Westwood revival
In west Denver’s largely Spanish-speaking neighborhood, progress is taking root while decades of city neglect fade and hope emerges
O n Morrison Road, a diagonal that slices through one of west Denver’s most hardscrabble neighborhoods, an air of change is unmistakable.
It’s evident in the food trucks that park behind the Kitchen Network Commissary, a collection of commercial kitchens that for 15 years has served as a launching pad for small food businesses and now is being bought by the local business association to support local entrepreneurship. It’s reflected in the vibrant, colorful murals on buildings that used to be tagged with graffiti.
And it’s visible in a Mexican restaurant called Kahlo’s that, while still struggling in its first year on the strip, is a bet by the owner of an established eatery on nearby Federal Boulevard that Morrison Road is primed for a resurgence.
That wager could be a good one, based on a number of community- and government-driven initiatives along Morrison and elsewhere in the largely Spanish-speaking Westwood neighborhood.
The 1.5-mile Morrison Road, which runs southwest from Alameda Avenue, is poised to undergo a multimilliondollar transformation making it friendlier to people on foot and adding new nods to Mexican and Latin American culture, along with other amenities. In another big win for the neighborhood, more than $30 million in city money will build a much-needed recreation center.
The forthcoming projects, to be funded through a $937 million bond package approved by Denver voters last month, join numerous community initiatives. Driven by nonprofit groups and neighborhood advocates, they have addressed other neighborhood challenges, from difficulties facing the elderly to early childhood education to Westwood’s status as a fresh-food desert.
“What I’m seeing is that a lot of people are involved now that wouldn’t have been before,” said Santiago Jaramillo, 44, a third-generation resident
of Westwood who has owned a gallery and tattoo shop. “And a lot of people are really hopeful for the change. We felt kind of passed over for a really long time.”
The Westwood neighborhood’s business boosters consider Morrison Road its de facto main street. But if that takes some imagination now — amid sometimes-clumsy intersections with side streets and a scattershot of bars, auto repair shops and small offices — the city bond list, which includes $12 million for Morrison, will nudge the mainstreet vision closer to reality.
The Morrison Road project includes the slimming down of the road and pedestrian improvements, changing it from an arterial street to a neighborhood connector; aesthetic enhancements and gateways to new districts; five reworked intersections; and, with help from other another grant program, two new community gathering places modeled on Mexican plazas.
Another hard-fought win for Westwood’s mainly Latino residents: $37.5 million for a new recreation center.
For a neighborhood that has Denver’s largest concentration of children — residents younger than 18 make up 40 percent of residents and have one of the city’s highest rates of childhood obesity — the lack of a recreation center long has felt like more than an oversight.
Making progress
“What we’re achieving is just leveling the playing field with the rest of the city,” said Paul López, who grew up in Westwood but now lives in Villa Park to the north. Since 2007, he has represented the area on the City Council, helping residents oppose liquor license applications, often successfully, while pressuring the city to pave alleys. “This isn’t whipped cream. This is the cake that we’ve been longing to enjoy.”
Jaramillo, the longtime Westwood resident, painted some of the area’s murals. He remembers the widespread surge of violence in the early 1990s that turned the formerly quiet neighborhood into one of several that still are perceived by outsiders to be dangerous places.
In recent years, crime rates have ticked down steadily in Westwood. Both violent and property crime declined 13 percent in the first 11 months of this year, according to Denver police data. Among 78 Denver neighborhoods, Westwood has improved from having the 14th-highest violentcrime rate four years ago to ranking 29th this year.
Combating neglect
But few advocates expect the money flowing into the community of nearly 17,000 to be a panacea after decades of widespread poverty and neglect by the city.
And some residents are suspicious of the changes, which already include fastrising home values — even though Denver’s influx of newcomers has tended to flock elsewhere in the city, largely sparing Westwood from gentrification concerns so far. The most recent census estimates put the median household income in Westwood at just over $34,000 a year, compared to $56,258 in the city as a whole.
There are occasional reminders that life remains more volatile in Westwood.
In May, a bullet fired from a passing car found a 15-year-old girl, killing her as she slept in the front room of her family’s home on the 4200 block of West Dakota Avenue. Police said they believed the house was targeted, and it was the second of two homicides in the neighborhood this year.
Homeownership high
Despite a high rate of homeownership — nearly half the homes in Westwood are owner-occupied, according to census estimates — plenty of residents struggle.
López and other city officials say predatory lenders contributed to a high foreclosure rate in Westwood and other West Denver neighborhoods that took hold years before the last recession hit the rest of the city. Only in the last few years has the situation stabilized, partly because the economy improved and in part due to city homeowner assistance programs, said Jeff Romine, the city’s chief economist.
For renters, López says, the upswing in property values introduces new uncertainty as to whether their homes will remain affordable.
Among the plans under development is the creation of a Mexican Cultural District on Morrison Road. The eastern border of the neighborhood, along Federal Boulevard, already is known as “Little Saigon,” because of the strong presence of Vietnamese restaurants.
“When I look in the future and see where Denver is going, I think Morrison Road is in a perfect spot to do business. I see the potential,” said Noe Bermudez, 41, who grew up in Uruapan, Mexico, and moved to the United States three decades ago.
He has lived in Denver for 25 years, first working for more than a decade as a restaurant manager. Twelve years ago, he opened Tarasco’s New Latino Cuisine on Federal. And in the last year, he added Kahlo’s on Morrison.
Bermudez knew the first few years of a new business can be tough. So far, customers have streamed through the doors slowly at Kahlo’s, he said. But he remains optimistic.
“It’s still a good Spanish community,” he said.
Plan for upswing
Bermudez is not alone in Westwood’s business community, which has planned patiently for this moment.
The Morrison Road Business Association, formed 31 years ago, is now known as the BuCu West Development Association, with the first word combining “business” and “culture.” It has received more than $550,000 in city support since 2011, according to the economic development office.
The organization previously worked to install a median with plants in the central area of Morrison Road, said Jose Esparza, its executive director. Though it has developed a detailed streetscaping plan that would cost upward of $19 million, the project was pared back to $12.2 million in the city’s bond list process before the November election.
“We were lucky enough to be in that conversation, so we’re very happy with our compromise — to reconstruct the northern and southern ends of Morrison Road,” he said, building on the earlier improvements in the central section.
A group called Re:Vision has helped residents plant hundreds of backyard gardens and started the Westwood Food Cooperative at 3738 Morrison Road last year. So far, 290 members have signed up during a pilot phase, the group says. But it has work to do to reach the 1,000 members seen as necessary before it builds a full-service grocery in a couple years.
During the summer, the co-op sold produce grown in an urban farm out back.
As López, the councilman, looks at the neighborhood where he grew up, the changes underway amount to “a new chapter” for Westwood.
“Twenty years ago, if I were to walk around and say, ‘I am from Westwood,’ I would have hung my head,” López said. “It was typical for us to hang our heads. Well, that game has changed.”
Denver Post photographer RJ Sangosti contributed to this report.