Happy Colorado Sunday, all.

I hope your week was lovely. I can’t tell you how happy I was to be able to report measurable rainfall to the Colorado Collaborative Rain, Hail and Snow Network three days in a row. If I didn’t have a full-time job, you can bet that the big storms delivering needed doses of cooling rain every afternoon would have sent me scrambling for a novel and a chair on the covered front porch.

There is something soothing about a break with a book. These days there are stacks of to-be-read books staring at me from most flat surfaces in my house, so I don’t have the same use for the library that I did when I was a kid. But I learned reading this week’s cover story by Kevin Simpson that if I did peek inside the branch less than a mile from home, I would find a place transformed to meet the needs of my community no matter what direction they’re coming from.

Dana Coffield

Senior Editor

The Cover Story

Libraries have adapted to the moment, but their bedrock purpose hasn’t changed

Seems like everyone has some vivid memory of their public library, right? For me, it’s flashbacks to grade school days when the bookmobile would visit and I’d score an armload of fresh literary adventures. Or the woody scent of the main library’s massive card catalog as I scoured the Dewey Decimal System to source a high school paper. A lot has changed since then, and a pandemic demanded a whole raft of new strategies, but libraries have always operated on the premise of welcoming all and filling public needs.

And we found that’s definitely still the case — with some interesting twists — as we checked in on this amazing institution in Colorado to see how it has evolved to meet a very challenging moment. We paid particular attention to rural libraries, whose services have expanded even into connecting patrons with health care, but also looked at overarching issues like censorship and the difficult task of patching our social safety net. And just a heads up: We’ll be talking further about libraries’ evolving role with a panel of experts next month at SunFest. Sign up and bring your library cards!

READ THIS WEEK’S COLORADO SUNDAY FEATURE

Kevin Simpson | Writer

The Colorado Lens

Things move quickly in Colorado and people wear many hats to get things done. Here are a few of our favorite images this week of people going places and making change happen in their communities.

Hugh Carey | Photographer

Flavor of the Week

To-may-to, to-mah-to. Any way you juice them, they make a great cocktail.

Summer is not my favorite season — winter is, by a country mile, followed by the other seasons that at least have some snow and no 100-degree days.

However, as an avid gardener and a big fan of the fresh offerings at at our local farmers market, it’s easy to acknowledge how good a tender, juicy, heirloom tomato is with a sprinkle of salt and pepper, and maybe a drizzle of really good olive oil, in the middle of summer. And as a distiller, I’m a big fan of tomato-driven cocktails, whether a Bloody Mary, Bloody Maria, Bloody Caesar, Red Snapper, really anything punched up by tomato and a bit of spice.

I’d heard of a freshly juiced Bloody Mary at Mount Princeton Hot Springs Resort near Buena Vista more than 10 years ago, when some friends were married there, but didn’t have the opportunity to try it. The concept stuck with me, though. Friends described it as a totally different cocktail experience. Years later, I stopped in and interrogated some confused employees at the hot springs. They had apparently discontinued it during the COVID-19 pandemic.

So when it returned this summer, I knew it was time to strike. Tom Warren at Mount Princeton and Susan Hirt, whose Bloody Mary at Mother Muff’s in Colorado Springs was inspired by a visit to the hot springs almost 20 years ago, were very generous in talking through their processes and ingredients, and offering tips for home mixologists. There are countless possible permutations, so don’t be afraid to experiment. If it’s fresh, delicious and refreshing, if it leavens a hot summer day and puts a smile on your face, then you’ve succeeded.

READ ON FOR TIPS, TECHNIQUES AND A BASIC FRESH TOMATO JUICE RECIPE

Gabe Toth | Author

SunLit: Sneak Peek

In “Burn,” a surreal landscape greets two men with the remains of seemingly indiscriminate violence

EXCERPT: Two men emerge from a hunting trip in the Maine wilderness to find a staggering swath of death and destruction. Bestselling author Peter Heller taps into today’s disturbing political dysfunction as these lifelong best friends, Jess and Storey, navigate their way toward an understanding of what’s happened to society. Secession?

READ THE SUNLIT EXCERPT

THE SUNLIT INTERVIEW: Heller offers a glimpse inside the writing process that has made him a bestselling author, but also into his thoughts on the divisive politics of our time and the dangers that presents. Here’s a brief segment from his Q&A, but you do not want to miss Heller’s podcast conversation with our Tracy Ross:

SunLit: How does the relationship between your characters Jess and Storey, who emerge from their trip to find a starkly divided America, fit into the broader societal and political rift?

Heller: Well, there is this sense that whatever happens in this conflict — which may or may not be rippling out into the broader nation — their friendship is solid, irrevocable. I can only hope that their bond stands for the state of our Union. That whatever the perceived betrayals or wrongs … we can get past them.

READ THE INTERVIEW WITH PETER HELLER

LISTEN TO OUR PODCAST WITH THE AUTHOR

Kevin Simpson | Writer

Sunday Reading List

A curated list of what you may have missed from The Colorado Sun this week.

🌞 The big news of the week was that a Mesa County jury returned a guilty verdict on most of the charges former Clerk and Recorder Tina Peters faced. Nancy Lofholm reported from the trial and served up the jury findings with a lot of important context. Related: Can people convicted of felonies vote in Colorado? It’s complicated.

🌞 More than half of Colorado school districts now have kids in the classroom just four days a week, a move superintendents attribute to budget problems. Erica Breunlin reports there are costs to the switch that are showing up in students’ academic performance.

🌞 In political news, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, the presumptive Democratic nominee for vice president, was in Denver last week and raised $3 million for his run with Vice President Kamala Harris for the White House. Our own governor called a special legislative session to hammer out a deal that, among other things, is intended to keep two tax measures off the November ballot. The state GOP sent out a transphobic email ostensibly intended to support a well-loved Republican senator in a toss-up race in southern Colorado. He was mortified by the messaging.

🌞 A lot of money has flowed toward regional trail building projects, but not so many trails have been completed. Jason Blevins uses fragments of a trail from Carbondale to Crested Butte to explain the hold up.

🌞 An oil and gas operator with about 60 wells in Larimer County lost its right to do business in Colorado and must clean up two wells and processing sites north of Fort Collins within 90 days. Mark Jaffe explains why people living near those sites are OK that the deal with state regulators let Prospect Energy duck $1.7 million in penalties.

🌞 Colorado food banks have spent just about all the $10 million in pandemic-era aid allocated for the purchase of fresh food from small farms, Parker Yamasaki reports. So what happens after the money runs out?

🌞 Colorado’s surge of new business formations dropped like a stone in the year after the state reinstated full-freight filing fees. Economists told Tamara Chuang it just signals a return to normal. Speaking of which, metro Denver’s inflation rate fell — a lot faster than the nation as a whole — to 1.9%.

🌞 Good news! All that work to save the tiny endangered boreal toad seems to be paying off in Colorado. Jennifer Brown, who went on a recovery mission with biologists in 2019, reports the high-elevation amphibians seem to be breeding — a lot — near Pitkin.

Dana Coffield | Senior Editor

Thanks for dropping by this morning, friends. If you’ve forgotten since the last time we said it, we appreciate all you do for us, whether it is sharing links to our stories, putting in a good word about The Sun, or subscribing to this newsletter.

— Dana & the whole staff of The Sun

The Colorado Sun is part of The Trust Project. Read our policies.

Corrections & Clarifications

Notice something wrong? The Colorado Sun has an ethical responsibility to fix all factual errors. Request a correction by emailing corrections@coloradosun.com.

Story first appeared in:

HUGO — While kids meander among the stacks at the Hugo Public Library, 5-year-old Letty Nuffer sits cross-legged at a table concentrating on her language skills using a borrowed laptop computer that displays a fun video to show her how to pronounce consonant blends.

Thanks to a pilot project in telehealth, Letty can access therapy for her speech delay without a four-hour round trip to Denver for an in-person appointment. By checking out an equipment kit designed to facilitate a wide range of health care consultations, Letty’s mom, Kali Nuffer, can connect directly with her therapist as well as to specially designed video lessons.

The library, already an almost daily destination for Nuffer’s family, now has become the conduit for virtual doctor’s appointments for all four of her kids — just one more service that the facility offers beyond the traditional resources for residents on the Eastern Plains. Kristin Allen, the library’s director, says this year’s addition of telehealth has started to become, well, contagious.

“I’ve had several people recently call and say, ‘How can I do this? How can I get one of those kits?’” she says. “Just come down and get a library card. That’s all you need.” 

For many Coloradans, today’s library card unlocks a lot more than books or even an ever-expanding array of digital material available from 113 public library jurisdictions across the state — and that’s particularly significant for relatively far-flung rural communities whose smaller systems account for nearly 75% of the total.

The way libraries serve the public has evolved significantly over the last several years — a trend that only accelerated during the COVID pandemic, says State Librarian Nicolle Davies. She notes that libraries “leaned into technology” for the entire range of patrons, whether that involved teaching grandparents how to use video chat apps, preparing job seekers for a 21st-century workforce or helping kids advance their digital literacy.

“For years, we were really freaked out that everybody identifies us as just books, but we’re so much more,” Davies says. “And the reality is we’ve been in the (digital) space long enough now that we’re comfortable saying, ‘Yeah, we are still about books and we’re about all these other things as well.’ So it’s very surprising when people visit libraries today and find out what we’re doing and what we have, because the perception still can be outdated and antiquated.”

The pandemic necessitated a number of innovations that worked around COVID restrictions, and many of those remain. Davies, who lives in Douglas County, recalls checking out a meat-smoking kit from her local library that came complete with recipes and seasonings. She also checked out an outdoor version of the block-stacking game Jenga for the family to play.

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“There were just so many ways that the library got really creative on how to provide services to people during the pandemic,” she says.

The pandemic also elevated the role of libraries when it came to digital resources like ebooks, audiobooks, streaming movies and music, notes Sherri Baca, executive director of the Pueblo City-County Library District. She said her district reallocated its 2020 budget to pump up funding to digital vendors, embracing the “library at home” concept that meant buying fewer hard-copy books in order to meet the needs of homebound patrons with digital offerings.

“Readers are reading, but the formats are a little different, which is great,” Baca says. “I think that that’s what libraries are supposed to do, move with the times and be very relevant to our users, and get them what they need when they need it.”

That credo has provided scaffolding for public libraries’ ongoing evolution, a transformation forged in times of a devastating virus and deafening political noise — both challenging factors as library workers face burnout on one hand and, on the other, an invigorating reimagining of their role. Pushing back against the headwinds of censorship, libraries have sought to serve as patches in the social safety net, channels closing the distance between patrons and health care, and myriad other functions — while still navigating the shifting demands for information and entertainment in all its digital and analog forms.

Digital content use was escalating even before the pandemic, and COVID ratcheted the demand even higher. But for the Denver Public Library, there’s still high interest not only in bound books, but also older media formats such as CDs and DVDs, which remain popular among those who may not have access to the latest streaming technology.

“We think that’s an equity issue,” says Michelle Jeske, the city librarian and executive director of the Denver Public Library. “A lot of people still don’t have high-speed internet access or may not have great devices for downloading ebooks or streaming videos. Some people might still have a VCR or a Blu-ray player, so we’re still seeing use of those formats. And that’s why we’re continuing to buy or support that part of our collection.”

The specter of censorship

In any format, library collections nationwide have become the target of challenges — some from individuals, others orchestrated by politically motivated groups that have brought issues surrounding intellectual freedom prominently into the public discourse.

Sept. 27 | 7:30 a.m.-4 p.m.

The libraries of the past are gone. So what are they now?

Remember when a library’s search engine was its card catalog? A lot has changed since then — from the materials to the technology to the scope of libraries’ very mission. Sun writer and book editor Kevin Simpson moderates a panel of experts for a conversation about the changes — and challenges — to a venerable American institution.

Join us for the panel at SunFest 2024.

Buy Tickets

Colorado isn’t without its conflicts, but has been far less affected than many other states. Still, lawmakers in the last legislative session passed a measure designed to reinforce the policies and procedures Colorado’s public libraries employ not only to acquire and use materials, but to deal with challenges to their content. 

James LaRue, executive director of the Garfield County Public Library District, has dealt with more than a thousand such challenges over a career in library management that includes stints as director of the Douglas County libraries as well as with the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom. His book “On Censorship” explores the motives behind the challenges, which have come from across the political spectrum, and the dangers of book banning.

“It has gone from the one or two people that get upset by running across something in a library to being more centrally coordinated,” he says, noting that nationally many of the recent objections stemmed from both isolation during the pandemic that pulled some down conspiracy rabbit holes and political strategy aimed at motivating conservatives for the 2022 midterm elections — most often by objecting to books with LGBTQ content. 

Poll after poll says this is a deeply unpopular view, that 70% of either party is opposed to censorship. But why do they keep at it? Because it seems to work. It gets people riled up, and as always in America we are both obsessed with and repelled by sex.

— James LaRue, executive director of the Garfield County Public Library District

“Poll after poll says this is a deeply unpopular view, that 70% of either party is opposed to censorship,” LaRue says. “But why do they keep at it? Because it seems to work. It gets people riled up, and as always in America we are both obsessed with and repelled by sex.”

Although he notes that other states have experienced more frequent challenges, and have seen legislative efforts aimed at even criminalizing anyone who provides access to certain materials, about five states have passed what he calls “anti-censorship legislation.”

“Colorado,” he adds, “is a much happier environment.”

In particular, he notes the new state law’s emphasis on the “request for reconsideration” that challenges must go through that effectively slows the process and prevents knee-jerk reactions. The new law requires that library boards establish a written policy for reconsideration, and lists specific standards that, among several other things, require they consider the perspectives of marginalized groups.

Davies, the state librarian, says that the rancor that spills over from book challenges now appears to have gotten personal. For years, she recalls, surveys on the most trusted professions in America found librarians ranked near the top, along with firefighters. But in the last few years she has been troubled to hear the integrity of her peers disparaged, even if the spitefulness seems less prevalent in Colorado.

“We’re all librarians at the end of the day,” she says, “and so when institutions like the American Library Association are getting challenged, and everybody’s lumping our profession into having this agenda of grooming children and being pedophiles, it’s just been something I never thought I would have seen in this work.” 

The Pueblo district has had a request for reconsideration policy in effect for more than 10 years, and the passage of the new law required them to simply tweak the timeline for how often an item could be reconsidered, Baca says — from once in a 12-month period to once every two years, the most frequent allowed by the law.

Although she welcomes the attention to the issue of censorship, she estimates that in the nine years she’s been with the library system it has received only one or two requests per year for material to be reconsidered.

In Denver, Jeske estimates she sees “zero to one challenge a year — knock on wood.” Even before the new state law, DPL changed its policy to only allow Denver residents to challenge materials to block organized national challenges.

Providing a social safety net

The pandemic proved challenging in many ways, and its aftermath revealed all sorts of societal issues that had always been present but suddenly were exacerbated. Think homelessness, mental health issues and substance abuse, among others. And libraries, particularly in population centers, found themselves nudged to become more engaged when it comes to connecting those in need with social services.

“That’s nothing new, especially for the Denver Public Library being in this urban setting,” Jeske says. “I think the pandemic demonstrated to us and the community how vital we are as a public space and a place of access — for learning, for knowledge, for technology and connection to the world.”

Not to mention for clean water and a restroom.

Since 2015, the Denver Public Library has had at least one social worker on staff to serve that population. That lone hire nine years ago “seemed like a win,” Jeske says, but soon it became clear that one wouldn’t be enough. Now there’s a Community Resources team of at least 10 people, some of them “peer navigators,” people whose experience mirrors those they’re serving.

The team’s training has spilled over to the entire frontline staff so they’re better equipped to handle issues like security, de-escalation, mental health and first aid.

“We’re one of the pioneers in that space,” Jeske says.

Increasing concern over drug abuse at libraries surfaced early last year with a string of suburban Denver library closures over possible contamination from methamphetamine fumes. (There were no reports of patrons affected by exposure.) Contamination became an issue at one branch in the Pueblo district that required action to remediate exposure to the public, Baca says — though fortuitously, the branch was already scheduled to close for renovations. 

