For 25 years, Denverites have waited and wondered what would become of the old Gates Rubber factory at the intersection of Broadway and Interstate 25 south of downtown. Beautiful but badly contaminated solid brick buildings were torn down with the promise of remediation and redevelopment that never materialized.

Millions were spent on the cleanup of the soil, only for the debt to act as an albatross around the properties’ neck, tied to the metropolitan district on the land. A bridge was built to connect South Broadway to Santa Fe, but isn’t open for use.

Now redevelopment of the 40-acre site is within grasp, with a promising economic model. But the catch is that the city must invest millions more into a project that has already been promised millions in tax incentives.

A team of investors wants to build a stadium on the land for their newly acquired National Women’s Soccer League franchise. The stadium and surrounding mixed-use development would bring the promise that the abandoned brownfield will finally become green – green with a soccer pitch, a new city park, and with customers bringing cold-hard cash to the neighborhood.

We understand the reluctance to let the city invest in another stadium project. Less than 25 years after taxpayers built the Denver Broncos a new stadium, there is already talk of demolishing the fully paid-off investment. However, with turbulent economic times ahead for the city, state and nation, we don’t see another investor stepping up to build up the vacant Gates’ land anytime soon.

Denver Mayor Mike Johnston was right to jump at the opportunity to help bring this new franchise to the city, making sure that Colorado’s first stadium for professional female athletes opens right in the heart of Denver. And after some very healthy skepticism, the City Council seems ready to support the proposal.

Johnston is pledging to use $42.5 million to buy the land at the old Gates site and allow the investors to build a stadium on the land rent-free, along with some combination of housing development, commercial real estate, and other entertainment venues. The money would come from non-general fund sources. Technically, the city would use capital improvement fund dollars, but that money would be backfilled by interest earned on the 2017 bond package.

“We want to own and control long-term the land for the stadium as public land,” Johnston said. The design of the stadium will also allow people to enjoy concerts from the public park adjacent to the open end of the field, giving a public feeling to the private venue.

The city plans to spend $27.5 million on infrastructure for the project as well, which will come from existing funding for capital projects.

The developer will also benefit from an existing tax increment financing deal. Likely for the next 17 years, the developers on the land will pay no property taxes for the stadium or any of the mixed-use buildings, and the deal also includes a break on sales taxes. There is no estimated value of those tax breaks because the plans for the development have not been finalized, but Johnston said it will be a negotiation with the Denver Urban Renewal Authority.

Finally, the developers will also be able to levy sales taxes and an additional property tax on the property using the existing metropolitan district. That district is already deeply in debt from the demolition and remediation work completed, and Johnston said any tax benefits would first have to pay down the debt before they could benefit the developer.

This is a complex deal layering private and public dollars on top of years of complex financing and remediation work. But that does not mean it won’t ultimately be a good deal for the city of Denver, especially the South Broadway community of small business owners, homeowners and renters.

The City and County of Denver’s Finance Department conducted an economic study and estimates that even with all of the tax breaks, the project will generate increased sales taxes within the community and that the overall economic impact of the stadium and the team with 24 home games a year could top $2.2 billion and create 1,100 jobs.

And the icing on the cake, of course, would be giving more women from around the world the opportunity to make a good career out of professional sports. For far too long, that career path has been available only to men, and this stadium will only further gild the golden pathway being laid in this nation for women at the top of their sports.

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We all know the saying — if a deal seems too good to be true, it is.

Christophe Attard scored a Denver home worth at least $300,000 in a 2021 foreclosure auction for a mere $23,524. To his credit, Attard has allowed the family he bought the home out from under to continue to live there as long as they made the payments to the mortgage that still used the house as collateral.

This was not actually a foreclosure. Monica Villela and her ex-husband Gilardo Gonzalez Jr. had made their mortgage payments and had even paid their homeowners association dues.

But the aggressive HOA in charge of their Green Valley Ranch neighborhood used fines, late penalties, interest and attorney’s fees to push the family out of the home that they had purchased in 2005 for $164,000.

Denver Post reporter Noelle Phillips has documented the abuse of the Green Valley Ranch HOA in northeast Denver, where people have lost homes over oil stains on driveways, broken blinds, and having a rug on a back patio.

The Master Homeowners Association filed 50 foreclosures in 2021 alone. And while they were among the worst offenders, across the state, HOAs take hundreds of houses every year, often over petty infractions and hefty late penalties and attorney fees.

The situation uncovered by The Post was so dire that state lawmakers responded with changes — limiting the amount of fines and attorney fees that can be collected. Most HOAs got the memo, and the number of foreclosures has decreased; Green Valley Ranch HOAs filed none in recent years. But other HOAs are still initiating foreclosures.

As we wrote in 2024, state law must change further so that HOA liens are secondary and cannot be used to initiate a foreclosure process. Leins should also not be used for fines, but only for unpaid HOA dues. Small claims court is the appropriate venue for an HOA to collect fines for overgrown weeds and broken windows.

For families like Villela’s, the damage had already been done.

Her situation, however, is unique because they purchased their home under an affordability easement owned by the City and County of Denver.

A judge ruled just last week that the house was illegally sold to Attard’s investment company — Welcome to Realty LLC 401K PSP — because the company exceeded income limits, and also the city’s housing ordinance prohibits homes from being owned by investors.

