The Gentrification Conundrum

I got to know West 23rd Avenue here in Denver while biking from my condo in South Central Denver to Sloan's Lake, on the city's west side. After biking around that lake and starting home, I would head down West 23rd past many Victorian homes and what were once corner grocery stores. One of those former groceries is now Briar Common Brewery and Eatery, located in the Jefferson Park neighborhood. The Sloan's Lake area east and north of the lake itself has always been a desirable location, but Jefferson Park, not so much. Federal Boulevard is the main business street for the area, and many of the businesses and homes in the neighborhoods along the length of Federal are Hispanic or Latino. During the 1990s, due to the affordability of Jefferson Park and its proximity to downtown Denver, not to mention being close to both Sloan's Lake and the very desirable Highlands neighborhood, "Jeff Park" began to experience a renaissance. These days, it is filled with pricey apartment buildings, as well as homes from the 1890s, 1910s, 1920s, 1940s, and 1950s. And I suspect it is now anything but affordable. Gentrification has taken a firm grip on the area. And so, biking past the corner of 23rd and Federal on my way toward downtown, I am always happy to see two traditional Mexican businesses on the corner - Taqueria Mi Pueblo, seen on the right in the photograph on the left, and Pinateria La Fiesta, across the street from it.

I especially like the outside of Pinateria La Fiesta, which sells flowers and pinatas. I saw an old photo of this building on the web, and it was painted white and a bit run down but now is painted red and decorated with many festive drawings, as seen in the photograph on the right. I assumed that it now attracts its Latino customers from further south, where most if not all of the businesses are Hispanic, but then I looked up Jefferson Park on the internet and saw that it was still 44% Hispanic or Latino, which hopefully means that the gentrification process did not drive all of the long-term residents out of the neighborhood. I remember working with a woman at the Tattered Cover Bookstore here in Denver who lived in the home she grew up in in the Lower Highlands (LoDo) neighborhood, which today is hipster central. She is still there, but remembers the good old days when parking was easy to find, there were no crowds of hipsters walking around night and day, and the property taxes were a fraction of what they are today. But, as I said, she is still there. Hopefully that is the case for many of those residents who have lived in Jefferson Park all their lives.