But just as libraries have adapted to community needs, they’ve also had to adopt safety measures. In Pueblo, that means installing environmental sensors in the restrooms that monitor the air in real time to detect potential hazards and immediately notify staff.

“A lot of preventative kinds of stuff,” Baca says, “and just being really active in making sure people understand what the library rules are.”

Pueblo’s library system saw another vehicle for meeting the community’s needs. Although most of the district’s facilities are clustered in the city, Baca launched the telehealth pilot in 2,000-population Colorado City, about a half-hour south of the city limits. Kits similar to the ones used in Hugo and elsewhere are available, with the added feature of a hot spot that can provide patrons mobile internet access in an area where service can be lacking — thanks in part to grant money from the Federal Communications Commission during the pandemic.

Pueblo recently received a $250,000 Mellon Foundation grant for a project aimed at collecting digital archives to preserve the local culture and history of areas that may not have the wherewithal to host the material themselves. As the regional hub for this effort, the Pueblo library will be reaching out to communities across southern Colorado to solicit audio, video or photo files that can be uploaded to help maintain the historical record.

She holds out both projects as evidence of the evolving state of public libraries as they match resources with pressing local concerns.

“So it goes back to the social supports,” Baca says. “Where are the gaps? Can the library be relevant?”

Digital literacy, broadband and health

Kieran Hixon suspected something was up when he took part in Gov. Jared Polis’ broadband initiative and learned that rural areas use telehealth at far lower rates than urban centers. The trend seemed counterintuitive, given the scarcity of medical services in rural areas.

A subsequent partnership with the state Office of eHealth Innovation explored melding telehealth services with libraries that, especially in small towns, are considered anchor institutions when it comes to broadband. And it turns out that one of the hurdles to implementing telehealth in those communities is digital literacy. 

Hixon, the rural and small library consultant within the state department of education, saw the gaps and immediately knew libraries could be relevant by combining their core mission — namely literacy, including the digital kind — and their unique ability to provide access to broadband in far-flung locations. He started calling around to small libraries to ask what they thought and found that while some were already hearing about patrons’ health concerns, they didn’t have the resources to assist them. 

“I called this one librarian and she says, ‘People are coming in, and I just don’t know how to help them. And I could sure use help to do it better,’” Hixon says. “I was like, OK, we’re onto something.”  

In partnership with Ashley Heathfield, a telehealth project manager at the Office of eHealth Innovation, Hixon combed data to find the counties with the worst health outcomes that were farthest from medical services. Then they targeted libraries in those counties and sent out an email to see who was interested.

Eventually 17 library jurisdictions, encompassing 24 buildings, signed on to the pilot project, which has been running for less than a year. Early findings include greater use of the in-library spaces than the kits. 

But in Hugo, director Allen began a “soft launch” last spring, and then started spreading the word. Two portable kits have been the most popular, with Allen scanning a barcode just as she would a book to check them out. Patrons normally have 24 to 48 hours to use the kits, though Allen remains flexible. She also fitted a mobile desk that patrons can roll into the library’s board room to use for in-library telehealth appointments with privacy.

Each kit contains a laptop computer with features like headphones with individual volume controls for the hard of hearing and large-print keyboards for the vision impaired, and an ergonomic mouse. It also includes a ring light, scale, blood pressure monitor (including cuff sizes from child to extra large adult), pulse oximeter and forehead thermometer. The kit includes a wireless hot spot to provide an internet connection to a health care provider.

Getting people to realize that libraries are available for more than just books is changing a thought process.

— Kristin Allen, Hugo Public Library director

Allen estimates that the portable kits get checked out five or six times a month, a gradual increase as the area’s “very traditional” population becomes familiar with telehealth as an option and gets used to the idea that their library can be a resource to pursue it.

“Getting people to realize that libraries are available for more than just books is changing a thought process,” Allen says. “They still get surprised when you say, ‘Oh, yeah, you can come in and make copies.’ And then you throw in being able to check out a telehealth kit, and they’re like, ‘A what?’ It’s just a whole new thing for a lot of people to wrap their heads around.”

Librarians going … and coming 

As libraries have undergone mind-bending changes, there’s been some evidence of burnout among librarians even as another generation has embraced the job for new reasons.

Davies, the state librarian, says she’s seen signs of burnout particularly among those frontline staff who deal directly with the public. She also notes what appears to be a mass retirement among those in library leadership roles, though it’s unclear whether that’s a response to librarians coming under attack over issues of content, the overarching lack of civility from the public or just demographics naturally thinning the ranks.

“Regardless of why it’s happening,” she says, “it is happening.” 

But she adds that a lot of younger people have been attracted to librarianship, prompting a spike within some programs as students seek advanced degrees in library and information science, because the shifting role of libraries has in some ways recast the profession as social justice work.

“It’s an equalizer in a community,” Davies says. “It serves everybody.” 

Allen, 44, first worked as an auto insurance claims adjuster in California, but about 14 years ago migrated to Colorado when her company moved its call center to Colorado Springs. She eventually moved to Limon after her husband took a job at the correctional facility outside of town.

With a degree in early childhood education, Allen did day care in her home. She often took her own kids to the Limon Memorial Library for story time with library director Lucille Reimer.

Describing herself as “one of those odd introverts that likes people,” Allen soon found that at the library she was completely in her element, and that comfort zone fed an innate desire to help people. It wasn’t long before Reimer, who needed some extra help, offered her a part-time job. So a few days each week, Allen learned that being a librarian involved a lot more than checking out books.

“It’s a service that you’re providing a community,” she says. “And it just spoke to my heart.”

After about a year, the position overseeing the Hugo library opened up. Reimer urged her understudy to apply. Allen hesitated — she didn’t have that much experience. But Reimer convinced her to take a shot, and she got the job.

It’s part-time, like many library jobs in rural areas, but that meant Allen could continue helping Reimer on a morning schedule in Limon before heading over to run the Hugo library in the afternoon. Now, Reimer is retiring and passing the reins in Limon to Katie Zipperer, who has been directing the library’s bookmobile, another crucial tool for serving the 2,500 square miles of Lincoln County.

“We try to do everything we can together,” says Allen, who’s in her third year directing the Hugo library. “So when we make flyers, when we do programs, it’s always the three of us working together. So it’s been great to share resources.”

When she attended CALCON, the annual gathering of library staffers from all over the state, Allen saw the world opening up. She knew she wanted even her tiny facility to be about much more than books, and suddenly she learned that bigger (and better funded) libraries were doing all sorts of things to serve their populations.

“It just opened my eyes,” she says. “When I saw what other, bigger city libraries were doing, I thought, ‘We can do that.’ I was like a blank sheet when I got here.”

While Hugo’s size and budget might be limiting, Allen’s imagination was not. She noticed the array of “tool kits” that other libraries offered — materials for crafts, sewing machines, yoga, even memory resources for Alzheimer’s patients. She went to her board and told them that Hugo wasn’t keeping up. The library could do more.

So she started small, packaging various school materials in backpacks that students could check out. After those started gaining popularity, Allen moved to providing copying services and printing services that could produce brochures, flyers and posters. Word started filtering through town that the library could offer some extras like binding and laminating, printing and faxing — Allen even started providing a notary service.

With the Lincoln County Courthouse nearby, services like those proved particularly popular.

“We’re trying to do small things,” Allen says. “We don’t have tons of room but we can add on services to make things easier for people.”

When it comes to the future, Davies figures that Colorado is “just scratching the surface” in terms of creative ways that libraries can serve their patrons.  

“Ten years ago, we didn’t have a library of things where you can check out tools and you can check out cake pans, and you can check out VR headsets or GoPro cameras,” Davies says. “Whether you’re checking out gardening tools because you live in an apartment, but you have a gardening box, you don’t need to own these things. But how cool is it that you can check it out from the library?”

Happy Colorado Sunday, friends.

It’s hard to believe that we’re well on our way to the end of summer. But time flies when you’re doing whatever you’re doing, fun or not.

It also hardly seems possible that more than four years have passed since I bowed to the stay-at-home orders of the pandemic and paid mighty tribute in the form of $20 bills handed through the door to brave pizza delivery kids. I happily added tips of 40% or 50% to the tab of my pick-up orders because I was grateful the bag included a mixed drink, even if it came bundled up in a styrofoam cup with a liquor “license” taped across the lid. I got so used to the self-imposed upcharges that I only barely cared when I started noticing little things like “staff benefits” charges still affixed to the ticket by the actual restaurants two years after public health restrictions were lifted.

I’m starting to feel it now. As menu prices continue to click up and restaurants and cafes in my orbit experiment with things like passing on credit card processing fees to customers and European-style service fees instead of tips, I wonder what I am paying for. I am especially aware of the little extra charges when service is a little sketchy or the food is not up to par.

In this week’s cover story, Tamara Chuang unpacks the economics of dining out, and explains how even some top Denver metro restaurateurs are struggling to keep their dining rooms and kitchens staffed and their operations profitable as the crowds come rushing back.

Dana Coffield

Senior Editor

The Cover Story

The changing economics of eating out

Sometimes, you’ve got to look behind the data to figure out the reality of what’s going on. After a Denver economist told me that sales tax revenues for “food services and drinking places” rebounded surprisingly fast after the pandemic and the restaurants he frequented were busy, I began asking around.

Umm … no, Denise Mickelsen with the Colorado Restaurant Association essentially told me. “A busy restaurant isn’t always a thriving business, meaning that every single thing a restaurant operator needs to run their business right now costs more and more, and menu prices can’t rise in tandem or no one will go out to eat. That’s not a situation most restaurants can survive, which is why we continue to see closures across the state.”

I reached out to some of Denver’s top chefs and restaurateurs. I was floored by their willingness to share specific details about what it takes to operate a restaurant in 2024. Some added service charges in lieu of tips. Others took pricier items off the menu. They’ve had to adjust to the new economy. But just as consumers have dealt with higher prices and slower-growing incomes, owners, too, seem to be living paycheck to paycheck. Not broke, but not able to save or make much of a profit.

The added challenges of surviving in Denver have contributed to many calling it quits. It’s rough for everyone, but is this just a cycle? New restaurants continue to open weekly in Denver.

READ THIS WEEK’S COLORADO SUNDAY FEATURE

Tamara Chuang | Business/Technology Reporter

The Colorado Lens

Many essential workers behind the scenes, from educators to the farmers, keep the world connected and functioning on a daily basis. Here are recent photos by The Sun photo team in appreciation of the less-visible workers across Colorado.

Hugh Carey | Photographer

Flavor of the Week

Eagle’s Downvalley Vibe Fest hosting all-Colorado musicians

In 2014, Andy Jessen hatched a plan for a grassroots music festival outside his Bonfire Brewing bar in Eagle. His Bonfire Block Party blossomed, luring national acts for a three-day festival that took over most of downtown Eagle. When Jessen died in a backcountry avalanche in 2021, other businesses stepped in to carry the Eagle Block Party into a new chapter.

While the Eagle Block Party is not happening this year, the Second Street Tavern, which took over Jessen’s sadly departed Bonfire Brewing location in Eagle, is launching a festival that returns to Jessen’s original vision.

The Down Valley Vibes Fest — Aug. 23-24 — is a return to the roots of the Bonfire Block Party, with 20 musical acts, all Colorado based, playing in downtown Eagle.

“The Block Party contributed so much to our local music community and our local economy. It was something everyone in this town looked forward to every year. It’s disappointing it’s not happening, but it’s also an opportunity to do something new and different,” said Zach Gilliam, an Eagle musician who is shepherding the new festival plan. “Block Party disappearing this year opened an opportunity to put a spotlight on Colorado musicians.”

The Down Valley Vibes Festival features funky blues explorers Dragondeer and Denver’s roots-rock Taylor Scott Band as headliners, with an eclectic mix of musicians from the Eagle River Valley and the rest of Colorado. We are stoked to hear cosmic country jammers Extra Gold, psych-rockers Sqwerv and Eagle’s own Endless Shrimp. And we are especially excited about a two-day festival pass for $60. Check it out here or at downvalleyvibes.com.

Jason Blevins | Outdoors/Business Reporter

SunLit: Sneak Peek

“The Girls in the Cabin” introduces a darkly troubled girl, a grieving family

EXCERPT: Two slices of Caleb Stephens’ psychological thriller, “The Girls in the Cabin,” offer disturbing glimpses into what a widowed father hoped would be a healing camping trip for him and his two daughters — but which quickly turns into a nightmarish scenario. Told from multiple points of view, Stephens’ Colorado Book Award finalist lays the groundwork for characters caught in a web of darkness.

READ THE SUNLIT EXCERPT

THE SUNLIT INTERVIEW: After finishing a complex apocalyptic novel, Stephens wanted his next book to be more of a straightforward thriller. He explains how “The Girls in the Cabin” came to life, and how his Colorado roots influenced the writing. Here’s part of his Q&A:

SunLit: Tell us about creating this book. What influences and/or experiences informed the project before you sat down to write?

Stephens: As a Colorado native who grew up in the southwestern part of the state (Cortez), I always wanted to write a book where the state not only served as the setting, but also as a character. … Settings should be immersive. And that’s what I wanted to do with this book — immerse the reader in a life-or-death struggle with a family and pose the question: How far would you go to save the ones you love?

READ THE INTERVIEW WITH CALEB STEPHENS

LISTEN TO OUR SUN-UP PODCAST WITH THE AUTHOR

Kevin Simpson | Writer

Sunday Reading List

A curated list of what you may have missed from The Colorado Sun this week.

🌞 Many Colorado cities have playgrounds that are accessible to kids with disabilities. But parents are pushing to make sure that they’re also inclusive. Dan England reports from an inclusive, accessible playground being built in Berthoud to explain the difference.

🌞 All three Front Range forest fires are considered controlled and rain has been helping to snuff the hot spots. Olivia Prentzel reports that the Quarry and Alexander Mountain fires were caused by people. And Shannon Mullane looked into what the National Weather Service is calling a “flash drought” that set up perfect conditions for the wildfires to spread far and fast.

🌞 Speaking of those fires, is all that slurry dumped to douse flames and draw lines between the fireline and houses bad for the environment? Justin George checked and yes, it is harmful to waterways.

🌞 Colorado Parks and Wildlife thought it had a deal that would see 15 wolves removed from tribal lands in Washington and transplanted west of the Continental Divide. But the Colville Confederated Tribes have put the brakes on, Tracy Ross reports, because they say Colorado has done a poor job of negotiating with the Southern Ute Tribe over the potential impacts of the reintroduction.

🌞 A coalition of mountain towns is already lining up to push the state legislature next year to make it possible for them to tax houses that are almost always vacant. Jason Blevins explains the thinking behind yet another effort to solve for a shortage of housing in the high country.

🌞 Larimer County’s mental health center is letting 75 workers go. It wasn’t the first community health center in Colorado to make deep cuts. And as Jennifer Brown reports, it probably will not be the last as hundreds of thousands of Colorado people lose their Medicaid eligibility and massive changes are made to the way behavioral health providers are paid by the program.

🌞 What was it like to work on one of the most influential and controversial Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advisory committees during the COVID-19 pandemic? Denver pediatrician Dr. Matthew Daley, who is ending his work on the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, explained it all to John Ingold.

🌞 Birth rates across Colorado are down. The reasons are diverse and deeply personal. And Erica Breunlin lays out the impact already being felt by school districts trying to plan for the future.

🌞 There are two pack llamas on the lam in the San Juans near Lake City. Michael Booth has the story of how they were lost and what’s being done to find them.

Dana Coffield | Senior Editor

Thanks for hanging out with us this weekend — we do appreciate the attention. We’ll see you back here next Colorado Sunday!

— Dana & the whole staff of The Sun

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Months before the global pandemic, chef Troy Guard opened his first restaurant outside of Denver, a Guard and Grace steakhouse in Houston. Then COVID “kicked our butt,” he said. The restaurant eventually found its place in the city, even landing top honors in a state where beef is just part of being Texan. 

And now Guard, who began building his restaurant empire TAG Restaurant Group in Denver in 2009, is leaving Colorado for greener pastures.

