Cider Days 2014

I love the city of Lakewood's annual Cider Days. Quaint and oddly anachronistic, it harkens back to the days when Lakewood was a farming community on the outskirts of Denver.

High Brow: Cider Tasting

Today, Lakewood is a city of 145,000 people, with the area around Wadsworth and Alameda as its newly designated downtown. But Lakewood grew in a patchwork fashion, as apple orchards and farms were developed into housing, one by one.

Cider Days reflects this agricultural heritage, with displays of cider presses, saw mills, and vintage tractors. This makes it sound like Cider Days is a series of historical reenactments. And it is. But it's also part county fair, with deep-fried Snicker bars, turkey drumsticks, and funnel cake. Low brow, yes. But also delicious!

Low Brow: Fried Foods Galore

Owners of vintage tractors bring them in from all over Colorado and even beyond to participate in the Cider Day's Tractor Pull competition. There's music and cowboy-themed comedy routines.

Cider Days also has a contemporary feel, with tasting booths offering small glasses of fine hard ciders (real cider, the alcoholic kind-- not apple juice), and food trucks selling sweet barbecue tortas with Kimchi garish, potstickers, and french fries with Thai peanut dipping sauce. So it's high brow, too. Really, it's hard not to have a great time.





The event even takes place at the Lakewood Heritage Center in Belmar Park, which makes it an easy walk for anyone living in downtown Lakewood. But if you didn't make it this year, here are some photos:

Cutting Beetle Killed Pine into Boards

More Vintage Saw Mill Demonstrations

Cowboy Themed Entertainment

Pony Rides! Or are they Donkey Rides?

Antique Car Show

The Every Popular Hand-Powered Apple Press

Protests Continue to Rock Jefferson County, Downtown Lakewood

Protests against the Jeffco School Board's conservative majority continued on Friday night, as an estimated 2500 protestors waved signs at intersections from 120th Ave in the north of Jefferson County to Ken Caryl Blvd. in the south. Newspapers as far away as Great Britain reported on the controversy.

Parents, students and teachers line Wadsworth

Blvd. in downtown Lakewood on Friday night 

to protest the actions of the Jeffco School 

Board.

The protests began last year when a newly elected conservative school board majority announced its plans to end the Jeffco school district's 45 year history of collaboration with its employee association and implement a series of controversial decisions, including the firing of Jeffco's award winning superintendent, Cindy Stevenson, and the unilateral imposition of an opaque and untested pay scheme for teachers.

It was the decision by board member Julie Williams to create a curriculum review committee, however,  that ignited the latest round of protests, sick-outs, and student walk-outs. The proposed committee would have had the mandate to seek out and bring to the board's attention classes and curriculum that failed to promote Ms. William's narrow view of patriotism, the free-market system, and history. The original text of the committee's mandate even hinted that courses that taught about safe sex, global warming, or evolution would soon be placed under the school board's microscope.

The Jeffco School Board dropped Ms. William's language at its Oct. 1st board meeting, but voted nevertheless to establish the curriculum review committee, despite nearly three hours of public comment that ran overwhelming against the proposal.

All year, I've been hearing rumblings about the Jeffco School Board's hidden agenda. Now it seems that agenda is out in the open.

Jeffco Schools Ruckus to Hurt Local Economy, Home Values

Will the ongoing Jeffco school board drama hurt area businesses and economic development?

That's the question posed in the headline of a recent Denver Business Journal article about the chaos Jeffco has seen in the wake of a right wing takeover of our local school system.

The article reports on a survey of Jeffco business owners by the West Chamber. The results should serve as a wake up call to anyone who doubts the potential of this Jeffco school board to damage home values.

Considering that the school board members who started this ruckus won't be up for reelection for three years, this makes for some scary reading, folks.

Jeffco School Board Makes the National News (in a Bad Way)

It's a truism in real estate that good schools support home values. This is particularly the case here in the city of Lakewood.

Much of the city's attraction to would-be residents has come from the fact that our city has the amenities of an urban downtown district but the school system of a well-funded suburb. Consider the fact that the innovative Belmar redevelopment is just a couple of miles from nationally recognized Lakewood High School.

So it might have been a surprise to many when teacher sick outs and massive student protests rocked our county this week.

Interested readers will find an excellent synopsis of the controversy in the New York Times and additional details in Newsweek.

Perhaps more relevant to this blog is that many supporters of the current, conservative Jeffco school board are also ideologically opposed to Belmar and other new urbanist redevelopments. The right-wing Independence Institute is perhaps the best example. The Independence Institute is ardently opposed to mass transit, smart growth, and has even gone out of its way to ridicule Belmar's row homes. They also fully supported the conservative slate in the last school board elections.

Although the current Jeffco school board is not up for reelection at this time, many of their supporters and ideological soul mates are vying for other offices this November. As the election season begins and ballots begin to arrive in mailboxes, I hope that supporters of downtown Lakewood and Belmar do their homework and support the candidates who in turn support the great things we have going for us here in Lakewood.

Photo: 7News Denver reports on today's student walk-outs in 

downtown Lakewood. 

Townhouses Coming to Block 15 (aka the Belmar Bocce Courts)

David Weekley Homes has filed papers with the city of Lakewood to build nine more townhouses in Belmar-- this time on Block 15 at the corner of Alaska and Saulsbury-- a space currently home to the Belmar Bocce courts.

Long time Belmar residents know that this lot was originally proposed for market-rate condos (the Alaska Flats). With the market for multi-unit condominiums crushed by the Great Recession, the temporary bocce court on Block 15 has been with us for a long, long time-- almost ten years, in fact.

Townhouses make a lot more economic sense right now, and won't compromise the quality of the urban environment (unlike the disappointing designs of the Belmar Chick-fil-A and Best Buy buildings).

The construction will at long last complete the corner's built environment, and will hide the surface parking belonging to the Gallery Apartments that is currently visible from the intersection. It will provide more for more owner occupied housing in Belmar, and brings us that much closer to seeing Belmar built out. It seems like a win to me.

2014 Festival Italiano is Happening Now!

In Photos: Big Changes at Saulsbury & Custer