Starting in 2024, DUG will focus its new builds on Denver’s West Area. We will continue our work supporting gardens and food forests across seven counties in metro Denver, but special circumstances have aligned to allow us to focus expansion in a limited geography.
In March 2023, Denver City Council unanimously passed the West Area Plan. Denver’s Neighborhood Planning Initiative is a long-term commitment to ensure every corner of the city can enjoy the benefits of an area plan. Since its launch in 2017, residents, neighborhood groups, and community leaders have worked alongside city planners to create a vision and plan for their areas.
The West Area Plan was different:
- centering Quality of Life issues, including food access
- providing an in-depth understanding of the history of West Area neighborhoods and the impact of harmful policies like redlining
- providing a clear path for the city and community partners to begin to bring this vision to life through thoughtful implementation of plan recommendations
- strengthening equity:
- First-ever section in an NPI plan about past planning inequities
- Historic timeline tells the community’s story
- addressing document complexity
- plan navigation improved with recommendation summaries added to each main section of plan
Key Quality of Life Recommendations:
- Quality of Life is the backbone of the plan and the driving force of the other content
- First ever section devoted to water
- Expansive content on healthy food access and production
- Environmental justice emphasized in multiple subsections
- Celebrating and building community around the diverse cultures of West
Denver’s West Area includes six neighborhoods nestled between 17th & 19th Avenues, Sheridan Boulevard, Alameda Avenue and the South Platte River:
- West Colfax
- Barnum
- Barnum West
- Sun Valley
- Valverde
- Villa Park
Denver Urban Gardens had the honor to participate in the planning process and is now working with the stakeholders of the West Area to bring some of the green infrastructure elements of the plan to life.
To that end, DUG has received city and federal funding towards the installation of six community gardens and nine food forests in the West Area between now and summer 2027, all in response to this Plan. Specifically, we received $500,000 from the EPA’s Environmental Justice Collaborative Problem-Solving Cooperative Agreement, $350,000 from the USDA’s Office of Urban Agriculture and Innovative Production, and ongoing support from the City and County of Denver’s Healthy Food for Denver’s Kids program. This work will be done in deep partnership with the community architects of the West Area Plan.
If you would like to get involved with this transformational work:
- Please help connect DUG with community members and community partners to ensure as many voices as possible inform our plan;
- Submit an application for a new community garden or food forest site (applications for 2025 are closed but please submit for 2026-2027);
- We are seeking finishing funding for each site including site adoptions and legacy gifts for each of the 15 sites;
- Email DUG’s Executive Director, Linda Appel Lipsius