“My wife and I are moving to Houston,” Guard said. “The company will still be based in Denver, but we want to grow more of the company in Houston because it’s a better climate for business and restaurants over there. … Honestly, I love Denver. I’ve been here 23 years. But it’s becoming more and more difficult every year to open restaurants. The last three restaurants have taken way too long by the city to OK, and I’m just kind of over that.”

Troy Guard, chef and owner of Guard and Grace, located in downtown Denver at 1801 California St., on July 26. (Kathryn Scott, Special to The Colorado Sun)

That’s just one beef that Guard and other top local chefs and restaurateurs have with doing business in the city these days. Higher operating costs were exacerbated by the more commonly known culprits, like inflation, which pushed up the price of not just food, but also construction, insurance, utilities and property taxes. Labor shortages fueled rising wages and new worker benefits, like the state’s paid-leave program.

But there seems to be something in particular with Denver, especially as downtown has struggled to return to its pre-pandemic heyday. Ongoing construction that ripped up 16th Street Mall hasn’t helped. While Mayor Mike Johnston’s pledge to end homelessness has minimized the number of tents pitched along sidewalks, the reputation has been difficult to ditch. For some of the biggest names in Denver dining, it feels like the city just isn’t listening. 

Juan Padro, cofounder of Culinary Creative that operates several Denver restaurants, including Michelin Bib Gourmand winners Mister Oso and Ash’Kara, first ventured out of state in 2019 with Italian eatery Sofia in New Orleans. Now the Big Easy also has a Mister Oso, and soon, another Denver original, A5 Steakhouse.

“We are looking all over,” Padro said. “We have deals that are signed in Denver that we’re going to honor, but generally, I don’t have a strong interest in doing business in Denver right now. I love Denver and want to do business in Denver. But economically, it’s just not feasible.”

How infeasible?

Culinary Creative’s Red Tops Rendezvous, a Detroit-style pizza joint that opened last summer in the Jefferson Park neighborhood, started on a high note, averaging $50,000 a week in revenue, Padro said. But when construction began last fall on Federal Boulevard, making it tough to turn onto West 25th Avenue, where the restaurant is located, sales dropped to $30,000 a week overnight. He said $36,000 was breakeven. 

“And then they ripped up 25th and we dropped to $16,000 to $18,000,” he said. “I’m under no illusion that the city doesn’t have to move forward with projects to enhance the streets and sidewalks for citizens. I support that. What I don’t understand is how the heck do they not have a plan for the businesses?”

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Instead of keeping Red Tops open and paying staff, food and other other operating costs, he temporarily closed it in June. It’s still losing money. Padro has loans to pay, plus insurance and other upkeep for the building.

“I’m losing $17,000 a month, but it’s better than losing $50,000,” Padro said.

While he’s rethinking Denver for new restaurants, he hopes to reopen Red Tops, which he said did get a $15,000 grant from the city’s Business Impact Opportunity Fund with United Way. 

“You don’t just get into the restaurant business to make money,” he said. “You get into the restaurant business for community, and because you believe in something. It’s a form of art and entertainment. So as long as the company remains healthy, and the company’s healthy, but, generally speaking, we have other restaurants that are more profitable for sure.”

During a recent weekday lunch hour at the Mercantile Dining & Provision, business seemed steady, but there was no wait to be seated as the clock ticked past 1 p.m. The restaurant, tucked into the northern end of Union Station, was one of the most anticipated openings in 2014. That’s because it’s led by Alex Seidel, the first Denver chef to earn a semifinalist nod in the prestigious James Beard Foundation awards in 2008 for Fruition. He was named Best Chef South West for Mercantile in 2018.

Alex Seidel, owner and chef, inside Mercantile Dining & Provision on July 26 in Denver. The restaurant is located downtown inside Denver’s Union Station. (Kathryn Scott, Special to The Colorado Sun)

Business hasn’t returned since COVID, at least not enough to sustain a staff of 100, which Mercantile employed prior to the pandemic. It now employs 30, he said.

“I personally have never worked in a restaurant in my entire 36-year career where it is slower on a Friday and Saturday night than it is the rest of the week,” Seidel said. “What that tells me is that there’s nobody coming down from the suburbs. The people that go out on Friday, Saturday night are no longer coming downtown.” 

It wasn’t too long ago that Seidel was excited about sharing his cooking. “You felt this great responsibility to provide something amazing for the community,” he said. He opened the fast-casual Chook Charcoal Chicken in late 2018 to “bring great food to people and it doesn’t have to cost an arm and a leg.” Back then, Chook charged $20 for a whole chicken. More than five years later, it’s $21.95, or 10% higher, less than inflation for the same period.  

118 minutes

In 2018, when the state’s minimum wage was $10.20/hour, it took one hour and 58 minutes of work to pay for a whole chicken at Chook, which cost $20 at the time.

72 minutes

In 2024, with Denver’s minimum wage at $18.29/hr, it takes one hour and 12 minutes of work to pay for a whole chicken at Chook, which now costs $21.99

“We’re a certified B Corp., we have been trying to do things for all the right reasons, taking care of people and our planet,” he said. “And those restaurants have struggled in this setting. And when I say struggle, I mean they just break even.”

His northeastern Denver commissary, Füdmill, which produces pastries for his restaurants, has struggled to renew its license after the city put the licensing system online to save applicants an in-person visit to City Hall. He admits that this delay could be his fault. His applications had some missing information. But the back-and-forth emails to figure out what was missing has been such a time suck that even a James Beard award-winning chef feels hopeless. 

He took up pottery during COVID and that “has brought some peace to my life,” he said. But, he added, “I am not looking to open another restaurant. (Insert audible gasp from the interviewer.) No really. It sucked the life out of me.”

Denver. Costs. More.

The restaurant business is no picnic even with the fame and foodie fandom that can come with it. Profits are notoriously minuscule, like living from paycheck to paycheck. 

According to an analysis by point-of-sale system developer Toast, restaurant profit margins range between 0% and 15%, but the average is 3% to 5%. Larger corporate-owned chains benefit from shared costs and streamlined operations, allowing a place like Olive Garden to notch a profit margin of 22.8% despite a 1.5% drop in sales at existing locations in its latest quarter, according to parent Darden Restaurants. 

“It’s very, very difficult to make any money,” said John Imbergamo, a Denver restaurant consultant who represents award-winning chef Jen Jasinski’s restaurants Rioja, Bistro Vendome and Stoic & Genuine. “The fact is, you not only have to be busy, you also have to make money. And we’ve had a harmonic convergence of cost increases … that have all hit at once combined with pandemic relief funds, which are now running out or have run out in most cases.”

Jasinski, in fact, with Crafted Concepts partner Beth Gruitch, announced Aug. 2 that Stoic & Genuine will close in September, a decision made based on “changing market conditions” and  coinciding with an expiring lease at Union Station. They’ll also hand over two restaurants to their partners. Adam Branz  becomes sole operator of Ultreia, while Tim Kuklinski takes Bistro Vendôme. Jasinski and Gruitch will continue to operate Rioja in Larimer Square. 

“It was always our plan to turn our businesses over to our partners and let the young, fresh people run these businesses so we can take a little bit of a step back,” Jasinski said. “We weren’t thinking about closing Stoic, but that has more to do with the economy. … The pandemic changed a lot of things.”

Inflation also hit the Denver area earlier than other U.S. cities. The metro area recorded a 9.1% increase in consumer prices in March 2022, several months ahead of the nation. And while Denver’s inflation has slowed —  it fell to 2.6% in May — it hasn’t stopped.

Once raised, prices rarely go down, though corporations do try to nudge revenues higher. In late June, McDonald’s launched a $5 meal deal. It wasn’t enough to improve sales for the quarter, which fell 1% from a year earlier. But CEO Chris Kempczinski said it did the job of “improved brand perceptions around value and affordability,” reported business-news site TheStreet.

Honestly, I love Denver … But it’s becoming more and more difficult every year to open restaurants.

— Troy Guard, chef and owner of Guard and Grace

And restaurants and all businesses, really, must deal with customer perception, Imbergamo said. Sourcing fresh ingredients, maintaining a trained staff to grill a burger to perfection, and serving customers at the table, costs more than it did a few years ago. The consumer’s “value barometer is a very, very difficult thing to change,” Imbergamo said. 

“For 10 years, we’ve been telling people that a burger is worth $10 or $12. Now it’s $15 and that just doesn’t compute when it comes to the value barometer,” he said. “We can’t move that needle over to where it needs to move very easily because even though consumers understand (that) the price of goods has gone up in the grocery store, they don’t equate that necessarily to restaurants. And if they do, they still don’t care. The fact is they say, ‘Why is my burger that used to be $12 now $15?’”

But not all consumers have pulled back their spending. Guard said he’s seen sales at his lower-priced restaurants slow, but not so much at pricier places, he said. Guests at Guard and Grace, where a 22-ounce Cowboy Ribeye is $140, tend to be out-of-town visitors or business professionals with big expense accounts. 

“At Guard and Grace, which is a high-end steakhouse, we were up. In my opinion, people that go out and dine at the $100-plus check average have the money to do that,” he said. “At our HashTag restaurant, breakfast is a little bit down. … Maybe it’s summer and it’s hit and miss because people are on vacation (but) the first seven years of HashTag have gone up every year. And this year, it’s down, so not flat, but down. That’s kind of a bummer.”

Hop Alley owner Tommy Lee introduced a six-seat Chef’s Counter in February. The chef-driven tasting menu is available only by reservation, which requires a $100 deposit per person. He said 90% of Chef’s Counter customers end up spending around $230. That’s steeper than the average $65 check at Hop Alley, which earned a Bib Gourmand award from the Michelin Guide this year for “good quality, good value.”

“It’s been great because we’re generating a good amount of revenue out of the six seats,” Lee said. “It’s a lot of people from out of town because there are people seeking out these tasting menu experiences. A lot of these customers that are coming to the Chef’s Counter have never been to Hop Alley.”

The economy may be impacting consumer budgets, but restaurants are still opening in Denver, Imbergamo pointed out. According to his unofficial count — he relies on Westword’s weekly “Every Opening and Closing This Week” report — more open each month than close. 

What he doesn’t understand is why established out-of-state restaurants pick Denver, where operating costs, including minimum wage, are much higher. Denver’s hourly minimum wage is $18.29 an hour and will increase to $18.81 in January since it’s pegged to inflation. Many other states, including Texas and Louisiana, default to the federal minimum of $7.25. 

And in the land of restaurants, there’s something called the tipped credit. There are many, many complex rules around tipped credits in Colorado. But the gist is that tipped servers can be paid $3.02 less than the minimum wage, or $15.27. Meanwhile, the states that use the federal rate? The tipped minimum is a mere $2.13 an hour, which hasn’t changed since 1996.

“I can’t stress enough how much that tipped minimum wage increase every year impacts profitability because we use so many tipped employees,” Imbergamo said. “In many restaurants, some restaurant servers, bartenders are making $55, $60, $70 an hour and for them to get $1 raises is, you know, it just doesn’t really make any sense. When you multiply that dollar times the number of hours that we use in a week, in a month, in a year, that turns into a huge number for restaurants.”

The minimum wage and tipped minimum in Denver and Colorado are going up again in January. That will happen every year, as long as inflation exists. Robin Kniech, an at-large Denver city council member in 2019 who advocated for the city to break out in 2019 with its own higher minimum wage, said her support was due to the gap between stagnant wages and escalating housing prices. 

“We talk a lot about a housing crisis in Colorado, but we’ve really had a wage gap. That’s really the underlying thing that has complicated and exacerbated our housing crisis,” Kniech said. 

But she also pointed out that rising wages is just one piece of rising costs of doing business. Commercial landlords have increased rent. Food prices are up. The city policy helps the lowest-paid workers whose income makes it challenging to live in the city.

“What’s really clear (is that) leisure and hospitality employment in Denver is growing,” she said. “It grew at a rate of 5.9% last year. It’s grown every single year since the pandemic — 13.8% in 2021, 19.9% in 2022 and 5.9% in 2023. All of that is along with this wage. Each individual business may be having a variety of adjustments that they are making in this era of making sure that workers can earn closer to what it costs to live in their city. But overall, the industry is growing. It is not contracting.”

The city’s leisure and hospitality workforce has grown since the worst of the pandemic, and so has pretty much every industry, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data. But at the same time, the city’s estimated 65,322 workers in such occupations is just back to where it was in 2019, as seen in the chart below. 

Kniech, now a Bell Policy Center fellow working on affordable housing projects, said the City Council couldn’t touch the tipped minimum because it was already baked into the state constitution. 

“There was a desire to talk about it and it just wasn’t on the table,” she said. “But I will tell you because I have a little mental file cabinet of the number of restaurant owners who said they could never, or would never, go to a service-fee approach (like in Europe) and that was not happening in America. That it was impossible. That was 2019. And here we are. Many restaurants have adjusted. It’s not just about government policy. It’s also about business practices.”

Dana Rodriguez, chef and owner of Carne and Work and Class, inside Carne located in RiNo at 2601 Larimer St. on July 26 in Denver. At a cutting board, she prepares olive tapenade to be served with achiote-grilled octopus. (Kathryn Scott, Special to The Colorado Sun)

Chef Dana Rodriguez may be one of the more recognized names in the local restaurant industry as the chef behind Casa Bonita’s new menu. But at the two restaurants where she is executive chef and owner, she has just 60 employees. TAG Restaurant Group employs about 500 companywide. Culinary Creative Group has 750. Darden Restaurants, which owns brands including Olive Garden and The Capital Grille, employs 190,000 globally.

Policies often apply uniformly to all. Why is that, Rodriguez wondered. She said she appreciated how Mayor Johnston talked last year about helping people who were homeless.

“He said the first thing is to divide. Some is mental health, some is addictions. And the other one is literally like they just want to live their life like that,” she said. “And I say they should look at us in the same way. There are the big corporations, there are the small independents, there are franchises and fast-food restaurants. How can we help them and them and them? The same formula doesn’t work for everyone. That’s the part that we’re missing. They don’t see us for our real needs.” 

Denver improves backlog, wait times 

And then there are delays with building permits, inspections, reviews and business licenses. Before COVID, Guard said, the city provided a time estimate on how long it would take for approvals. Now, it seems like it’s timeless.

“It used to be 90 days. Now, it could be eight months, which my last one was, and I lost my general contractor because of that. I lost my pricing because of that,” Guard said. “Then I have to reprice and then the price goes up and then I have to go to my investors. They don’t want to give me more money. It’s like this complete circus and it’s frustrating.”

City officials acknowledge that things got backed up during COVID. But commercial building permits, in particular, have been a priority of Denver’s mayor. Last year, Johnston pledged to reduce building-permit wait times by 30%. As of the end of July, the average wait time for intermediate commercial projects had been cut by 14% to 30 days. The goal is to get to 25 days by the end of the year, city spokesperson Genna Morton said. Current plan review times are posted on the city’s interactive dashboard.

“Our recent efforts have brought those review times back to what customers were experiencing pre-COVID. There’s opportunity to continue to improve and the city is focused on continuing to bring down those review times,” Morton said in an email. “Overall, our permit review times as of (July 31) are comparable to what our customers experienced 3 to 5 years ago, before the pandemic.”

The city also revamped its food licensing program by moving everything online so applicants no longer needed to show up in person. When the new system launched a year ago last month,  the average wait was 71 days. Now, it’s five, said Eric Escudero, spokesperson for the city’s Excise and Licenses department.  

“We’re seeing the fruit from the changes with the processing times. I mean the vast majority of applications are (completed) within five days,” Escudero said. 

But he understands that the new system may be confusing. Companies that just needed to renew had to start over because the new system didn’t have their old data. Escudero said the department helps anyone who asks.

“If you’re applying for a license and you’ve run into a dead end, you’re not sure what to do or are confused, we’ll meet with someone and we’ll coordinate with those other city agencies,” he said. 

According to city licensing data, the number of retail food establishments has increased in Denver since 2021, but it declined 4.4% to 3,947 businesses this year. (Escudero said older data before 2021 is unreliable.) Statewide, the Department of Revenues’ sales tax data shows that the number of active food services and drinking establishments in Colorado is higher than it was before the pandemic. 

