After nearly five decades of advocacy, Frances Torres finally will have the opportunity to wield some institutional power over the Denver land from which she and her family were forcibly displaced.
On Wednesday, the board governing the Auraria Higher Education Center — the downtown campus that’s home to the University of Colorado Denver, Metropolitan State University of Denver and Community College of Denver — approved a new years-in-the-making masterplan.
That planning document outlines the future of Auraria’s development, beginning with a hard-earned concession to the displaced residents and their descendants who sacrificed their homes in the largely Latino neighborhood razed by the city in the 1970s to build the campus.
A strip of about a dozen Victorian homes, now called the Ninth Street Historic Park, was preserved from destruction through grassroots organizing and remains on the campus today. But who gets a say in what happens to Ninth Street has been a matter of contention for years as the displaced residents have vied for more control over the land they used to call home.
In a resolution adopted Wednesday alongside the masterplan, the Board of Directors established the Auraria Historic Corridor on the 150-acre campus, an area that includes the Ninth Street Historic Park and St. Cajetan’s Church. The designation acts as a boundary around what remains of Denver’s former Westside neighborhood.
And a new nine-member committee — with displaced Aurarians and their descendants holding the majority of seats — will oversee the planning and use of the historic corridor. Plans for art, proper educational signage and a healing garden, among other ideas, all fall under the new committee’s purview.
Nolbert Chavez, an elected CU regent who helped shepherd the renovation of Ninth Street, called the resolution “a very big deal.”
“Nowhere else in the country has a community ever been displaced and then been given back this kind of genuine involvement,” said Chavez, who is studying displaced communities as part of his Ph.D. work at CU Denver.
“The purpose of the Auraria Historic Corridor,” according to the resolution, “is to celebrate and honor the history and legacy of the people and places of Auraria before the creation of the campus.”
The resolution also created two reserved parking spots for displaced Aurarians in the Juniper Permit Lot at Seventh and Curtis streets.
“Thank you from my displaced Aurarian heart,” Torres said during Wednesday’s board meeting inside the campus’s Tivoli Student Union. “If my parents were here, Phillip J. and Petra Torres, they would be so proud of everything that we’ve done. When we were growing up, we weren’t even supposed to play in this building, the Tivoli. I’m standing here now thinking how happy they would be that we can say that we have a part in this campus.
“But most importantly,” she continued, “I think our relationship is much more positive, and the process of healing that we’ve wanted for so long is beginning.”
In February, dozens of displaced Aurarians showed up to a campus board meeting with a list of demands that boiled down to wanting more say in what happens to Ninth Street.
Virginia Castro, an activist who has been fighting alongside the displaced Aurarians since 1969, told The Denver Post she thinks enough people turned out to finally prove they were not backing down.
“We ended up having to show the powers that be that it wasn’t just a few of us wandering around,” Castro said. “There are a lot of people out there and when you suffer some kind of trauma, it doesn’t just go away. You deal with it and stuff it somewhere and people still want to talk about it.”
Colleen Walker, CEO of the Auraria Higher Education Center, said Wednesday’s board meeting was emotional. The resolution said the board “recognizes the history and trauma associated with the displacement of this community.”
“I am feeling deeply grateful,” Walker said, noting the hard work of everyone involved to hold 80 engagement opportunities for students, staff and the broader community throughout the Auraria Campus masterplan planning process. “There were lots and lots of tears today, but they were happy tears.”
Castro plans to sit on the committee and hopes to focus on a peace and healing garden on Ninth Street that is already underway and figure out how to bring the community back to St. Cajetan’s.
“I feel that even though sometimes we just don’t think that anything can change, I think it can,” Castro said. “If it’s the right thing to do and you know it’s the right thing to do and you stick with it, sometimes it happens.”
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Originally Published: June 27, 2024 at 6:00 a.m.
