Denver Parks and Recreation has fenced off portions of Sonny Lawson Park and La Alma-Lincoln Park in what the department described Friday as its latest effort to curb rising drug sales, violence and vandalism in those spaces.
A pocket of grass and trees near the intersection of West 14th Avenue and Kalamath Street also was barricaded this week in response to those same behaviors, said Stephanie Figueroa, a spokeswoman with the department. The closures will remain in place for at least 30 days.
The parks department has worked with the city’s Department of Transportation and Infrastructure, Department of Public Health and Environment, City Council members, the Denver Police Department and the nonprofit Denver Dream Center to coordinate the closures, Figueroa said in an email Friday.
“The decision was made due to the increase in drug sales, violent incidents and vandalism,” she wrote. “(Denver Parks and Recreation) attempted other interventions before deciding on the closures, but the problem persisted.”
News of the closures was first reported by Denverite Thursday. The parks department does not appear to have announced the closures on its website or social media pages.
The head of the La Alma-Lincoln Park Neighborhood Association on Friday said the organization has fielded numerous complaints about conditions in the park in recent months. Officials with a neighborhood charter school raised concerns in July about open drug use and dealing across from the school building on the west side of the park. Human waste and frequent physical fights in the park also worried school officials, emails show.
In another email sent to the organization, a mom shared pictures of syringes scattered in the grass. She brought her children to the park to play on the playground but left after finding the drug paraphernalia and witnessing a large group of people using needles and smoking substances off pieces of foil.
Still, Nolan Hahn, the president of the neighborhood organization, said he was disappointed with the steps parks and public safety officials took in response to those concerns. Beyond fences being erected, city officials also removed portable toilets from the park, he said.
He would have preferred to see more targetted measures like a wider-scale deployment of the city’s Support Team Assisted Response program — which sends paramedics and mental health professionals to the scenes of emergency calls instead of armed police officers — to try to tackle the problems in the area before taking the park away from all users in a low-income neighborhood.
“I don’t want to say that Denver Parks didn’t try anything. I think they definitely tried,” he said. “It’s just unfortunate that two of the methods that were tried involved making the park worse and less useful for everyone in the neighborhood.”
City agencies “working incredibly well together”
City Councilwoman Jamie Torres represents the portion of west Denver that encompasses La Alma-Lincoln Park and Paco Sánchez Park, another area that she dsof has seen increased crowds of people in recent months. The parks department has also put up barriers along a portion of that park, she said.
The crowds and drug-related behavior in west Denver are connected to Mayor Mike Johnston’s All In Mile High homelessness initiative, Torres said. As of Friday, that program had sheltered 1,872 people for at least one night. but has also closed off portions of downtown known for homeless encampments to people sleeping outside, pushing the behavior into other neighborhoods.
The program has been a needed boost in resources for people who are seeking to stabilize their lives and may just need some short-term support, Torres said, but the people who are left outside are the hardest population to reach, including those with severe addictions.
From Torres’ perspective, conditions in La Alma-Lincoln Park have actually improved greatly compared to earlier this summer.
“I don’t think our departments are operating in silos as much as they used to be,” she said. “Parks and DPD are working incredibly well together around the two areas I’ve got (in my district) that are particularly intense.”
Denver police have stepped up patrols in La Alma-Lincoln and Sonny Lawson parks in response to “an increase in community complaints in those areas in relation to illegal drug use, assaults and disturbances,” a department spokesperson wrote in an email Friday, but all decisions on park closures are made by the parks department.
Select activities are still being allowed at both Sonny Lawson, located at 2301 Welton St. in the Five Points neighborhood, and La Alma-Lincoln Park, which anchors its namesake neighborhood at 1265 Mariposa St.
The dog park and playground at Sonny Lawson remain open — at least for the time being, Figueroa said. People and organizations who already hold permits for events and activities on specific days will also be allowed to use the parks at those times if they still want to.
“Permitted uses include baseball league play, farmer markets and concerts,” Figueroa wrote in her email. “DPR has reached out to permit holders to let them know about the closure and to work with them if they choose to change their permit.”
Not the first time parks have been closed
Closing public parks to clamp down on potentially dangerous and damaging behaviors is not a new approach for the city.
La Alma-Lincoln Park and its recreation center were closed on and off for the better part of five months between December 2021 and April 2022 amid a spate of shooting incidents that included someone firing a shot into the rec center while it was open, parks officials said at that time.
The final closure, a weeklong shutdown that began on April 28, 2022, following a fatal shooting in the park. Gary Arellano, 63, was killed while attempting to break up a fight in the park. A 24-year-old man from outside of the neighborhood was arrested in Arellano’s killing.
Civic Center Park, located in the heart of the city at the intersection of Broadway and Colfax Avenue, was also subject to a lengthy closure from September 2021 to May 2022. The parks department enforced the shutdown in part to restore grass and make safety improvements, but also to disrupt what was described as rampant drug use and drug sales there.
Figueroa noted in her email Friday that the city limited access to Civic Center Park up through 2023 even after the more extensive closure was lifted. That was done to ensure safety and has been deemed a success.
“As you walk the park today you can witness firsthand how successful that closure and reopening was. The park is in amazing shape and is welcoming to all who want to visit this public space,” Figueroa wrote.
Mark Hettig has lived in the La Alma-Lincoln Park neighborhood for three years. In the past six months, his garage has been burglarized twice, costing him four bicycles, two pairs of skis and a tool set, he said. After the second incident, he did not bother filing a police report.
Denver has big problems when it comes to housing costs and availability, Hettig said. Closing parks and moving people along are short-term fixes for those deeper needs. He has noticed that since the fencing has gone up at the park and along 14th Avenue, more people have gathered at the corner of West Colfax Avenue and Mariposa Street.
“No one likes being violated in their home and having things stolen from what they thought was safe,” he said. “It’s a tough problem to solve. I wish the city luck and hope they are trying to help people and not just harass them. I think it will push people into someone else’s neighborhood and then the cycle continues.”
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