Permit delays have long been part of commercial projects, which include restaurants. But the convergence of inflation, pandemic recovery and a slower summer has just made restaurant operations more challenging, Ibergamo said.

“Restaurants used to be the place that people who didn’t have a ton of money could open, could find a spot that had a grease trap and make some minor changes to the way the place looked and get open,” Imbergamo said. “That’s kind of gone.” 

How chefs decide to increase menu prices

Higher prices are an issue consumers face at nearly every income level. But not all restaurants have effectively shared why menu prices are higher.

Rodriguez gave it a shot: “This restaurant is a $2.3 million restaurant,” she said referring to the revenue at her award-winning Work and Class in Denver’s RiNo neighborhood. “And then when you look at the expenses, it’s $1.9 million. “And you’re like, ‘Why even open?’” 

That’s roughly a 17% profit margin, and her most profitable restaurant, largely because the staff is small with 31 employees. And call her crazy, or uncorporate-like or just someone who wants to do right by her staff and the community. Her workers have benefits. They support one another, which meant covering health insurance for an employee who spent three years fighting cancer and was unable to work.  Customers waiting for a table can order a discounted mixed drink, for $4. But every year, costs continued to rise. 

As the cost of Colorado lamb rose, she pulled it off the menu at Work and Class to avoid raising prices. 

“And people said, ‘What?’ Yeah, now I can serve chicken, pork, veal, the meats that are more affordable. And people who say, ‘What the f—, we want our lamb back’ (and) I say, ‘Are you willing to pay market price?’” she said. “That’s why all the menus now you see market price for oysters, for lamb, for steaks, for caviar (so) you don’t get stuck as an owner feeling, ‘Oh, I’m losing more and more every time.’”

She brought lamb back at double the price. It’s currently going for $64.75 a pound, up from $28.75 a decade ago when the restaurant opened.

216 minutes

In 2014, when Denver’s minimum wage was at $8/hr, it took three hours and 36 minutes of work to pay for the lamb dish at Work and Class, which charged $28.75 back then.

212.5 minutes

In 2024, with Denver’s minimum wage at $18.29/hr, it would take 3 hours and 33.5 minutes of work to pay for the lamb dish at Work and Class, which now costs $64.75.

Restaurants hate to raise prices though because of customer perception, said Lee, whose restaurants, Uncle and Hop Alley, serve up ramen and regional Chinese cuisine, respectively. But they have to figure out a way to make a business sustainable.

“I was looking at our prices and our ramen has only increased by, I think, $4 in 12 years when it should probably have increased by $10,” Lee said. “We’re lucky, you know. I think our restaurants are relatively busy in general, like every day, and we’ve just had to kind of get creative with how we bend our models to make it work.”

105 minutes

In 2014, when Denver’s minimum wage at $8/hr, it took one hour and 45 minutes of work to pay for a bowl of Uncle’s Chashu ramen, which cost $14 back then.

63 minutes

In 2024, with Denver’s minimum wage at $18.29/hr, it takes one hour and 3 minutes of work to pay for a bowl of Uncle’s Chashu ramen, which now costs $19.

Lee said that right before the interview, he was texting another restaurant owner about how some places are adding a credit-card surcharge to their bills. Among his three restaurants, Lee said he pays “a hundred-and-something thousand” a year in credit card fees. 

“And if you were to pass on that 2%, which the customer would barely notice probably, you could cover your credit card fees. But to a customer seeing that, it’s like, ‘Hey, why are you charging me $1.25?’” he said. “But we can’t just eat the cost of everything that’s going up.”

For him, the restaurant business is a marathon with good years and bad years. He’s had more good years than bad so he feels fortunate. But 2024 may be one of the bad ones. Lee has a business degree so when he started out, he was always thinking about sustainability.  

LEFT: Tommy Lee, owner and chef of Uncle, inside his restaurant’s West Wash Park location at 95 S. Pennsylvania St. in Denver on July 26. RIGHT: Line cook Hilario Gregorio prepares Chinese eggplant inside Uncle. (Kathryn Scott, Special to The Colorado Sun)

“At the two Uncle locations, we have open kitchens where the cooks are also helping serve customers. So we can legally put them as part of our tip pool, which helps pay your cooks through a different method and outside your bottom line,” he said. 

In Colorado, wait staff can’t share tips with the kitchen crew unless those workers interact with patrons and provide customer service. In order to pool tips, all staff must earn the full minimum wage, and not just the tipped minimum.

Jasinski said that her restaurants opted to skip the tipped-minimum savings and pay everyone minimum wage so that the kitchen crew, who are doing all the prep and cooking, can share tips. That started after 2019 when the city of Denver approved its own minimum wage, which initially was 7.1% higher than the state. Now, it’s nearly 27% more.  

Padro tested out a service fee at Highland Tap and Burger, the first restaurant he opened in Denver back in 2010. Then they rolled out a 20% service fee at all 18 restaurants that is shared with its nontipped kitchen crews. Customers are told that no tip is required, but some consumers call such fees “sneaky” and vow to never return. One Reddit thread tallied up Colorado restaurants with fees and the restaurant’s explanations.

But it’s really helped the rest of the staff. The restaurants still had to raise prices. At Tap and Burger, it’s still busy but profit has slid, Padro said.

“Volume in our restaurants? For sure, people are there. We have some really busy restaurants. It’s just not translating into profit,” he said. “In 2017, Highlands Tap and Burger did $3.7 million or $3.8 million in sales and a profit of $900,000. Last year, it did $3.3 million in sales and profited $30,000.”

Is it just Denver?

It’s still challenging even for someone like Rodriguez, who has won multiple best-chef awards. Sadly, she said, she made the hard decision to close her first solo venture, Cantina Loca, on April 29. Higher costs for food and labor plus declining number of patrons did in the 2-year-old Loca, she said.

“My employees start working at 8 in the morning to prep. And then at nighttime, come to cook at 4 p.m. but no one shows up from 4 to 6, so you already lose money in the first two hours. And then you make money only two, and lose money the other three,” she said. “That’s when I decided the numbers are not making sense. I put all my savings to save a restaurant and then I say, I’m hurting myself and my other businesses. It’s a hard decision that investors will never understand. And maybe the community will never understand. It’s so sad when people hear you are closing and are like, ‘Oh my God, she was my favorite.’ And I’m like, ‘But where have you been?’”

Of course, Rodriguez is a little … loca. Two months and a few days later, she opened Carne, a globally inspired steakhouse “for everyday” in Denver’s RiNo neighborhood. She says she wasn’t going to do it. She says she probably shouldn’t have done it.  

“I was down. I was sad. And the next day, literally, I’m like, ‘I’m not f-ing done.’ I guess I have this strength that I’m going to keep going whether it is here, whether it be somewhere else,” she said. “This is the only thing I know how to do and I love it.”

The “everyday” menu items may be more expensive than grilling steaks at home. But for the extra service, flavor and overall dining experience, Carne’s menu has dishes that seem tricky to cook at home, like the Argentinian Bife de Chorizo, which at $29 is about the same price as a bacon cheeseburger, large fries and milkshake at Five Guys ($26.37, before tax).

She still doesn’t feel Denver is the easiest place to open a restaurant, even if it took a mere two months to turn the old Il Posto location into a sexy, ’70s-inspired hangout complete with an upstairs lounge with shag carpeting, low-slung seats and Playboy magazines hiding behind a beaded curtain. She considered other states. Nearby cities also tried to woo her.

She picked Denver. RiNo specifically, because it’s an active nightspot that translates into multiple hours of activity. It helped Work and Class, located a few blocks away. Both are open Wednesday to Sunday, mainly for dinner “’til close.”

She wishes someone at the city would just listen “with their heart.”

“I have a fake sign because I’ve been waiting three months for a permit. If they come and they want me to take it down, I have to pay a fine. They are not very helpful in trying to build more businesses,” she said. “It feels like they’re saying, ‘Dana, you don’t need to open another restaurant.’ And I’m like, ‘No, I do need to open another one.’ ‘No, you don’t.’ And I’m like, well then if I close all my restaurants and Troy closes restaurants and Jen closes restaurants and Alex, what do you got in Denver? Do you want just Applebee’s?”

In the past two weeks in downtown Denver, Bonanno Concepts announced a temporarily closing of French 75 on 17th Street (via Westword), Cholon Restaurant Concept’s Bistro LeRoux shuttered on 16th Street (via Denver Post), and the aforementioned Stoic & Genuine is closing on Sept. 1. 

But coming soon, two new restaurants will debut inside the funky new Populus hotel near Civic Center park; South Carolina import Church and Union may finally open on 17th Street (via 303 Magazine); and (ahem) two more from Guard, including a HashTag on 17th Street and Swedish import, Eggs, on Wewatta Street, which Guard is opening with former Avalanche hockey player Peter Forsberg. 

Guard said it’s hard to say if he’d be moving to Texas if the permit delays had never happened. 

“I love Denver. I have the brand here and, yes, we want to continue to grow. But this was just one more push that says ‘Troy, you’ve got to get up and get out of the city and go somewhere else to continue the growth.’ I kept my roots here, but I believe in signs. I don’t know why but this is a sign. It’s time for your family to get up and move and try something new and grow the company somewhere else,” he said.

Jasinski is eager to focus on her first born, Rioja, which she and Gruitch opened in 2004. It’s won multiple best chef and restaurant honors. So, instead of running around operating four restaurants, she’ll return to the kitchen. They just signed a 20-year lease.

“There were times I didn’t cook all week and that was a bummer for me,” she said. “But you know, Beth and I have wanted to do this plan. We’ve taken these people, we’ve taught them and they’re wonderful people and we want them to shine on their own, have new ideas and do cool things like that. Let me get out of the way.”

A new city, new people and new food experiences invigorate many a chef, and that’s probably the sentiment Guard, Jasinski and others felt when they landed in Denver years ago. 

“There’s always a new crop of people who have worked their lives in restaurants and are now looking for the opportunity to do one of their own. And that’s what keeps the Denver restaurant scene vibrant,” Imbergamo said. “The base premise is that it’s an industry that thrives on creativity and opportunity and hard work. That premise remains in place no matter what the economics are. It’s just harder.”

Happy — I hope — Colorado Sunday, friends. I guess I jinxed the whole state last week when I suggested things would be cooling off a bit. So I’m just going to keep my thoughts and prayers inside my head this go-round and focus on that one time I went with my brother, husband and sister-in-law on an adventure in the Lower Arkansas River Valley.

The pictures from that day have us looking sunburned and maybe a little parched, but comfortable perhaps because three-quarters of our crew have ancestral roots in the arid towns east of Colorado Springs and Pueblo. But when our people got there 160 years ago, the would-be towns weren’t so arid and our great-greats maybe didn’t have to worry so much about how to irrigate their crops or graze their animals, or whether the water in their cups was safe to drink.

This week’s cover story by Michael Booth and Jerd Smith is an ambitious look at how the growth aspirations of big cities to the north are dramatically changing the fields and fortunes of southeastern plains communities that only have so much water left to give up.

Dana Coffield

Senior Editor

The Cover Story

Water moves in mysterious — and frustrating — ways

In a state where not enough water falls from the sky in the places where people use it, folks spend a lot of time, effort and money moving the water to where they want it.

We moved water under the mountains for distant cities and farms. We moved water from those farms back to the growing cities. This week, we’re lifting water back up to the mountains bucket by massive bucket to douse raging wildfires.

In the past couple of years, one particular movement — redirecting water from growing corn and wheat on the plains to watering lawns in the suburbs — has accelerated again. That may well be the highest and best use of some precious Colorado water, when 80% of the overall supply goes to farming arid land.

But shouldn’t we have a good debate about it first?

This Sunday, we’re trying to give voice to the less-powerful counties framing the Lower Arkansas River, from Pueblo to the Kansas line. Aurora, Colorado Springs and Pueblo want increasing amounts of those counties’ farm water to slake their thirsty suburban growth.

It’s happening. Is anybody who has the power to make it happen in a fair way paying attention?

After weeks of reporting, traveling and pleading with state officials for a meaningful interview rather than replies on paper, a certain kind of ennui became the theme. Everyone seems sympathetic. No one admits to being in charge.

Countless hours have been passed in sincere water conferences coming up with a plan to both preserve agriculture in Colorado and help cities get what they need. If we’re letting the cities win by indecision, let’s at least acknowledge that. If we agree farm economies are vital, let’s act like that.

Knowledge is power. We’re hoping to add a little more to the pool.

READ THIS WEEK’S COLORADO SUNDAY FEATURE

Michael Booth | Reporter

Jerd Smith | Fresh Water News

The Colorado Lens

The constant threat of wildland fires is a grim reality of living in Colorado. When fires occur, they can alter plans for weeks, or even a lifetime for those who lose their homes. This week, the photographers on the ground were there to create a visual narrative.

Hugh Carey | Photographer

Flavor of the Week

Olathe Sweet corn delivered to a parking lot near you

As connoisseurs of Colorado’s summer harvests know, there’s corn, like the kind you get from certain farms in, say, Nebraska, and CORN, like the kind you get from Olathe. And while the first might have the sweetness of, say, a Necco Wafer, the second is basically the definition of sweet.

Olathe Sweet corn kernels burst with sugary goodness thanks to crops grown at high-ish elevations under intense sunlight in Montrose County. Cool nights coupled with hot days bring out the flavor as only Mother Nature can orchestrate. If you think about it, you could say each bite of Olathe Sweet corn is a bite of Mother Nature bathed in sunlight. And if images of the ultimate pinup model aren’t coming to mind right now, then perhaps you don’t deserve to eat it.

But if you do possess the appropriate appreciation, you’re in for the butter on the ear of Colorado corn. Starting this month, the Harold family, growers of Olathe Sweet on their Tuxedo Farm since the 1970s, are expanding their direct-to-consumer reach with refrigerated truck deliveries to locations along the Front Range.

You might think of it as the old ice cream truck in the neighborhood model, with sunburned kids clutching grubby nickels. Except this is for foodies with $25 who don’t mind a little starch in their teeth.

Yes, you still can buy Olathe Sweet at King Soopers, or at the farm shed in Olathe. But for a month starting Wednesday, Tuxedo’s trucks will be making stops between Cheyenne and Pueblo. All you do is hit up the Tuxedo Corn website, place your order and arrive at the designated location at the designated time. The truck will be at Tractor Supply in Loveland on Thursday and China Buffet in Longmont on Aug. 21, for example. Or why not make a day of it by bowling at Highland Lanes in Greeley or eating a sub at Deli Dave’s in Pueblo West while you wait.

Tracy Ross | Reporter

SunLit: Sneak Peek

A secret liaison with a student led CU professor to live “Separate Lives”

EXCERPT: Mary Rippon was a groundbreaking professor at the University of Colorado as the first woman to hold that position at CU and possibly the first at any state university. She also harbored a secret — a student with whom she had an affair and a daughter — and proceeded to keep her private life hidden, in contrast to her renown as a professor. As Silvia Pettem’s biography shows, that was a particularly fraught proposition in Victorian-era Boulder.

READ THE SUNLIT EXCERPT

THE SUNLIT INTERVIEW: Pettem recounts how primary documents helped her uncover many details about Rippon’s life and convince her that the story needed to be told. Here’s a snippet from her Q&A:

SunLit: Tell us about creating this book. What influences and/or experiences informed the project before you sat down to write?

Pettem: It was Mary’s writings that allowed me to vicariously experience her life and times and try to imagine her life through her own eyes. To help achieve that goal, I wrote my first draft in the first person –– as if I were Mary, and as if I were writing my own memoir. Her diaries were very cryptic, and the process of deciphering them allowed me to “get inside her head.” In my attempts, I believe I gained insight into some of her very private thoughts, even a glimpse into her soul.

READ THE INTERVIEW WITH SILVIA PETTEM

Kevin Simpson | Writer

Sunday Reading List

A curated list of what you may have missed from The Colorado Sun this week.

