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December 23, 2021
DENVER, COLORADO
A publication of
VOLUME 95 | ISSUE 5
Helping to fill a need for preschool Denver Preschool Program adds services BY CHRISTY STEADMAN CSTEADMAN@COLORADOCOMMUNITYMEDIA.COM
Elisa Kim Lee and her husband, Chanyang, are happy to see that because of a preschool education, their young children are learning to write their names and use English, and they get to do enriching, hands-on activities every day. “But the best is that they are learning to integrate in a society where they can learn diversity and inclusion,” Elisa Kim Lee said. The Lees wanted to send their children to preschool. All of their family members live abroad, so they could not depend on family for childcare. But they could not afford preschool on their own, so the Lees had no choice but to have one parent stay home and provide full-time childcare. “I wanted to give my kids the best, but at home, we faced a lot of limitations as parents,” Elisa Kim Lee said. She added that at home, there were challenges with being able to provide education and discipline. Now, however, the Lees’ two
Advocacy groups demanded reversal of previous decision BY MICHAEL BOOTH THE COLORADO SUN
Place. One tower will rise 400 feet — the max, dictated by zoning — and include 38 stories; the other will rise around 350 feet and include 32 stories. The towers will boast ground-floor retail and both belowand above-ground parking. The building will also include a swimming pool deck and other amenities
The state Water Quality Control Commission has reversed itself and agreed to consider tougher protections for urban streams, another sign of activists deploying recent environmental justice laws in safeguarding local water, land and air. The commission on Dec. 13 unanimously accepted demands in a petition from a coalition of conservation and advocacy groups that they revisit staff recommendations rejected in 2020 that would have upgraded protections for the South Platte River and Clear Creek. The upgrades rejected at a June 2020 commission meeting would have made it harder for industries and other water polluters to get effluent permits in stretches of heavily impacted urban waters that nevertheless show some signs of fish and wildlife recovery. That 2020 decision, and a commissioner’s statement that higher protections were reserved for “pristine mountain waters,” infuriated a coalition of dozens of conservation groups and local governments, from Colorado GreenLatinos to Trout Unlimited to Denver City Council members.
SEE CONDOS, P8
SEE RIVERS, P4
Anna Lee, 3, works on a project during class time at her preschool. The Denver Preschool Program helped the Lee family of Denver send both Anna and her sister, COURTESY OF ELISA KIM LEE Elizabeth, 4, to preschool.
children — Elizabeth, 4, and Anna, 3 — attend the Primrose School at Colorado Station in Denver’s University Hills neighborhood. “Without the Denver Preschool
Program, we would not have been able to even consider a preschool education for our kids. We are very SEE PRESCHOOL, P6
Denver’s largest condo project in years on the way 461 units coming to old Shelby’s Bar site BY KYLE HARRIS DENVERITE
Canadian developer Amacon is ready to build two massive towers in Denver’s Central Business District on the edge of Uptown.
Colo. eyes tougher water-quality rules for South Platte, Clear Creek
The land is purchased. Permits are complete. The site is fenced off. Next step: construction. Unlike most new Denver projects, the Amacon Towers will offer market-rate condos to buy — not rent. The buildings, designed by Davis Partnership Architects, will take over a long vacant parking lot and the former site of Shelby’s Bar & Grill, at 18th Street and Glenarm
INSIDE: VOICES: PAGE 10 | LIFE: PAGE 12 | CALENDAR: PAGE 9
REIMAGINING ‘NUTCRACKER’ Colorado Ballet’s production gets new garb
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