Given the situation, we advise Attard to sell the home back to Monica Villela and her ex-husband Gilardo Gonzalez Jr. for the offered price of $30,000, which was raised by a group of people who support Villela’s effort to keep her house. Attard should not be surprised. The deal was simply too good to be true.

And we’d also advise HOAs and investors to take note of this ruling.

While past foreclosure auction sales will likely stand judicial challenge unless there are affordability easements on the property, this case should give everyone involved in these deals pause. It’s unethical to foreclose a home over unsightly or inconvenient violations of covenants, and the ethics of snapping up these deals at auction are questionable as well.

No one has evidence that HOAs have been conspiring with investors, but now that residents know their rights and have learned to protest this abuse, investigations for collusion and equity theft are certain to follow.

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Updated 9:40 a.m. April 26, 2025: This story has been updated to correct the figure in the headline.

Colorado lawmakers have passed an end to Colorado’s two-tier justice system. Now, Gov. Jared Polis just needs to sign House Bill 1147.

The Denver Post’s reporters highlighted the injustice of allowing municipal courts to carry much harsher sentences for non-violent, petty crimes than state courts in a series of stories last year.

The Post found that not only were people spending months in jail for minor retail thefts that would have resulted in only a few days sentences in state courts, but that indigent or poor defendants weren’t guaranteed access to an attorney in municipal court, resulting in longer sentences without any representation.

House Bill 1147 would prohibit municipal courts from having harsher minimum sentences than state courts, thus reducing the temptation for law enforcement and prosecutors to funnel cases to municipal courts to get harsher sentences without facing tough legal counsel.

Of 468 theft and trespassing convictions reviewed by The Denver Post, defendants going through courts in Colorado’s 10 largest cities served an average of five times more jail time than those in state courts. Some may argue that the difference is only a matter of days. After all, these sentences are less than a full year under Colorado law. But a day or two in jail can matter to a defendant trying to get out to care for children or to return to work, get a dog out of an animal shelter, or even just hoping to salvage some of their possessions that were left behind in a homeless camp or shelter.

Polis has an opportunity to reinforce the more lenient state sentencing laws that were passed in 2021. Nonviolent crimes should have repercussions, but we’re not convinced the deterrent of longer jail stays is nearly as effective as letting someone get on with their lives, and hopefully get back on track.

Polis was right in 2020 when he asked the Colorado Commission on Criminal and Juvenile Justice to go through the criminal code to update sentencing guidelines, calling for them to be “rational, just and consistent so that the punishment fits the conduct.”

We hope he heeds those words and considers that without House Bill 1147 our sentencing is neither consistent nor just. While the Colorado Supreme Court is considering the legality of the disparities between state and city courts, lawmakers have addressed the issue head-on.

There is no need to wait for the courts to rule. Already, state law caps the length of sentences for ordinance violations at 364 days. That cap doesn’t infringe on cities’ ability to govern themselves any more than bringing sentencing in line with the state’s maximum penalties would.

Our justice system cannot be arbitrary if Americans are to maintain faith in the courts. The circumstances of every crime are different, and judges are provided with a broad latitude in sentencing, weighing someone’s risk to society, their remorse, and whether they are repeat offenders.

However, judges have also always had guardrails placed on their sentencing. We can find no valid reason for municipal judges and state court judges to have different guardrails when considering the same crime with the same extenuating or aggravating details and facts.

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Tucker Carlson will no longer be on Fox News. The announcement Monday that Carlson and Fox had parted ways came after Fox had agreed to pay out three quarters of a billion dollars to Dominion in a defamation lawsuit that rested heavily on Carlson’s on-air reporting about election fraud coupled with his off-air text messages indicating he thought it all was a hoax.

To mark this moment, I’ve pulled some of the best Tucker Carlson cartoons from over the years because sometimes a drawing is worth a thousand words.

Megan Schrader is the editor of The Denver Post’s opinion pages.

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Editor’s note: Madison Schilling submitted her artwork to The Denver Post after her teacher at Green Mountain High School in Lakewood encouraged her to share it with a broader audience. Her hope is that it will help adults and teens cope with a difficult year of remote learning during the COVID-19 pandemic.

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On Tuesday, President Trump commuted the sentence of former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, who’s been serving time in Colorado prison.

Trump also pardoned former NYPD commissioner Bernie Kerik and granted clemency to financier Michael Milken.

As Democratic presidential candidates did battle this week in New Hampshire, Mike Bloomberg zipped ahead to focus on Super Tuesday states.

On the other side of the aisle, President Donald Trump took some flak from former chief of staff John Kelly over the removal of Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman from the White House. Vindman testified in the House impeachment proceedings.

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It’s been a big week for President Donald Trump.

Last Tuesday he delivered a State of the Union address that included a Presidential Medal of Freedom for Rush Limbaugh and Nancy Pelosi ripping up a ceremonial copy of the speech.

The next day he was acquitted of impeachment charges by a GOP-controlled Senate and he subsequently removed a number of employees who testified as part of the House investigation from the White House.

And then this week his longtime ally, Roger Stone, caught a break when DOJ officials decided to step in and reduce their recommended sentence, prompting all four trial attorneys to resign or withdraw from the case.