🌞 It was a bad week in terms of fires. We’ve got you covered, though. In addition to daily updates, we have stories from the major fires, including news that the Quarry fire in Jefferson County is being investigated as arson. We also mapped every fire in Colorado for the past 15 years and it’s a big number. The smoke’s bad in a lot of places, so we talked to lung experts about how to cope. Smart people at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration are figuring out how to use artificial intelligence to identify forest fires earlier than humans might detect smoke or flames. Fires are burning near sources of Front Range drinking water, so we asked about the implications. And hasn’t Estes Park suffered enough?

🌞 A new Lutheran Medical Center in Wheat Ridge opened this weekend, about 3.5 miles west of the old hospital. John Ingold explains why the new hospital is essential and how the transition to the new one was planned.

🌞 The fighting over management of the state Republican party has some real-life implications for GOP statehouse candidates. Jesse Paul maps out the strategies people running for office are using — minus support from the state party.

🌞 The trial started for Tina Peters, the former Mesa County clerk facing felony charges related to her role breaching her own county’s election system. Nancy Lofholm is in the courtroom alongside Peters’ supporters, including child-star-turned-election denier Ricky Schroder. (Yes, really.)

🌞 At a time when sophisticated surveillance tech is everywhere it seems weird that the state Child Ombudsman Office even needs to ask, but the agency is demanding that the state Division of Youth Services collect audio along with video of staff interaction with employees and people who are in detention. Jennifer Brown reports that 70 kids and teens have reported they were mistreated while they were locked up.

🌞The state’s Public Employees’ Retirement Association may have been making bad assumptions about who is going to draw a pension, when and how much they were being paid in the key final years on the job. Brian Eason has some of the details and reports that the uncertainty may lead to a legislative oversight committee making even more changes to the troubled retirement plan.

🌞 Yes, you can surf in Colorado. And the surfing is really good this year in Salida. Jason Blevins went to check out “the best river wave in the world.”

Dana Coffield | Senior Editor

Thanks for the time this morning, friends. I hope you all are safe this week. See you back here next Colorado Sunday.

— Dana & the whole staff of The Sun

The Colorado Sun is part of The Trust Project. Read our policies.

Corrections & Clarifications

Notice something wrong? The Colorado Sun has an ethical responsibility to fix all factual errors. Request a correction by emailing corrections@coloradosun.com.

Story first appeared in:

OLNEY SPRINGS — From satellite view, the land north of the Arkansas River is a seemingly random checkerboard of vital green and desperate brown, quickly fading from a few thriving farm acres to the broad, water-drained desolation of northern Crowley County. 

From the cab of Matt Heimerich’s pickup, each alternating square of emerald corn or desiccated knapweed is a decision by a distant big city — to either share Colorado resources responsibly or toss rural Arkansas River counties to the fate of the hot summer winds. 

That square was reseeded with native grass after Aurora bought the water in the 1970s, Heimerich says. That plot, Colorado Springs dried up and it’s all weeds. That farm, Aurora wants to dry it up soon, but the water court referee wants a better reseeding plan. 

Heimerich’s family is one of the few farmers remaining in the 790 square miles of Crowley County after city water buy-ups shrank the county’s irrigated acres from more than 50,000 in the 1970s to fewer just a few thousand this year. He jumps down from the pickup to clear invasive kochia weeds from a pipe opening gushing cool canal water down a 1,500-foot corn row. 

This Fresh Water News story is a collaboration between The Colorado Sun and Water Education Colorado. It also appears at wateredco.org/fresh-water-news.

Crowley is just the worst example of what can happen when nobody cares, and nobody pays attention.

Two miles away is downtown Olney Springs, population 310. Crowley County as a whole has only 5,600 residents, and more than a third of those are inmates at two prisons. The only retail operation left in Olney Springs is a soda vending machine against the wall of town hall.

As Heimerich clears his irrigation pipe, he pauses to jab a thumb over his shoulder 150 miles to the north at Aurora, where the population increased by more than 100,000 over 20 years. 

“When you build a new development, at the end of the day, you’re drying up a farm,” Heimerich said. “Where else is it going to come from?”

“Crowley is just the worst example of what can happen when nobody cares, and nobody pays attention,” he said. 

The tiny community serves as an enduring reminder of the cultural and economic ruin that occurs when big cities in Colorado and elsewhere purchase farms, dry up the land and move the water to urban areas. It gave rise to the term “buy and dry,” a practice now widely condemned.

The practice was supposed to end in the Lower Arkansas Valley in 2003 with a hard-fought federal court battle and settlement. Since then, state lawmakers and top water and farm agencies have changed laws and spent millions of dollars testing new protective methods for sharing water temporarily between rural and urban areas. They have also spent heavily to improve water quality for thousands of people living near the river who still don’t have clean water to drink.

The big cities insist they have learned their lessons from the Crowley County disaster.

“The results of what happened in Crowley County are unacceptable and widely recognized as a travesty,” said Colorado Springs Utilities spokesperson Jennifer Jordan. “We’ve taken those lessons to heart.”

But outraged Lower Arkansas growers and water districts say new efforts to protect their farm water aren’t working. At the same time, the big cities say new laws making it easier to share farm water don’t provide enough reliable water to grow their communities.

The cities also say big changes in the future water picture, climate-driven reductions in stream flows and threats to their Colorado River supplies leave them little choice but to draw more farm water.

This year they did that, inking deals in the Lower Arkansas worth more than $100 million to buy and lease land and water, raising alarms among local growers and generating big questions about whether the state is doing enough to protect rural farm communities and the water that keeps them going.

Buy and dry light

The cities say a lot has changed in the past 20 years and that these new deals represent innovations in water sharing. But critics in the Lower Arkansas Valley say these same deals signal that no one is doing enough to prevent “buy and dry” or the the latest tool in the water acquisition quiver, “lease and dry,” in which water is pulled from farmland periodically.

Aurora, for instance, spent $80 million in April to buy nearly 5,000 acres of farms in Otero County and the more than 6,500 acre-feet of water associated with that land. An acre-foot equals nearly 326,000 gallons of water, enough to irrigate half an acre of corn, or supply at least two urban homes for one year. 

Aurora plans to use the water itself in three out of 10 years, leaving it on the farms the rest of the time. Some 4,000 acres of land  will be dried up intermittently when Aurora is using the water, according to Karl Nyquist, a developer and grower who negotiated the deal with Aurora and who is operating the farms for Aurora under the lease agreement.

Colorado Springs has a different arrangement just downriver in Bent County, where it will permanently purchase up to 15,000 acre-feet of water from local farmers. Colorado Springs will also help pay local farmers to install modern center pivot irrigation systems that use less water, allowing the city to keep the saved water for its use.

FIRST PHOTO: Rows of corn are flood-irrigated in Pueblo County on June 23. Water for most farming in Pueblo County is delivered from the Arkansas River via the Bessemer Ditch. SECOND PHOTO: The view looking north from Olney Springs on June 26 shows how “buy and dry” practices have cut cultivated land in Crowley County from 50,000 acres to just a few thousand acres. (Mike Sweeney, Special to The Colorado Sun)

In this deal, Colorado Springs and the farmers will be responsible for revegetating any dried up land. It will use the water in five out of 10 years, and it has agreed to make a one-time, upfront payment of $2.5 million to Bent County plus payments each year based on how much water is taken off the fields. The money is in addition to payments to farmers.

“We wanted to make sure Bent County was kept whole,” said Scott Lorenz, a senior water projects manager with Colorado Springs Utilities.

And in Pueblo County, perhaps the least controversial of the three deals, Pueblo Water agreed to purchase nearly one-third of the shares in the local historic Bessemer Ditch system for $56.2 million. Pueblo continues to lease the water back to the farmers for now. At the same time,  the Palmer Land Conservancy has developed a sophisticated new framework that measures farm productivity on land watered by the Bessemer Ditch and will eventually help direct water to the most productive farms as Pueblo takes its water. The hope is that the new system will increase overall farm productivity on the ditch system and help make up for anything lost when the less productive lands are dried up, according to Dillon O’Hare, Palmer’s senior conservation manager.

Palmer is also working to analyze the impact of the deals on water quality downstream and how to prevent further damage, O’Hare said.

Irrigated farm land is evaporating

The three projects come as new data shows Colorado’s irrigated farmlands are shrinking. Since 1997, the state has lost 32% of these lands, with areas in the Lower Arkansas Valley seeing losses higher than that, according to an analysis of federal agricultural data by Fresh Water News and The Colorado Sun.

Crowley County has lost 90% of its irrigated lands in that period. Pueblo has lost 60.2%, and Bent and Otero have lost 37.6% and 35.2%, respectively.

State agriculture and water officials are worried about the decline, but say they have few tools to prevent it because farmers are free to sell their water rights to whomever they want.

“Am I concerned? Definitely,” said Robert Sakata, a long-time vegetable grower near Brighton, and former member of the Colorado Water Conservation Board who now serves as the director of water policy for the Colorado Department of Agriculture. “We all talk about water being a limited resource, but prime farmland is also limited and it’s important to take that into consideration.”

Not all these losses are due to big city water prospecting. Climate change, market challenges and legal obligations to deliver water to downstream states are also fallowing Colorado farmlands.

Everyone is sympathetic. No one is in charge.

Still, more than 20 years after the intergovernmental peace accords, it wasn’t supposed to be this way.

The Lower Arkansas Valley region is part of the sprawling Arkansas River Basin. The river has its headwaters near Leadville and flows through Buena Vista, Salida, Cañon City, into Pueblo Reservoir and on over the state line east of Lamar.

Its counties were once a sweet spot in the basin’s agriculture economy. The river fed a bountiful chain of tomato, sugar beet and onion fields, as well as acres of luscious Rocky Ford melons, and chiles, corn and alfalfa.

Cities say these latest deals, which they call “water sharing” agreements, will bolster the agricultural economies and keep remaining water on farm fields forever. But the term “sharing” doesn’t sit well with some local farmers and water officials who have a deep distrust of the cities they blame for the region’s decline.

“I call it a charade,” said Mike Bartolo, a retired Colorado State University extension research scientist who farms in Otero County near Rocky Ford. “You dry up an acre, you’re drying up land that was formerly irrigated. That’s buy and dry.”

While the state’s highly touted Water Plan cheers for the concept of cities helping rural areas thrive after water losses, there is no mechanism or state law or bureaucracy to watchdog new sales. 

After the 2003 agreement in the Lower Arkansas Valley, state and local water leaders began testing new ways for cities and farmers to temporarily share water, something that had been almost impossible under older water law.

I call it a charade. You dry up an acre, you’re drying up land that was formerly irrigated. That’s buy and dry.

But Aurora and Colorado Springs say the early experimental programs didn’t provide enough water at reasonable prices to fulfill their fast-growing community needs permanently.

Lorenz, the Colorado Springs Utilities manager, said the city does lease some water in the valley, but it hasn’t been enough to ensure the stability of its long-term water supply.

“The major concern is that we would lease from a particular farmer, and then a different city would come out and buy those water rights and the farmer wouldn’t lease to us anymore,” he said.

And in fact that is what just happened in April, when Aurora purchased the Otero County farms, which had formerly leased water to Colorado Springs.

Colorado Springs Utilities formally opposes the latest Aurora water deal, as do the Southeastern Colorado Water Conservancy District based in Pueblo, and the Lower Arkansas Valley Water Conservancy District in Rocky Ford. 

But their anger has so far been expressed by passing resolutions, not filing lawsuits.

How Aurora Water and other cities have treated Arkansas River counties like Crowley after past buy-ups leaves nothing but suspicion about newly announced deals, local leaders say. 

Though Aurora says it is not attempting any more permanent dry-ups of local land, “I don’t think any of us believe them,” said Heimerich, Crowley County’s representative on the Southeastern Conservancy board. Heimerich also is a member of the board of Water Education Colorado, which is a sponsor of Fresh Water News. “They’ll do whatever they need to do and apologize later.”

Thornton and Larimer and Weld counties conducted a similar debate publicly — from the 1990s to this year — as Thornton bought up 17,000 acres of northern Colorado farms and their water rights and began drying up the land. County commissioners and other local officials brought their legal weight and bully pulpits to bear in demanding extensive concessions from Thornton. The Adams County city has been reseeding dried up land with native grass and backfilling lost property taxes, but gets mixed reviews from locals. 

First photo: Seasonal workers harvest cabbage near Vineland on July 6. Pueblo County farmers operate on some of most fertile land in the state and irrigate their crops from water taken from the Arkansas River. But water-rights sales have changed the way they manage their land. Second photo: Water flows in the Bessemer Ditch near Vineland on June 23. Pueblo Water acquired rights to one-third of the ditch, but has been working with local farmers to help ensure their farmland remains productive. (Mike Sweeney, Special to The Colorado Sun)

The latest Lower Arkansas water deals are also pitting Colorado’s big cities directly against each other in conflicts not seen for decades. When the board of Colorado Springs Utilities passed a resolution earlier this year condemning Aurora’s Otero County deal, it was a direct shot from leadership of a city of nearly 500,000 — the Colorado Springs City Council is the utility board. 

“The idea is that there’s Denver, there’s a Denver metro complex and they’re going to just do whatever they want to do and the rest of the state has to go along with it,” City Councilman Brian Risley said.

But Alex Davis, a top Aurora Water official, said Colorado Springs’ ire is unwarranted.

“Aurora has worked in close partnership with Colorado Springs for decades and that will continue,” she said. “This is a case where we disagree.”

Peter Nichols, general counsel for the Lower Arkansas Water Conservancy District in La Junta,  said he is deeply concerned by what cities are proposing now. “We thought we were through with all of this. We thought we had it under control,” he said of the Aurora and Colorado Springs purchases. 

Nichols is among those who have spent much of the past 20 years creating a system, now known as the super ditch, that allows seven local irrigation companies to negotiate leases with cities.

Importantly, it also won the legal right to move leased water stored in Pueblo Reservoir out of the valley, via the federal Fryingpan-Arkansas Project and the Otero Pipeline, removing what had been a key barrier to leasing.

Nichols said local growers and water districts have worked hard to find ways to share water so that it doesn’t permanently leave the valley. That the cities are now jumping the line with these new deals isn’t OK with him.

A farmer’s — and a county’s — greatest asset 

Colorado Springs and the other thirsty Front Range cities want farmers like the young Caleb Wertz to be the new face of urban water agreements. 

On a recent 95-degree summer afternoon, Wertz high-tailed it across Bent County driving an ambulance to take an injured neighbor to the hospital. He had planned to be on his farm, but that’s life in the Lower Arkansas Valley. 

Colorado Springs is reimbursing the farmers to turn those corners into pasture land or to revegetate. … Even if it is not producing corn, it’s not just becoming wasteland.

The population is shrinking, and everyone has too many jobs to count. The local farmer is also a first responder. Your primary care provider is a farmer’s wife. 

Arriving back at the farm just after 5 p.m., Wertz talks about what is perhaps the most controversial decision he has ever made: Selling a portion of his agricultural water to fuel housing growth in Colorado Springs.

The deal will pay him enough so that he can install modern irrigation systems, drying up portions of the fields, known as corners, that won’t be reached by the new, center pivot sprinklers, and allow Colorado Springs to buy the saved water.

He is also planting cotton alongside his traditional corn, and he believes he is the first in the state to do so. A new modern variety is supposed to use half the water, just one acre-foot per acre, rather than the two acre-feet of water that older types, such as those grown in Arizona, use.

For Wertz, the agreement will give him enough money to keep farming and enough new technology to make his remaining agricultural water go farther. He will become a rarity in the area: A young farmer with enough land and water to continue the business his family started in 1919 and to expand it.

“The water purchase makes it a lot more doable because we can farm those acres so much more with pivots,” Wertz said. “That’s the case even though we’re drying up the corners. … That has a bad connotation to it. But Colorado Springs is reimbursing the farmers to turn those corners into pasture land or to revegetate. … Even if it is not producing corn, it’s not just becoming wasteland.”

But to some of his neighbors in the valley, Wertz has entered a hostile no-man’s land, facilitating yet another dry-up of farm land in a region that has already lost too much water and land to urban thirst.

