specifically to look at "chalk painting." It's a technique where a flat textured paint is applied over whatever surface without any real surface preparation. We've purchased a lot of furniture units on the various lists and in the various consignment shops around town, and we'll repurpose those as sink bases and storage cabinets. But, they need to be refinished and we don't want to spend a lot of time, money and energy scraping off the old finish. So, chalk paint. We can put it on the repurposed furniture without even sanding the old finish. Our friend's first project will probably be to refresh her kitchen cabinets.


That's a cool technique, but not really the point of this post. The RiNo district is one of the many renewed and revered areas within Denver. Others include LoDo (Lower Downtown), Larimer Square, Riverfront, Cherry Creek, Golden Triangle Museum District, Uptown, Highlands, Art on Sante Fe, Five Points, Capitol Hill / Congress Park, East Colfax ...... each area has its own special history, ambiance carefully preserved and revered.

Not everyone is a proponent of renewing without destroying. In the Washington Park area, the residents were too slow in getting the "Historical District" label and have been suffering what they call "scrape offs." That's where a developer comes in, buys a lot or two, scrapes off everything on the lot, and puts up a new home / duplex / etc. that's out of character with the neighborhood that originally grew up in the late 1800s, early 1900s. To their credit, there are some developers who have a reverence for the history and background of the neighborhood, and their scrape off projects result in period correct new homes.

That brings me to the real point of this entry. We spent almost 15 years revering and restoring, maybe even improving the home we left in Alameda. We are saddened to hear from friends still in that area that the new owners have started the process of "scraping off" what we worked so hard to create.

I didn't have an appreciation of how the residents of Wash Park felt about the scrape offs there until I experienced it myself. One of the things we liked most about our Alameda home (after our fine friends and neighbors) was the "Southwestern" flavor of the downstairs room, the heart Redwood deck in the backyard, and the little garden shed with the reclaimed windows that we built with our own hands. So sad to report that the rapists who bought our house have started a systematic destruction of the Alameda house. The southwestern room downstairs went first, then we heard that the front driveway would be widened to accommodate a basketball court, the rock gardens and specimen succulents will go as part of that project, now the back deck is no more, and the gardening shed fell under the sledgehammer.

I'm probably too sensitive and sentimental. I probably shouldn't think about the memories, the work, the fine days lounging in the cool of the backyard listening to the birds, or waking on Sundays to the sounds of the two squirrel kits chasing each other around and up and down the Redwood tree. I probably should just sit back and thank Harry and Natasha for buying us two new homes in Denver.

But, I just can't thank them for destroying our small piece of art and history .......