Mayor Coffman wants to make Northwest Aurora the ‘heart of the city.’ What do residents think?
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AURORA — Big changes are coming to Aurora. At least, that’s what the community is hoping for.
“There are so many stories that need to be told in this community. But that’s tough to do because it’s so diverse and complicated with issues impacting Northwest Aurora,” said Mateos Alvarez.
Alvarez is the community organizer director for the Northwest Aurora Community Collaborative, a registered neighborhood organization (RNO) that has formed over the last year and a half in Aurora. RNOs are formed by residents and property managers in a specific neighborhood. The city is notified of the groups, which meet regularly.
The collaborative plans to bring together Northwest Aurora community members, from longtime homeowners to budding entrepreneurs, creating a space where people can talk about the changes that they want to see in the neighborhood, and how to make them happen.
Video: Peter Vo, Rocky Mountain PBS
The official “North Aurora” neighborhood is tucked between Yosemite St. and Peoria St. and stretches from Colfax Ave. to 26th Ave. The neighborhood is home to more than 16,000 people and is one of the most diverse communities in the state.
“The reason this community organization exists is because Northwest Aurora, for a few decades now, has been economically depressed,” said Alvarez. “There’s not a lot of investment going into this particular community.”
Colfax Avenue used to serve as a thoroughfare for the City of Aurora. But the Colfax corridor saw less traffic following the completion of I-70 and I-225 in the 1970s. Highway travel discouraged commutes from Downtown Denver to Aurora via Colfax. With lower traffic and rising rent costs, many businesses along the Colfax corridor are struggling to survive.
Alvarez recently biked up and down the Aurora Colfax corridor and counted 16 boarded-up buildings between Yosemite and Peoria.
“These [closures] are some of the challenges that attract crime and attract the perception of crime in our community,” said Alvarez.
Northwest Aurora received national attention last year when footage showing armed men trying to enter an apartment at The Edge at Lowry — an apartment complex in the area — went viral. Aurora officials have since shut down the apartment complex.
On March 4, President Donald Trump commented on the state of immigration in Aurora and how the city has “buckled under the weight of the migrant occupation and corruption,” Since his campaign in 2024, Trump’s been using The Edge at Lowry as an example of the city being “destroyed” by migrant crime.
“There’s been a lot of exaggerated information about crime and gang activity, that has really done a disservice to our community,” said Reid Hettich, community leader and pastor at Mosaic Church in Aurora. “There are real challenges in our community, but there are also unprecedented opportunities. How do we help?”
Hettich recently announced his candidacy for the Aurora Ward I Council seat. The Northwest Aurora neighborhood is in that ward.
In 2012, Hettich started the Opportunity Center on Dayton Street, two blocks away from the now-closed apartment complex. The building serves as a community space where people attend church, volunteer and rent out spaces for their businesses.
Northwest Aurora Community Collaborative has been using the space for its meetings as well.
The group has held eight meetings since its inception. According to Alvarez, its recent meetings have focused on the area's economic revitalization. The city has participated in the meetings.
“My hope as mayor is to redevelop this area and return it to, really, the heart of the city,” said Aurora Mayor Mike Coffman.
Coffman points to Stanley Marketplace as an example of what redevelopment in the Northwest part of Aurora would look like. The marketplace was originally an aviation manufacturing facility that closed its doors in 2007. In 2016, it reopened as an independent marketplace with over 50 businesses, including a James Beard Award-winning restaurant and boutique shops.
Currently, the City of Aurora is working on an urban development plan for Fletcher Plaza on Colfax Avenue. Adopted in 2003, The Fletcher Plaza Urban Renewal is still being worked on today.
The City of Aurora wants to focus on this stretch of Colfax. It’s considered the Aurora Cultural Arts District, home to entertainment venues like the Aurora Fox Arts Center and The People’s Building.
Coffman believes bolstering this part of the city will bring the Colfax area back to its heyday of the late 1960s.
Residents of the area however, are no strangers to promises of redevelopment in the area.
“We've been through this before. We've heard promises, we've heard there's going to be efforts,” said Hettich. “Community members said that they’ve been through all of that, but nothing much has taken place as a result of all of that.”
Historically, turnout hasn’t been high at meetings because residents and community members felt like not much was changing according to Hettich.
On top of this, many residents in the neighborhood haven’t prioritized community action as they’re dealing with food insecurity, immigration and day-to-day means.
“The immigrant refugee population, they're surviving. They're not thinking about economic revitalization. They’re just trying to figure out how to put food on the table,” said Hettich.
Aurora is the most diverse city in Colorado. Its residents speak more than 160 languages. Hettich says it’s not surprising when there’s low turnout at the meetings if the meetings are held from one perspective, in one language.
“When you talk to homeowners, they say they moved here because they love the diversity, the food, the culture and that they want their kid to grow up in a diverse community,” said Alvarez.
Lizzie Schoon, a homeowner in the neighborhood since 2017, has been active in the community, attending these new meetings in hopes of changing the narrative surrounding the neighborhood and boosting participation. She lives with her eight-year-old son.
“[Northwest Aurora Community Collaborative] is trying hard to build trust in the process of building the new development plan. Something that’s happened a lot in this neighborhood is that the city has come in and asked people what they want, and not really doing anything with it,” she said.
This time around, the city is contracting Progressive Urban Management Associates, or PUMA, to study the area in order to bolster public participation and have a plan of development. PUMA has been researching the neighborhood and engaging with residents to get a better understanding of how they want the area to develop.
The study area extends from Yosemite St. to Moline St. and from E 17th Ave. to E 13th Ave.
On the evening of March 18th, PUMA held a community meeting at North Middle School. Many community members and organizers shuffled into the cafeteria, filling out 16 tables throughout the room. Many people had to stand.
After conducting interviews with organizations, businesses and people in the area, PUMA presented four development plans to attendees at the meeting.
PUMA pitched that the neighborhood could either become a Business Improvement District (BID), a Downtown Development Authority (DDA), a Community Development Corporation (CDC) or just continue on as the neighborhood is currently.
When it was time for people to sign up to speak, many worried residents came up on stage and claimed they’d never heard of PUMA, and that an entity contracted by the city was making changes to their neighborhood.
“I don’t like how [PUMA] hasn’t engaged with the community,“ said Margeret Turco, a neighborhood resident since 1993.
Turco, like many other members at the meeting, was hesitant about PUMA’s role in the development of their neighborhood because they hadn’t heard of PUMA or had been contacted by the organization.
The organization says it has contacted more than 40 businesses in the area and has hosted 11 events with over 300 attendees prior to this event.
“I would like to see a list or some context as to where they’ve been getting their information to present these decisions,” said Turco.
Rocky Mountain PBS reached out to PUMA for comment, but did not hear back.
Turco says she would like to see change in the neighborhood, but she wants it to be transparent from the city and wants it to be a community effort.
“With all of this conversation about economic revitalization, investment by the city and hiring consultants, more and more community members are stepping up,” said Hettich. “If we don't step up now, I don't know if [this opportunity] comes back again in a year or ten years or 20 years.
Schoon hopes that the city will listen to the residents and that these open forum meetings will grow as plans are put into action.
“I haven’t noticed things that the city specifically has done outside of the arts district. To me, it feels like the work that’s being done is from people who are already living here making it that way,” said Schoon.
Type of story: News
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources.
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources.
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