“I know people don’t like it and people are entitled to their opinions, but a lot of those are the older generation who don’t like seeing it because of what happened years before I was even born,” said Wertz, who is 23. “I was glad to see the Springs come in and ask questions about working with us. 

“We were quite leery at first. But they have proved it to us. It is extending the water use for them and us, and allowing my brother and I to start taking over some of these acres that haven’t been farmed for awhile because there isn’t enough manpower.”

But can the land come back after fallowing? 

Another worry for Lower Arkansas growers is whether new methods that allow cities to take the water off the fields for one or more years and then return it at a later time, do more harm than good. They’re not sure farmland in the region is resilient enough to bounce back from cycles of city-caused drought.

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Perry Cabot, a research scientist and specialist in farming practices and farm economies, has spent years studying the issue. He says that there is hope for fallowing, after years of experiments and tests, but only with crops such as alfalfa and other grasses and sometimes corn.

“The programs we have done saw alfalfa return almost with a vengeance,” Cabot said. “Grass hay is the second-best candidate.”

Nyquist, the developer and grower who is leasing back and farming the land he recently sold to Aurora, agreed, saying fallowing programs do work, but they are not good for small growers who don’t have the cash to buy the necessary new equipment and nutrients that are needed to help fully restore the crops once water returns.

Still, Jack Goble, general manager of the Lower Arkansas Valley Water Conservancy District in Rocky Ford is wary of plans that take water from parts of farm fields over long periods of time.

“And I haven’t found a farmer yet that believes that that’s a viable farming situation, ” he said. “It’s tough to bring that land back.” 

For years, valley water hasn’t been drinkable

Anger aimed west and north from Lower Arkansas Valley towns extends to water quality issues, not just water volume. 

For many decades, groundwater wells and the river have been contaminated by farm runoff, mining operations and some naturally occurring pollutants.

The same federal Fryingpan-Arkansas Project that in 1962 created Pueblo Reservoir was also supposed to solve the drinking water problem for 40 communities downriver by building the 130-mile Arkansas Valley Conduit to move clean water from Pueblo Reservoir. But it wasn’t until 2023 that final funding for the $610 million pipeline arrived. 

Some downstream leaders are galled that Aurora can start taking more fresh water out of the Arkansas before serious pipeline construction has begun to serve the 50,000 people in long-suffering downstream towns.

“My whole life has been under drinking water restrictions, not being able to attain safe drinking water except to go buy it or to go through extraordinary measures to treat it,” said Dallas May, whose family ranches 15,000 acres north of Lamar. May also is on the Southeastern Colorado Water Conservancy District board.

The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment’s Water Quality Division, which tests Lower Arkansas water a few times a year, classifies most of the river below Pueblo Reservoir as not supporting drinking water or “aquatic life use.” The classification calls the Lower Arkansas suitable for “warm-water aquatic life” and recreation. The state did not respond to requests for more detailed assessments of Lower Arkansas water health. 

Asked if state efforts were improving water quality on the Arkansas, a spokesperson said in an email, “Trend studies require extensive data over a significant period of time. The water quality in watersheds is influenced by a wide variety of factors, including precipitation and weather trends that can highly influence the water quality from year to year.” 

Some Lower Arkansas farmers and officials are tired of waiting. They see the problem getting worse as, for instance, Aurora takes more water out of Otero County, “What happens is all of the bad things are concentrated into what is left,” May said, “and that is a huge problem.” 

First photo: The Catlin Canal winds its way through southern Otero County near Rocky Ford on June 8. Aurora Water earlier this year paid $80 million for rights in the canal. Second photo: A screen bubbler helps filter water for pivot irrigation operations like this one near Rocky Ford. Farmers in the Arkansas Valley draw water from the Arkansas River via a system of canals and ditches to irrigate their crops. (Mike Sweeney, Special to The Colorado Sun)

Silence at the state level?

The Colorado Water Conservation Board spent years writing the statewide Water Plan, convening forums and task forces, and conducting listening sessions on the tensions between city water needs and the survival of agricultural communities. They say they are concerned about new city water buys, but add they have no authority to influence any deals because water rights are private property rights and can be bought and sold at will. 

The board declined an interview request about Aurora’s water purchase or the broader water use questions. 

“The Colorado Water Plan sets a vision for meeting the state’s future water needs and was broadly supported by local communities,” Russ Sands, the board’s water supply planning chief, said in email responses to questions. “But the decisions that happen in local communities regarding their water purchases and planning are largely outside of the state’s control. Accountability for staying true to the vision of the Water Plan is a collective responsibility.”

The loss of irrigated farmland isn’t expected to slow anytime soon as climate change dries up streams and population growth drives cities to buy more. The Colorado Water Plan’s forecast shows the population of the Arkansas River Basin, which includes Colorado Springs and Pueblo, surging more than 60% by 2050, increasing the pressure to tap farm water.

Sakata, the state water policy advisor, who farms near Brighton, said protecting the state’s irrigated farmland will take more work. “We can’t just say lease the water for three out of 10 years. We need to have agreements so that water sharing will be really available.”

As an onion grower, Sakata can’t do interruptible water supply agreements because he has long-standing yearly agreements with suppliers that require him to deliver vegetables. If he fallows his land for a year, the money he would likely be paid wouldn’t be enough to compensate him for the loss of onion sales and the need to support his employees during the break.

Farm research scientist Cabot would like to see the state begin buying irrigated farms, using conservation easements to protect them from development or purchase, and then leasing that land and its water to young growers.

What else state leaders can do to preserve what’s left of Colorado’s irrigated land isn’t clear yet, but Alan Ward, a Pueblo native who is also director of water resources for the Pueblo Water, said the state needs to reexamine its policies and goals.

“There is only so much water available, and I don’t think it’s realistic for the state to continue to think that we can control our urban areas and grow them fast without impacting agriculture.”

Clarifying that he was speaking as a private individual, rather than a water official, he said, “I’d rather have the farms continue and not have the urban growth, but I am probably in the minority on that.”

Where does the battle flow next? 

Water veterans such as Cabot said the state is likely doing everything it can right now to protect irrigated ag lands. But like Sakata, he says more work needs to be done to shore up farm markets and to create easier, more lucrative water sharing arrangements.

“I don’t want to oversimplify this,” Cabot said, “but the simplest way for cities to get this water is to go to farmers and say ‘How much did you make last year?’ and then offer them 10% more. … These are not just fields. They are farm enterprises.”

Kate Greenberg, Colorado’s agriculture commissioner, is overseeing multimillion-dollar efforts to protect farm lands by improving soil health, solving market challenges and making farm water use more efficient. She says the people of Colorado are on board with her agency’s efforts.

“We did a study last year that showed over 98% of Coloradans believe agriculture is an integral part of our state. If we’re taking water out of agriculture, where are we putting it to beneficial use?

“Are we conserving it to grow urban developments and do we want to see that over preserving agriculture and biodiversity. We need to answer that question as a state.”

Bartolo, the retired CSU researcher, hopes the answer comes soon, before any more of the valley water is siphoned off for urban use.

As news of the deals spreads, Bartolo’s sense of deja vu is growing and his fears for the future of the valley’s irrigated ag lands is growing too. No one knows yet what will happen when Aurora’s contract to use the Fryingpan-Ark to deliver water expires in 2047.

“Having lived through it in my lifetime, I have seen the drastic changes,” Bartolo said.  

What worries him, and other growers too, is “what happens if they come back after 2047? What happens then?”

Hi friends! I hope you all are managing the heat and the haze of distant wildfires and finding ways to enjoy this Colorado Sunday.

I might have mentioned it a million times before, but I live in a place where the long view over farm fields to the east is being rapidly filled with homes platted in the growth zone of a very aspirational neighboring city. I know it wouldn’t be happening if there wasn’t demand, but I still feel the encroachment on my sense of place.

What’s happening at the edge of my little town is probably why this week’s cover story by freelance journalist Kari Dequine Harden really resonates with me. She reported from rural South Routt County on plans to remake a middle-class community built on the foundations of a failed ski area into a lavish, members-only compound for the uber-wealthy in the model of the Yellowstone Club in Big Sky, Montana. The project is probably 30 years from completion — assuming it is approved. Some neighbors who live there now wonder if the place they call home can survive what the developers have in mind.

Dana Coffield

Senior Editor

The Cover Story

Stagecoach Mountain Ranch story is a tale repeated across the West

The narrative is so pervasive it is becoming tired: Ultrawealthy people buying up houses and open space in and around resort towns across the Mountain West at a rapidly accelerating rate. Middle and lower class people getting pushed out. An affordable housing crisis that doesn’t appear to be going away any time soon.

But when I heard about this particular development proposal, for a posh ski and golf resort at the edge of Stagecoach Reservoir, it felt different.

It felt like this plan to sandwich working class people between a golf course they can never golf on and a ski area they can never ski on in order to sell houses to wealthy people at an obscene cost — precisely to avoid the discomfort of being around working class people — epitomized the tale of the haves versus the have-nots in a way that is uniquely Rocky Mountain.

This is not just the story of Stagecoach. It’s the story of demographics that are changing in a very fundamental way in so many resort towns in Colorado, Idaho, Montana, New Mexico, Utah or Wyoming.

The story also is incredibly complex. Rural South Routt County, now targeted for this new sanctuary for the elite, can use additional property tax revenue for schools. For roads. For other infrastructure. Jobs? I don’t know — as a former restaurant manager in this area I have first-hand experience at how impossible it was to find employees, at least for “regular people” jobs.

And is there an element of preservation in handing wild land over to the ultrawealthy? There are intriguing arguments on both sides.

Over the next year or more there is no doubt that the Stagecoach Mountain Ranch development proposal is going to divide the community. Is going to test the resolve of the community. Is going to test the teeth of Colorado’s environmental protections. So buckle up! This is just the beginning.

READ THIS WEEK’S COLORADO SUNDAY FEATURE

Kari Dequine Harden | Special to The Colorado Sun

The Colorado Lens

July in Colorado is for outdoor music, wildflowers, afternoon thunderstorms and, unfortunately, grassland fires. Here are our recents images from the mountain corridor.

Hugh Carey | Photographer

Flavor of the Week

Don’t let your skin sizzle. Slather up with free SPF.

There’s nothing like a few runs of weather that makes us feel like we’re living in an air fryer to put sunscreen top of mind.

The necessity of protecting your skin when outdoors cannot be overstated. Colorado’s average altitude of 6,800 feet above sea level (thanks 14ers!) puts just about every resident in the state a mile closer to the sun than most other places in the country — and that much more at risk for damage that can lead to skin cancer.

While we’ve apparently been doing a decent job of covering up and putting on the SPF — Colorado’s melanoma rate is about 18.6 cases per 100,000 people compared with Utah at 40.7 — the state would like us to do a better job.

That’s why Colorado Parks and Wildlife, the state health department and UCHealth have set up stations serving free sunscreen at seven state parks. If you must recreate during the riskiest part of the day, between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m., at Chatfield, Roxborough, Golden Gate Canyon, Eleven Mile and Spinney, Ridgway, State Forest or Castlewood Canyon state parks, there will be an IMPACT Melanoma-branded dispenser standing in plain view. Help yourself to a splash of SPF 30 and enjoy your adventure.

Dana Coffield | Senior Editor

SunLit: Sneak Peek

Right out of the dock, “The Waterman” charts a course for trouble

EXCERPT: In “The Waterman,” Gary Schanbacher’s collection of interconnected short stories, the restless, impetuous elements of youth wash over protagonist Clayton Royster — the prologue to a narrative arc that spans 80-some years of his life. Schanbacher’s book, scheduled for release in October, expands on the character he created in a previous novella.

READ THE SUNLIT EXCERPT

THE SUNLIT INTERVIEW: As Schanbacher experimented with various drafts of Royster’s story, he wasn’t sure what form it should take. Eventually, he landed upon the linked short story collection, which fit his purposes but also presented its own challenges. Here’s a slice of his Q&A:

SunLit: What were the biggest challenges you faced in writing this book?

Schanbacher: Other than the usual false starts, dead-ends, and countless drafts, the challenge wasn’t so much in the writing as in finding a publisher. The format of the book is not ideal for one of the large publishing houses. It is brief (but not small, I hope) and a hybrid of sorts — Is it a novel? A story collection? … I was not interested in self-publishing, so I began the search for an independent, traditional outlet.

READ THE INTERVIEW WITH GARY SCHANBACHER

LISTEN TO A PODCAST WITH THE AUTHOR

Kevin Simpson | Writer

Sunday Reading List

A curated list of what you may have missed from The Colorado Sun this week.

🌞 There’s still time today to catch a few shows at Underground Music Showcase, Denver’s largest music festival. Parker Yamasaki reports the good news that the festival finally has a team paying attention to accessibility in the venues along South Broadway.

🌞 This is the first year Colorado people have been able to take paid family and medical leave under a new state-managed program. Tamara Chuang looked at the first six months of statistics and found out far fewer people applied for leave than projected and an unexpectedly small number of them took leave to care for a new baby.

🌞 Two lawsuits over Summit County vacation rental regulations are over, but as Jason Blevins reports, the fight absolutely isn’t finished.

🌞 Fatalities on Colorado roads were down during the first half of this year, and way down when we’re talking about pedestrians and cyclists, Olivia Prentzel reports.

🌞 After logging 30 cases of avian influenza in 30 days, the state now is requiring all commercial dairies in Colorado to test for the disease. John Ingold reports that the idea is to improve Colorado’s worst-in-the-nation infection rates.

🌞 The relationship between the Colorado Child Protection Ombudsman and the Colorado Department of Human Services is fraught by design. But Jennifer Brown reports that a fight over caseworkers found to have falsified records has led to a standoff requiring the ombudsman to file — and pay for — open records requests for access to crucial data.

🌞 The Olympics are underway in Paris. If you missed it, we did a primer on the Colorado athletes to watch. We’ve got an eye on cycling — especially the three athletes Ryan Simonovich introduced us to. They’re all from Durango, which has sent competitors to every Summer Games since 1996.

🌞 Who’s a good dog? Ash the fire-detecting dog is a good dog, with a very particular set of skills.

Dana Coffield | Senior Editor

Thanks for hanging out with us today! We’ll see you back here next Colorado Sunday. Want to bring a new friend? The more, the merrier! Please share this link with them: coloradosun.com/join.

— Dana & the whole staff of The Sun

The Colorado Sun is part of The Trust Project. Read our policies.

Corrections & Clarifications

Notice something wrong? The Colorado Sun has an ethical responsibility to fix all factual errors. Request a correction by emailing corrections@coloradosun.com.

Story first appeared in:

STEAMBOAT SPRINGS

Fifteen years ago, Jennifer and Adam Fernley came across an abandoned hilltop cabin for sale in the northwestern Colorado community of Stagecoach. 

Overrun with mice and other rodents, the house had been flooded by frozen pipes.

But the couple knew immediately they’d found their slice of paradise.

A house painter by trade, Adam took on the work of repair.

With sweeping mountain views across the rural corner of southern Routt County, the cabin sits on a 1-acre lot surrounded by scrub oak trees.

The only sound that can be heard from the back deck is the chirping of birds.

The Fernleys have raised their daughters in the house and don’t plan to ever leave.

The girls, now 12 and 16, say they also want to stay in the house forever. 

But right now the whole family is worried about their future as an Arizona-based operator with 35 private resorts worldwide moves ahead with a proposal to turn a large portion of their community into Stagecoach Mountain Ranch, a lavish members-only ski and golf resort similar to the Yellowstone Club in Big Sky, Montana.

“The whole thing is so overwhelming it keeps me up at night,” Adam said.

The Fernleys live across the road from the deserted Stagecoach ski area, about 15 miles south of Steamboat Ski Resort. With a vertical drop of 2,400 feet, it operated with three lifts from 1972 to 1974, when the owners, the Woodmoor Corporation, declared bankruptcy before completing a plan to build 16 subdivisions, a golf course, equestrian center and marina on Stagecoach Reservoir.  The new developer, Discovery Land Company, plans to build 700 luxury homes with exclusive access to skiing, golfing and fly fishing on the Yampa River.

