Citizen Centennial 12-6-2013
Centennial
Arapahoe County, Colorado • Volume 13, Issue 3
December 6, 2013
A Colorado Community Media Publication
ourcentennialnews.com
County, city face strained relations Mayor, newly elected council members hope to improve relationship By George Lurie
glurie@ourcoloradonews.com
Construction workers do exterior brick work on Dec. 2 on the 18,000-square-foot expansion of the Cherrywood Square King Soopers, located at Dry Creek and Arapahoe roads. Photos by George Lurie
Shopping centers get facelifts Renovation continues at University and Dry Creek By George Lurie
glurie@ourcoloradonews.com Two busy District 1 shopping centers near the intersection of Dry Creek Road and University Boulevard are getting major facelifts. The King Soopers in the Cherrywood Square Shopping Center is currently undergoing a multimillion-dollar renovation that will expand the grocery store by 18,000 square feet. And across University Boulevard, a new Larkburger is under construction and expected to open early next year. The popular “all natural, gourmet burger and fries” restaurant will serve as anchor tenant for the new development at the west end of the Dry Creek Shopping Center, which, according to the property manager, is nearly 100 percent leased. Both the Cherrywood Square and Dry Creek shopping centers are more than 30 years old, but have been updated and expanded in recent years as they have become increasingly busier, especially
A new Larkburger restaurant is under construction and scheduled to open early next year in the Dry Creek Shopping Center. during the noon hour on weekdays, when students from nearby Arapahoe High School walk across Dry Creek to eat lunch and shop. Construction work on the King Soopers expansion started earlier this fall and
is scheduled to be completed in June 2014. KTK General Contracting Limited is the general contractor on the project. Matt Koppenhafer, owner and project Malls continues on Page 11
Sloppiness cited in mental health delay Uproar leads state to start process over By Kristin Jones
I-News at Rocky Mountain PBS Susan Beckman wants you to know that “a lot of sloppy work” — and not a conspiracy — were behind the state’s botched job of finding someone to run a network of walk-in mental health crisis centers. Beckman, a Littleton resident and former Arapahoe County commissioner, heads the administrative branch of the Colorado Department of
Human Services, the office responsible for the failed solicitation process. The department has been accused of colluding with local actors — that is, local providers of mental health services — to Beckman elbow out a newcomer, but Beckman says a slew of mistakes were just human error. The department on Nov. 22 issued a new request for proposals to run the crisis centers, three weeks after deciding to
rescind an award it had made on Oct. 16 to Crisis Access of Colorado, which set up shop in the state for the purpose of applying for the contract. Crisis Access is affiliated with a private Georgia-based crisis intervention company called Behavioral Health Link and Recovery Innovations, an organization with operations in Arizona, California and Washington. Awards made to two Denver-based companies — Metro Crisis Services, to run a hotline, and Cactus Communications, for marketing — were also scuttled. The contracts will deter-
mine who runs the keystone mental health initiative of the Hickenlooper administration. The crisis stabilization centers are meant to take pressure off of hospital emergency rooms, jails and prisons — which have become the main providers of services for people with mental illness — after decades of funding shortfalls. But so far, the piece of legislation meant to promote unity and cooperation among mental health service providers in Colorado has proven divisive, at best. Delay continues on Page 7
The cancellation earlier this year of a plan by city council to annex 77 acres in unincorporated Arapahoe County for the development of a proposed business park exposed a long-standing rift between city and county officials. At an Oct. 14 city council meeting, several members of the city council expressed frustration about the lack of “communication” with county officials regarding key details of the proposed annexation — and in particular which local government entity, Centennial or Arapahoe County, would Noon be responsible for funding necessary street improvements. After the proposed annexation was derailed, Councilwoman Rebecca McClellan said, “Now that it looks like we are unlikely to move forward in acquiring this parcel, it seems that (the street improvements are) not our concern. There may be a lot of reasons to have heartburn for this or that issue with the county, but I wouldn’t think that this is one of them.” McClellan, who is term-limited and will step off the council at the end of this year, said this week: “I hope the new council will have the opportunity to dialogue with the (county) commissioners in order to work more effectively on the projects we have in common.” Some say the strained relations between the nine-member city council and the fivemember Board of County Commissioners dates back to the city’s founding in 2001. “When I was first elected, this same issue was out there and I sort of inherited it,” said Centennial Mayor Cathy Noon, who believes some of the contentiousness between the city and county revolves around “annexation issues.” And the decision a number of years ago to switch from Arapahoe County to CH2 Hill as Centennial’s public works provider probably ruffled some feathers among county officials, Noon added. “I wasn’t on the council then, but I perceived there were some issues on the county’s part when we chose another public works provider,” said Noon, who pointed out that “with Centennial being in Arapahoe County, the city council and county commissioners really are serving the same population.” But there are some “significant” cultural and operational differences, she added,
Talk continues on Page 11
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