The Downtown Development Authority will meet tonight at 6:30 in City Council Chambers. They refused a grant request from New Energy Colorado for the Metro Denver Green Home Tour, which will take place on October 7th. They gave them a $1500 grant last year, when the event was based at the Mountaineering Center, but this year it is based elsewhere–not within the DDA area. The Visitors Center and Visit Golden, which both receive funds from DDA, will report on their recent activity. They will discuss a potential TIF agreement with the Buffalo Rose, which would help offset the cost of their upcoming remodel. They will discuss a plan to remove some parking spaces on Washington Avenue between 14th and 19th Streets. See their meeting packet for more information.
The Parks & Recreation Board will meet tomorrow night at 7PM at the Community Center. They will review the recent increase in crime in Lion’s Park. They will also discuss how to respond to requests from special interest groups–something city government as a whole is considering.
The History Museum will present plans to de-accession several items from the collection, including the galvanized free-standing bathtub, the Heintzman & Co. square grand piano, the 6-octave Taylor & Farley melodeon, a blue, hardbound 1966 city directory for Golden, a wooden store counter with six pull-out drawers, originally loaned by the Old Ironsides Antiques shop, which was located at 2124 Ford St., another melodian, a red velvet-covered piano stool, a wagon wheel rim, a lithograph, a Battenburg lace collar, a print showing the first reading the Emancipation Proclamation, a roasting pan, a framed oil painting of Ella Fletcher-Tolan, a DAR certificate for Charlotte Ann Barron Rhodes dated 12/29/1899, a DAR certificate for Ella Fletcher Tolan, a round piano stool from Lyon and Healy, Chicago, 46 tokens mounted on a suede-covered board, 37 tokens mounted on a suede-covered board, a statue of an Indian chief, another statue of an indian chief, painted bronze, a wooden statue of an indian chief, a photographic print of Plains Indians, a print of an Indian family, and a map of the Uintah Railway from the Ronzio collection.
The minutes from last month’s meeting show that the proposal to turn the Astor House into a beer museum was turned down by city council. The building is currently gutted, with no future plans. The estimate is that it would cost $500,000-$1,000,000 to bring the building to “a minimum level of integrity.” The building needs to be reroofed, and money has been budgeted for that, but no funds have been budgeted to make the building usable again. There is no possibility of returning it to its previous incarnation as the Astor House Hotel Museum, because the artifacts from that museum were sold last year.