Environmental concerns

Retired ecology professor Bob Woodmansee lives just down the road from the Fernleys. He recently wrote a methodical “manifesto” in opposition to the proposed development in the community where he and his wife have lived for 19 years. 

Woodmansee, a professor emeritus at Colorado State University’s Colorado Water Center, has nearly 60 years of teaching and research in ecosystem science and sustainability.

He also served as a Routt County planning commissioner and on the board of the Upper Yampa Water Conservancy District, which manages the Stagecoach Reservoir, the large lake to the north of Discovery’s planned resort.

“Biologically and ecologically it could be a disaster,” he said.

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Woodmansee’s ire is focused on the plan for a lakefront golf course. 

“Stagecoach Reservoir is already listed as an ‘imperiled’ waterbody for water quality by state and federal agencies,” Woodmansee writes in his paper, which is being circulated around the neighborhood and being used to bolster opposition. 

Before the developer even begins its plan to use nutrient-rich treated wastewater to irrigate the golf course, Woodmansee said the ripping out and organic decomposition of the sagebrush ecosystem during construction will release large amounts of nutrients into the lake, which could lead to toxic algal blooms.

Woodmansee is 82 and recently diagnosed with heart problems. He doubts he will live to see the resort built if it is approved by Routt County. But that won’t stop him from fighting it now. 

“I look at this battle as my last swan song,” he said. 

Room enough for the rich

Stagecoach has been growing and attracting more wealth — a trend only accelerated by the pandemic. It is a “targeted growth area” in the 2022 Routt County Master Plan. Two other new subdivisions, northwest of where Discovery hopes to build, are currently in the planning process.

But the exclusivity around the Discovery proposal feels to many Stagecoach residents like they are confronting an entirely different degree of development. 

Stagecoach Mountain Ranch will be similar to the Discovery-managed Yellowstone Club, where members include Tom Brady, Bill Gates and Justin Timberlake. 

The whole thing is so overwhelming it keeps me up at night.

— Adam Fernley, Stagecoach resident

The Yellowstone Club is a self-contained haven where 864 members and their guests never carry their skis or wait in lift lines, always have fresh powder (the club trademarked the phrase “private powder” at the 2,700-acre ski area in 2006) and pay a $400,000 initiation fee to move into the neighborhood and $60,000 in annual dues. That’s after they purchase a home — the low end being $6 million for a one-bedroom condo. 

In his 2020 book “Billionaire Wilderness: The Ultra-Wealthy and the Remaking of the American West,” Yale professor Justin Farrell writes that “the Yellowstone Club represents the pinnacle, or inevitable telos, of the trajectory of extreme wealth concentration in the United States.”

Farrell focuses his book on the staggering collective wealth — and wealth gap — in the Wyoming county that includes Jackson Hole ski area, a 175-mile drive south of the Yellowstone Club, where 90% of income is made by 8% of households.

As to why extreme wealth has a rapidly increasing presence in the Mountain West, Farrell writes, “Burdened by social stigmas, status anxiety and feelings of inauthenticity or guilt, the ultra-wealthy use nature and rural people as a vehicle for personal transformation, creating versions of themselves they view as more authentic, virtuous and community-minded.”

Selling a “family-friendly and outdoor-forward lifestyle in a beautiful natural setting,” the Yellowstone Club maintains a high demand for membership, according to Ed Divita, a founding member of The Discovery Land Co.

“People are our highest focus,” Divita said in a July 19 phone interview, and that includes club members, employees and the surrounding community. He also touted philanthropic contributions to surrounding communities from Discovery club members across the globe.

And, it is a “top priority” for Discovery to not only be environmentally sensitive but environmentally beneficial, he said.

“A Faustian bargain”

The Stagecoach Mountain Ranch plan calls for close to 700 luxury homes on about 6,600 acres, which includes the ski mountain and golf course. Discovery has also acquired a slice of property with prime fishing on the Yampa River.

Divita said in the interview that 700 homes will have far less of an impact than the plans dating back to the early 1970s envisioning a maximum build out of 4,500 dwelling units.

According to the Stagecoach Community Plan, created by Routt County in 2017, there are currently over 2,388 platted single and multifamily lots within Stagecoach, of which 1,802 remain vacant.

Discovery owns the fly-fishing parcel of land and the golf course site, and Divita said the plan is to acquire the ski mountain parcel “in stages,” adding four new lifts, a gondola and high-end ski lodges and dining amenities. 

Membership fees for Stagecoach have not yet been determined, Divita said, when asked at a July 8 introductory meeting with community members at the Oak Creek Fire Protection District’s Stagecoach Station. “But it is going to be expensive,” he said.  

Divita insisted Discovery is not planning to build another Yellowstone Club, and that Stagecoach Mountain Ranch would reflect the area’s unique character.

Eli Nycamp is president of the Stagecoach Property Owners Association, which represents 2,400 lot-owners and about 1,200 residents living on close to 600 developed lots. Some are second-home owners.

“There are a lot of mixed feelings,” he said. “Some love it, some don’t and some are in-between.” 

Nycamp said it is disappointing the mountain wouldn’t be public, but notes the private land has long been zoned as a ski area, with plans for a golf course.

Benefits of the new resort could include much-needed upgrades to roads and other infrastructure, including increasing the capacity of the Morrison Creek Water and Sanitation District, Nycamp said. Those upgrades would need to happen on the front end, he said.

The “failed development” of the 1970s that Nycamp described left many owners with stranded lots, with no roads to reach their property and no access to water, sewer and electric service.

In 1978, the abandoned ski area was purchased out of bankruptcy court by the Wittemyers, a multigenerational Steamboat family well-established in the real estate brokerage business. 

They are taking something that is established and completely changing it. They are going to change the very fabric of what Stagecoach is.

— Jennifer Fernley, Stagecoach resident

There were a number of attempts by the Wittemyers over the past 50 years to revive the ski mountain — and keep it public — but nothing came to fruition.  

In the fall of 2022, the Wittemyers approached the Discovery Land Co. about a possible partnership, Divita told the crowd of nearly 300 people packed into the firehouse July 8, with some attendees listening through the windows from outside.

“We want to be members of the community just like you,” Divita said.  “We want to be a contributing member. We want to make the place better.”

The company wants to preserve for its members the same things the current residents love about their neighborhood, he said. 

“We love the fact there are authentic rodeos here,” Divita said. “We love that authenticity.”

Divita listed the economic benefits and amenities the developers hope to bring to the community: a large increase in property tax revenue, better schools, improved roads and infrastructure, good jobs and the construction of housing that is affordable to the estimated 300 full-time and 600 part-time employees needed to run the luxury resort (once fully developed), as well as to local teachers and firefighters.

“We want to do even more,” Divita said.

He described a 12-acre parcel dedicated as a “community gathering place,” with a sledding hill, trailhead, grocery store, gas station and 140 workforce housing units. Currently, the nearest store is 7 miles away in Oak Creek.

But 16-year-old Hazel Fernley said she was suspicious of all the promises. “They think we need help having a better life here and we don’t.”

Neighbors being asked to trade the laid-back, rural character of their community for tax revenue and improved infrastructure, Woodmansee said, “feels like a Faustian bargain.”

Private skiing with slopeside neighbors

Divita estimated the new resort would take a minimum of 15 years to complete, and could take 30 years to “get to the final finish line. … We are not looking at coming in and selling a few homes and leaving. We are here forever.” 

He said Discovery plans to submit its application to the county in August. 

In contrast to when the Yellowstone Club was built in 1997 by lumber baron Tim Blixseth, Stagecoach has existing subdivisions and condominium complexes at the edge of the ski area, as well as in between the proposed lakeside golf resort and ski mountain. 

“They are taking something that is established and completely changing it,” Jennifer Fernley said. “They are going to change the very fabric of what Stagecoach is.”

Hundreds of residents will find themselves sandwiched in by a ski area they will never be allowed to ski and a golf course on which they will never be able to golf.

Josh Cook has lived in the Stagecoach Townhouses for the past decade, previously serving as HOA president. The 15 mismatched buildings in his complex — each with six units — are tucked into a dense grove of Aspen trees on the mountainside overlooking the lake.

Cook, a photographer, lives in a building with a firefighter, a nurse, a sheriff’s deputy and a retired couple. 

The ski resort property surrounds the cluster of condos on three sides.

“We are a little black circle in the middle of their grand plan,” Cook said. Part of the parking lot near Cook’s building is actually on ski resort property.

The townhouses, along with the nearby Eagle’s Nest condos (known locally as the “chicken coops”) were built 50 years ago in anticipation of the ski resort that never was.

One building sits right along a ski run that empties onto the mountain’s base area.

Cook questions the integration of the townhouses and their residents given their proximity. He also hopes the Stagecoach community will not be sacrificed for money for the rest of the county.

“I don’t think millionaires want to ski by our 1970s townhouses and see us on the porch,” he mused. 

Neighbors at the meeting expressed concern about getting priced out of the community, worried their property taxes would rise so high they’d have to move. But Cook thinks the development’s impact on the market is unpredictable. “Not everyone wants to live in the shadow of billionaires,” he said.

Divita said “good planning” will provide appropriate landscape buffers and setbacks between existing homes and resort properties. 

Other concerns expressed at the meeting included public access to the ski area, fire risk, water, wildlife, the viability of finding and housing 600 employees, traffic, and noise and light pollution. 

Cook debates whether a private ski area is perhaps the “lesser of two evils” when compared to the crowds a public ski area could bring. He also worries the people pleading to Divita for access to the ski area are barking up the wrong tree. What Discovery sells is exclusivity, Cook said.

“An unavoidable impact upon the culture of a community”

Routt County Commissioner Tim Corrigan, who has represented the southern part of the county for 12 years, said it is too soon to assess whether Stagecoach Mountain Ranch would bring overall benefit to the community. 

“I would need to see the application before I could render a judgment,” Corrigan said in an interview this month. “It’s going to be a really subjective thing for most people in the community to determine whether the direct public benefits in total result in an overall net benefit to the community. For any similar community that sees this kind of real estate development, there is an unavoidable impact upon the culture of the community. And land use regulations are not very well equipped to address the cultural impact.” 

Jennifer Fernley said she accepts the ski mountain is private property and the owners have their rights to develop, but she hoped a future use would be more in tune with the values of the existing community.

“It’s going to ruin the character of Stagecoach,” she said.

Adam Fernley always hoped for a “mom-and-pop operation.”

Frances Fernley, 12, said she was most concerned about wildlife. “They don’t have as much room as they used to,” she said. “And we have to speak for them since they can’t speak for themselves.” 

The Fernleys described elk, deer, moose, bears, mountain lions, eagles and other wildlife roaming on and around the densely forested mountain.

“There are very real concerns around wildlife,” Corrigan said, including the Columbian sharp-tailed grouse, a state species of special concern because of its shrinking sagebrush habitat. “It’s unclear to me how the developers will mitigate those impacts.”

On water supply, Corrigan said he defers to the water providers and their claim there is sufficient supply. 

After increasing capacity, the local water district has said it may be able to supply water for domestic use, and the Upper Yampa Conservancy District has said it is possible the reservoir could be used for irrigation and snowmaking.

All those details will have to be worked out during the application process, said Andy Rossi, general manager of the Upper Yampa Water Conservancy District. 

They think we need help having a better life here and we don’t.

— Hazel Fernley, age 16

Rancher Peter Flint questions the water-supply wisdom of building such a massive luxury operation. The Yampa River is over-appropriated and states are battling over the Colorado River, he said. 

The Yampa is a tributary of the Green River and a significant part of the Colorado River system. It is one of the few free-flowing rivers in the West. 

“Now they will be telling me — with 150-year-old water rights — that I can sit and watch my hay field burn up while they water a golf course,” said Flint, who was a Routt County planning commissioner when the Stagecoach Community Plan was developed in 2017.

Flint worries that by using treated wastewater to irrigate the golf course rather than returning it to its source will tighten the supply in the Yampa.

On the stretch of the Yampa River spanning from its headwaters in the Flat Tops Wilderness to the Stagecoach Reservoir, Flint said a “call” was placed on the river several weeks ago, meaning there is not enough administered water to satisfy all decreed water users’ rights. He said it goes on call every year, it is just a matter of when.

The main stretch of the Yampa River below the reservoir went on call for the first time in history in 2018, and again in 2020.

In terms of water quality, Corrigan said, “I do think there are big questions. And I do believe Routt County has some oversight and authority to ensure water quality is maintained.”

Environmental impacts from Discovery Land Co. resorts

A number of Discovery-operated resorts across the world are in the crosshairs of concerned environmentalists.

In 2016, a pipe froze and broke, instantly dumping about 30 million gallons of treated sewage from a Yellowstone Club holding pond into the Gallatin River southwest of Big Sky, Montana. 

In 2023, the Yellowstone Club was sued by the Cottonwood Environmental Law Center, alleging the company has been “knowingly discharging its treated sewage directly into the South Fork West Fork of the Gallatin River without a permit.”

A trial is scheduled for 2026. 

On Sept. 4, 2023, Yvon Chouinard, a conservationist and founder of the outdoor gear company Patagonia, issued a statement in support of the Cottonwood lawsuit, warning that “mindless consumption is killing our planet.” 

“Patagonia believes that clean water is more important than vacation homes and golfing,” Chouinard wrote.

Asked in an email interview about the 2023 lawsuit, Divita referred to the broken pipe in 2016 and said it had been resolved. “The river system is healthy.”

Cottonwood is also pursuing litigation against the Yellowstone Club over alleged pollution from the use of treated wastewater in snowmaking, concerned in particular about untreated pharmaceuticals and PFAs in the water. 

Thomas Goreau, president of the Global Coral Reef Alliance, published a before and after study in 2020 evaluating coral reef ecosystems and fisheries in the Bahamas next to Discovery Land’s Bakers Bay Club. His work concluded that nitrate flowing through groundwater near the club “destroyed the ecological function of pristine Bahamian coral reefs, mangroves, and sea grasses that were crucial and essential nursery habitat for lobsters, conch, and fishes, devastating the fisheries resources of a community that had lived from them since the 1700s.”

Goreau said he found it “unconscionable” that anyone would be allowed to build a new golf course next to an already impaired body of water like Stagecoach Reservoir in Colorado. 

“I can’t believe they are proposing this in a water catchment area,” he said. “That to me is astonishing. … It’s antithetical to the purpose of a reservoir. I can’t believe they are even considering it.”

Divita insists that environmental stewardship is one of Discovery’s core values. “We are continually evaluating the best practices to reduce environmental impacts to ensure these incredible locations are protected for generations to come,” he wrote in an email.

Discovery must show the development won’t negatively impact the Stagecoach Reservoir, the Upper Yampa Water Conservancy District’s Rossi said. The application review process will be a long one, he said, with plenty of opportunity for public engagement. 

Though no application has been submitted, and no decisions have been made, there is a feeling of inevitably hanging over Stagecoach, some residents say. But Corrigan, the county commissioner, said approval of Stagecoach Mountain Ranch is not a sure thing at this point. (Steamboat Springs councilman Michael Buccino earlier this month announced he was resigning from his community relations job at Discovery Land Company after fellow council members expressed concerns about his role with the company could be seen as a conflict of interest.)

“Any approval will be based upon the assessment of whatever the application contains or does not contain,” he said. “We’re going to consider the application on the merits and how it adheres to the master plan and uniform development code.”

“And,” he said, “I totally understand why people are fearful of this development.”

Good Colorado Sunday, friends.

I hope your weekend is going well and that you’re able to poke around a bit outdoors now that the temperatures have dipped closer to “seasonally appropriate.”

Over here, the sizzling heat that defined the start of this month wreaked havoc in my garden. It’s been too hot for the tomatoes to set fruit and for the first time in a long time, my garlic sent up no scapes and only a few cloves planted last fall bulbed up as they were supposed to. Garlic is highly reliable in Colorado, so the thought of going into fall with only a handful of weird super cloves and a few sadly small bulbs is disappointing.

