Hoar Frost, Affordable Housing Via Land Trust, and a Crime Wave in Golden

*Golden Eye Candy – Greg Poulos – Hoar Frost – North Table Mountain – click to enlarge*

Virtual Golden

6-6:55AM Virtual Dynamic Circuit
8:30-9:30AM Virtual Power Training
10:15-10:45AM Spanish Story Time
2-3PM Active Minds
4-5PM Recursos Digitales
4-4:30PM Kids Martial Arts Class
5-6PM Young Readers Book Club

6:30PM GURA Board Meeting
GURA will start with an update on all things COVID. The meeting packet contains a good explanation of why we’re at kind-of-Level-Orange/kind-of-Level-Red right now. The County hopes to establish a program that would let businesses be certified as 5-Star Businesses, which would allow them to be more open than non-5-Star Businesses.

They will then discuss a conceptual design for 24th street, which will provide easier pedestrian access to DeLong Park for residents of the new housing project at 24th and Jackson.

They will discuss the Community Land Trust that the City hopes to work with. The Land Trust wants to buy houses and condos throughout Golden and make them “permanently affordable” and available for purchase by people at the 80% AMI or below income level. To accomplish this, the Land Trust would retain ownership of the land beneath the house while the purchasers buy the building. They want the City to contribute some of the money toward the initial purchase. The City may not want to use money from the general fund, but GURA and the DDA might choose to fund affordable housing within their districts.

The meeting memo says that staff has identified properties around town that the Land Trust might want to buy for use as affordable housing. The memo does not specify which properties they’re suggesting, but perhaps they will reveal that during the meeting.

Staff will provide an update about the proposed trail/stairway between 8th Street and Lions Park at the east end of the Community Center.

I think these instructions from the meeting memo are saying that public comment will only be accepted in writing for this meeting:

GURA plans to stream this meeting on the City’s website and will upload the recording of the meeting to the City’s website after the meeting.
Members of the public without access to the internet may call in to the following phone number to listen only mode. Please call 1-408-418-9388; access code is 146 118 9695. The public may submit comments to rfleischmann@cityofgolden.net before or during the meeting. Public comment from call-in observers will not be accepted.

7-8PM Golden Concert Choir – New Virtual Season Begins
We will begin class/rehearsals next Monday, January 11th; the class from 7-7:55pm and rehearsal from 8-9pm. Learn more….

Golden History Moment

The scene of the crimes – click to enlarge

71 Years Ago
According to the January 12, 1950 Colorado Transcript, Golden had been experiencing a crime wave. The previous Friday (January 6th), a man had robbed the hardware store, shot a power company employee, and taken hostages as he attempted to get away.

Eugene Lewis had been drinking in Denver before taking a taxi to Golden. Once here, he toured Golden’s taverns for a few hours, then stopped at the jewelry store to ask where he could buy a gun. The jeweler directed him across the street, to Kellogg Hardware. An employee showed him a gun. Saying that he “wanted to see if the gun held shells properly,” Lewis quickly loaded the gun and turned it on the employee. He then used it to herd everyone to the back of the store. He ordered the owner to give him the cash drawer, and grabbed about $100 from the drawer.

At that moment, a young couple and their one-year-old son came in the store. Lewis asked the new arrivals if they had a car, and demanded the keys. The baby was holding the keys, so Lewis grabbed them from him and ordered the family to join the others at the back of the store.

Then he ran outside, but couldn’t find the car, so he ran down 13th Street to the Jackson side of the block. There, he encountered five power company employees and turned his gun on them. He stole a power company truck and ordered two of the employees to get in with him. One of the employees tried to grab him, but Lewis shot him in the thigh. He then began to drive away. The three other power company employees jumped into another company truck and followed, radioing their locations to the police and sheriff.

Golden police followed him up Highway 93 to Highway 72, where the Arvada chief of police was blocking the road. Lewis swerved around the car and continued heading north. After another mile, he jumped out of the truck and began running. He was soon surrounded by both Golden Police and Jeffco Sheriffs. He threw away the gun and lay down on the ground.

Lewis was held in the Jefferson County jail (at 16th and Washington) but escaped in April. He was caught the following day and stood trail a week later. He was sentenced 13 to 14 years in the state penitentiary for the shooting and another 13 to 14 years for the robbery.

Three days before the Kellogg robbery, three men had tried to steal the safe from the Golden Safeway store (which was located at 13th and Washington at that time). They entered the store through a skylight. The custodian at Foss Drug, next door, heard them on the roof and called the police. One patrolman climbed to the roof while the other waited at the back door of the store. The one on the roof yelled at the burglars, surprising them as they were pulling the safe from the wall. The three tried to escape out the back door, where they were greeted by the other patrolman. One immediately gave up while the other two escaped in a nearby car. They were picked up in short order. One of the men was sentenced to 1 to 3 years in the penitentiary while the other two were given probation.

The January 12th Transcript concluded by celebrating the end of the crime wave, but two weeks later, armed gunmen tried to rob Meyer Hardware. In that case, Joe Meyer was able to dodge behind the paint counter and call the sheriff. The would-be robbers were quickly caught.

Many thanks to the Golden History Museum for providing the online cache of historic Transcripts and to the Golden Transcript for documenting our history since 1866!