This week’s cover story by Nancy Lofholm made me feel a bit better about my crop failure. The Palisade farmers she joined for their big summer dig face similar challenges, but still are entranced by the vast variety of flavor and fragrance their half-acre garlic garden produces.

Dana Coffield

Senior Editor

The Cover Story

Yes, Palisade is peachy, but garlic also has deep roots here

Palisade is one of those places that instantly conjures pastoral images of peach trees, lavender fields and vineyards. So, I was a little surprised late last summer when a friend asked, during one of our Sunday morning visits to the farmers market, “Do you have time to visit the garlic farm?”

Garlic farm? It turns out that I had ridden my bike past the small Green Acres U-Pick farm dozens of times but had never associated it with one of my favorite seasonings.

It didn’t take long amid the boxes and bags of allium sativum on Bob and Elaine Korvers’ small front patio — their garlic showroom — to realize that there was a story there. I had thought garlic was garlic. Toss it in pasta. Chop it in pico de gallo. Slather it on bread. My garlic knowledge didn’t extend beyond my nose and my taste buds.

I learned that day it’s possible to take a savory and olfactory world tour with the Korvers’ garlic bulbs.

So, this summer, when Bob started digging up bulbs with enticing names like Nootka rose and Asian tempest, I was there tromping along and trying to decipher the charts needed to track what’s what and what’s where in the garlic patch.

The Korvers not only grow between 40 and 50 varieties of garlic from all over the world. They also give you a little geography, history and taste lesson with each fat bulb — not a surprise from a former teacher and a retired librarian.

So, tromp along with me to the garlic farm. I promise not to make a single nose-for-news joke.

READ THIS WEEK’S COLORADO SUNDAY FEATURE

Nancy Lofholm | Reporter

The Colorado Lens

From the highs of the Rocky Mountains to the lows of the metro areas, Colorado offers a diverse set of people and places. Here are the recent images from the Sun as we swing through July.

Hugh Carey | Photographer

Flavor of the Week

The little engine that probably won’t show up anytime soon

In March, the governor and transit leaders hopped a train to Longmont to demonstrate an alternative to the madness on Interstate 25. Once rail service returns, that is.

No need to buy a ticket just yet.

Coloradans have been paying for imaginary trains for nearly two decades as part of the FasTracks ballot initiative passed in 2004. Now our elected trainspotters are looking for half a billion more dollars to fire up the engines from Pueblo to FoCo.

This time it’s going to happen. No, really. Just a few more details to clean up.

SEE THE PREDICTIONS FOR WHEN FRONT RANGE RAIL WILL RETURN

Peter Moore | Illustrator

SunLit: Sneak Peek

“Blood Betrayal” sends readers on a twisting tale along a racial divide

EXCERPT: Two police shootings in one Colorado night set the stage for Ausma Zehanat Khan’s Colorado Book Award-winning mystery that turns its lens on race relations and how these incidents are perceived across the board. This slice of the book’s beginning focuses on a white cop who kills a Black man during a street chase. Khan’s protagonist, detective Inaya Rahman, a practicing Muslim, adds another twist to the genre.

READ THE SUNLIT EXCERPT

THE SUNLIT INTERVIEW: Khan explains that she selected this particular excerpt in part because it tests readers’ assumptions about the kind of incident that happens repeatedly in America. And she notes it has particular resonance for Colorado, given its history of police shootings. Here’s a portion of her Q&A:

SunLit: Place this excerpt in context. How does it fit into the book as a whole? Why did you select it?

Khan: I selected it for impact and because it encapsulates the novel’s central themes. A white police officer mistakenly shoots and kills a young Black man whom he assumes is a criminal. Scenarios like this have become routine in the United States in recent years. And it was important to me to reflect on that knowing that the state of Colorado ranks fifth in the nation in terms of officer-involved shootings.

READ THE INTERVIEW WITH AUSMA ZEHANAT KHAN

Kevin Simpson | Writer

Sunday Reading List

A curated list of what you may have missed from The Colorado Sun this week.

🌞 Attainable housing is a top economic issue in Colorado. Lately, Brian Eason reports, policymakers are directing funding to building projects affordable to middle-income families who make as much as $170,000 a year.

🌞 The Republican presidential nominating convention wrapped in Milwaukee with all 37 of Colorado’s delegates casting their votes for Donald Trump. And now we turn our attention to the Democratic convention where the buzz out in the world suggests that voters are somewhat less aligned behind the reelection of President Joe Biden. Jesse Paul and Sandra Fish surveyed the delegates to the DNC in Chicago and they seemed more certain.

🌞 In other political news, state Rep. Jennifer Parenti, a Democrat, has dropped her reelection bid in the 19th House district. The last-minute move has watchers worried Dems won’t maintain their supermajority in the House next year. Eighth Congressional District candidate Gabe Evans, a Republican, is paying himself a salary from his campaign account, just like incumbent U.S. Rep. Yadira Caraveo did when she ran in the district the first time. A two-week trial challenging Colorado’s voter-approved campaign contribution limits started last week. Now that Democrat Adam Frisch doesn’t have an extreme candidate to run against in the 3rd Congressional District, he’s trying to run on the issue of protecting access to abortion. It’s a risky move. State GOP Chairman Dave Williams sent a $60,000 check to the party. He says it is not to reimburse the party for using its mailing permit.

🌞 Many of us wondered what was next for Carrie Hauser when she left her post leading Colorado Mountain College. Now we know: She’s the new boss of the 32-office Trust for Public Land. Jason Blevins spent a lot of time talking to her. You can listen in on the conversation: PODCAST.

🌞 At least two big gravel race organizers in Colorado are adding rules of the road to the documents participants must sign before they ride. Tracy Ross reports on a conflict during Ned Gravel that illustrates why organizers think this is a necessary move.

🌞 Colorado could be better at recycling. Part of the problem is that many of us don’t believe what we toss is getting reused. Tamara Chuang looked a bit more deeply into the trash and found a bunch of interesting Colorado companies that are making new markets for your old stuff.

🌞 The Summer Olympics start this week. John Ingold has data on Colorado’s athlete roster in a series of charts that started when we realized our state has the second largest number of competitors — at least on a per capita basis.

Dana Coffield | Senior Editor

Thanks for spending time with us this morning. We appreciate every link you click and every story you share with friends and family. If you’ve got a pal you’d like to invite to the Colorado Sunday crew, please share this link with them: coloradosun.com/join.

— Dana & the whole staff of The Sun

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In a farmyard on the western outskirts of Palisade, a distinct odor seeps through the sweet scent of ripening peaches, the yeasty aroma of fermenting wine, and the perfume of lavender.

It doesn’t take a vampire to recognize that punchy smell. It is allium sativum — garlic — and it is wafting from the Green Acres U-Pick farm.

Green Acres U-Pick is the most prolific grower of garlic varieties in Colorado. In five acres that neighbor a handful of wineries, bulbs of Montana Zemo, Russian giant, Georgian crystal, Killarney red, rose de Lautrec and dozens of other garlic cultivars are waiting under the soil for farmer Bob Korver’s digging fork. 

About 1,500 pounds of bulbs will be liberated within the next several weeks.

Bob and his wife, Elaine, still have fruits and vegetables dotting and fringing their small farm, but it is the half-acre spiked with the spear-like leaves of 40 garlic varieties that has bumped up the Korvers from garlic growers to garlic geeks.

If the Korvers were to put pins on a map showing where their garlic cultivars originated, the dots would be sprinkled to the far reaches of the world.

This year’s garlic crop originated in Siberia, the Republic of Georgia, the San Juan Islands, Uzbekistan, Russia, Italy, Spain, France, Transylvania, South Korea, Vietnam and Romania. There is also garlic that was first grown in California, New Mexico and the Colville Indian Reservation in Washington.

“I don’t think you will find anyone that is crazy as I am,” Bob admits about his garlic enthusiasm.

Elaine puts that obsession into more sensible terms: “We like to experiment.”

How to grow (and sell) garlic by hand

All the work of planting and harvesting garlic at Green Acres is done by hand except for the initial field preparation. Bob does that by putting around on his little orange Kubota tractor to create furrows.

Halloween is planting season. That’s when Bob hunkers down over those rows poking each garlic clove into the ground. For the next seven months, if all goes right, those single cloves will expand into a fist-sized bulb made up of many cloves.

Shortly after each Fourth of July, Bob starts the harvest by aiming his trusty garden fork with uncanny accuracy into the weed-choked rows. He digs and hauls in the early mornings and the evenings because the hot sun can leach some of the flavor from garlic.

He lays out the newborn allium bulbs in his well-used wheelbarrow and hauls them one load at a time up the road, past the revelers on the patio of Red Fox Cellars winery, to the Korvers’ little garlic-colored house.

There Elaine sorts it, with nothing more than an appraising eye and a quick heft in the hand to determine the size of each bulb.

In a couple of weeks, this same patio will become the sales floor for Green Acres garlic.

The Korvers don’t waste any time or money on advertising. Those in the know watch their Facebook page for Elaine’s posts that the garlic is ready or that different varieties are running out.

Right now, the Korvers’ earliest harvest is undergoing a two-week curing rest in their four-car garage (which has never had a car in it). They fill it with garlic four times each season.

Bob is responsible for nipping the leaves and stems from the rested bulbs before Elaine takes a cheapo toothbrush to them to banish clinging dirt. Bob helps out with that task, too, when he is waiting for dinner or hiding from the heat.

Last year, there was more scrubbing to do. The Korvers had 50 cultivars of garlic. A few of those didn’t do so well in the increasing heat of western Colorado.

Bob could easily have replaced those with some of the new allium cultivars he ogles in seed catalogues during the winter, but “she said enough,” he explains while cutting his eyes toward Elaine.

She levels a hard stare at him over a grin: “Enough is right!”

Trading the classroom for the field

The Korvers, both in their early 70s and married for 37 years, never saw garlic taking over their lives back in the day.

Bob moved with his third-generation agricultural family to a farm just down the road from Green Acres when he was 4 years old. He grew up picking peaches and trying to listen to his father who warned him: “If you want to make a million dollars in farming, start out with $2 million.”

He went off to the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley, then on to Colorado State University where he earned a master’s in guidance counseling. He taught English and journalism and coached volleyball and track as well as serving as a counselor at schools in Columbus, Nebraska, on the Eastern Plains of Colorado and eventually in Steamboat Springs.

Elaine first met Bob in Greeley where she was attending college to earn a degree in library science. She describes herself as a city girl. She had grown up in Omaha, Nebraska, and after college aspired to teach in larger places like Denver and later Grand Junction.

The two came together like garlic and bread when Elaine was doing a librarian stint in Rifle during the oil shale boom. Friends invited her along to watch a volleyball game in Steamboat.

In between games, she spotted a guy in the bleachers who was busy grading papers, oblivious to the hubbub around him. His briefcase was beside him. Bob!

Their conversation led to a connection and eventually to Green Acres after they both decided they would retire from their professions and farm together. They would grow fruits and vegetables without using pesticides and herbicides and showcase rows of lavender.

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They proved they could master lavender when their oils won two first-place prizes in an international lavender competition last year in Australia.

Neither one remembers exactly how they came to decide that the fragrant lines of waving lavender could be neighbors to a garlic plot. It has something to do with saving water. Garlic does not require much water.

Bob’s years of classroom planning made him well suited to garlic farming. Garlic is an easy thing to grow. Home gardeners can plunk cloves in loose soil and create a bulb. But the way Bob does it requires complicated charts and graphs and timing schedules. Locations, planting dates, size of cloves, names are all neatly printed out on papers spotted with sweat and dirt, and snapped onto a clipboard that resides in the garlic field while Bob is working there.

His colored charts correspond to brown, pink, blue, red, green, orange and yellow flags that flutter at the end of rows in the recent air-fryer heat.

“We wouldn’t want anyone to think they were getting one kind of garlic and get another,” Elaine explains about all that paperwork. She is, she admits, “the queen of handouts.”

Each garlic bulb sold or given away at Green Acres comes with one of Elaine’s cheat sheets of information about that particular cultivar. Elaine staples the info to the brown paper bags that she stresses are the only proper receptacles for storing garlic. Her slips include information on variety, taste, storage, cooking, how many cloves should be in one bulb, where the garlic originated and where the seed to grow it came from.

Elaine’s taste descriptions require a passel of adjectives, including mellow, complex, spicy, musky, hot, full-bodied and even explosive. 

Beyond supermarket garlic

“I never knew there were that many varieties. It’s insane,” says Katie Henderson, a dedicated garlic customer at Green Acres who claims to cook with garlic every day.  When she runs low on Green Acres garlic, she asks the Korvers to scrounge around for scraps. Even a couple of cloves will do, she says, to keep her from having to buy grocery store bulbs that she now writes off as bland.

Julie McSherry of Omaha waits every year at this time for a box of garlic from Green Acres.

“I get about 15 types. The variety is exceptional,” she says. “Pungent is a good word for it.”

Pungent is a good word for it.

— Julie McSherry, an Omaha resident who gets a yearly box of garlic from Green Acres

Jarrett Nelson says Green Acres garlic has become a favorite at the Gypsum Fire Protection District where he works with the Korvers’ son.

“I am not a garlic taste-tester expert, but I can definitely tell the difference,” he says of the many varieties he has tried and used in his firehouse meals of lasagna and carne asada. This year, he has found more recipes to showcase garlic. He also plans to roast it, store it in olive oil and turn it into a butter.

Sherrie and Scott Hamilton who own Red Fox Cellars say they also cook with it regularly. They welcome garlic wafting over to mingle with the top notes of cabernet franc and merlot at their winery.

“A lot of my customers see Bob out there working in his field and they ask us, ‘What is it that he’s doing?’” she says.

A crop with deep roots

If wine tasters wander over to talk to Bob, they can get a garlic lesson.

Garlic is one of the oldest crops tended by humans. It is believed to have evolved and spread from south central Asia and was carried around the Mediterranean and European continents by nomadic tribes.

Garlic appears in the oldest written language, Sanskrit, in writings from 5,000 years ago. The Egyptians used garlic with its loads of sulfides for food and medicine. They revered it so much they entombed garlic with their dead.

There are two subgroups of garlic — hardneck and softneck. The hardneck varieties send up a flower stalk that is known as a scape (a tasty morsel on the grill or in a pickle jar). Hardnecks do better in colder climates, and they often pack the spiciest punch.

Softneck garlic (the kind you will see in those fancy garlic braids) has no tough stem.

Beyond those neck differences, there are 13 sub-varieties of garlic. Bob holds up one called an artichoke. The name comes from the fact that the cloves resemble artichoke petals. The cloves on the outside are large, and they get smaller toward the center.

Bob has also grown sub-varieties of porcelains, purple stripes and creoles.

He didn’t do great with the latter, he says, because he failed to figure out that something called creole would do better in Southern climates.

 “I’m kind of slow sometimes. I learn some things the hard way,” Bob says, garnering an indulgent smile from Elaine.

Garlic’s future 

There are other vegetable farms around Colorado that grow garlic. The Rocky Mountain Garlic Farm near Salida grows about a quarter-acre on an agricultural operation that has gone in the opposite direction of Green Acres and pivoted to more vegetables. Several other small Colorado garlic farms have closed in recent years.

Trisha Nungester with Tagawa Gardens in Centennial says Tagawa sells about 40 varieties — mainly for seed. Their garlic comes from multiple sources, including the motherlode of U.S. garlic, Filaree Farms in Washington state. When Tagawa announces that garlic is ready for sale, there is always a line out the door with people clamoring for favorite varieties.

In terms of homegrown variety in Colorado, the Korvers take the odiferous prize.

They grouse about maybe wanting to plant less. They both have had health problems in recent years.

But their seed-saving practices say cutbacks won’t happen soon.

They are already at work picking out 300 pounds of the fattest bulbs that will be saved to seed next year’s crops.

And there is always one new garlic variety to try, one more wheelbarrow load to sort, one more giant bulb to marvel over, and one more group of kids who come to Green Acres to get a farming lesson from a librarian and a teacher who can’t drop those old habits.

Bob won’t tell many of them one of the deepest, darkest secrets of Green Acres: He really doesn’t like to eat garlic.