January News
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Eagle View has landed; opens Jan. 17
Ten years after initial plans took shape for a new senior center, the Eagle View Adult Center will open.“The first plan had no site, so we didn’t worry about a floor plan,” Parks and Recreation Director Gary Wardle said.
“First we did a kind of self assessment – where we were, where we needed to be and the next step was a feasibility study,” Senior Center Director Sue Corbett said. What a difference 10 years makes.
Doors will open Jan. 17 to the $6.9 million Phase One of what ultimately will be a three-phase project. The official grand opening will be Feb. 3 and 4.
People will walk through sliding automatic double doors into a lobby with a three-sided fireplace, a seating area among bookshelves, and a welcoming, curved wooden registration desk that introduces a “prairie” theme seen throughout the structure.
“We really wanted to make sure it is a comfortable, warm and inviting space,” Corbett said.
Directly ahead of the entrance, past the lobby, and front desk, and the café (with a computer counter and wi-fi) is a stained-glass window and an entryway to the billiard room. Following the wrap-around registration desk to the right, one enters a hallway that leads to administrative offices and a conference room and the doorway that now leads outside but in the future will connect to the fitness area. Outside that door is also a garden area with 10 handicapped-accessible 4-by-8-foot raised beds.
If a visitor turns left beyond the fireplace, it leads down another corridor to several sites of activity. An enclosed office on the right in that hallway – with another L-shaped desk and sliding glass windows – serves the outreach and meal programs and has its own corridor leading to small offices for client services (that’s where Ermie Marquez’s office is) and the wellness clinic.
Classrooms also are on the right. They can be divided into three smaller rooms (Falcon, Hawk and Heron, for now) with temporary walls to accommodate smaller or larger groups. One wall of the Heron Room has full-length mirrors, similar to the room in the old senior center where aerobics and dance classes were conducted. Five computer stations sit along the east wall of the Hawk Room. Initial plans are to place three computers there for classes ...
• Read the full story in the current issue of Local Color. • Read the full story in the current issue of Local Color. • Read the full story in the current issue of Local Color.
Brighton woos big and small business
It’s like match.com for business, Brighton Economic Development Corp. CEO Ray Gonzales said, and Brighton has a lot of potential dates.
The EDC board of directors allowed the Brighton Economic Development Corp. to work with Buxton, a market-analysis company, to identify trade areas of downtown Brighton, Prairie Center and Adams Crossing; to identify who is shopping and psychographics (demographics and social research) of that group; and to match the shoppers’ needs and wants with the businesses that fill those needs (along with their compatibility in Brighton).
What they found, Gonzales said, was in Prairie Center and downtown alone, there were 200 matches of businesses.
“When I was looking into purchasing those services – vetting it and calling references – some cities said their match was only 20,” Gonzales said. “That gives you an idea that we are truly a regional hub for the northeastern metro corner.”
Armed with that information, Gonzales said, he and his EDC staff will work with Buxton on the final element of its service: preparing marketing for Brighton.
It means Brighton will more aggressively pursue businesses that the survey shows are well suited for the city – down to which shopping area would be most effective.
The key, Gonzales said, is a portion of the study that uses 75,000 data points to identify details such as “what kind of gum (a household) is buying, what kinds of nonprofits it supports, and per-household product numbers.”
Every year, Brighton sends an economic development team to the International Council of Shopping Centers conference in Las Vegas. This year, Gonzales said, “I’ve already set up 21 appointments” with some of those identified businesses. “That’s the most we’ve ever had with retailers – and we can present a model and justify why (those businesses) would succeed here.”
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City will celebrate past at new park
A new city hall, a new water park, a reuse for the former city hall (now Historic City Hall), all in the same year: but there’s more to come in 2012 for the city of Brighton.
Before the Ken Mitchell Lakes fishing pier was dedicated this summer, before the new City Hall opened in September, even before the Brighton Oasis Family Aquatic Park opened in June, the city broke ground on a 10-year project: a new senior center/adult recreation center. The Eagle View Adult Rec Center, on Prairie Center Parkway near Platte Valley Medical Center, will open Jan. 17 and hold its grand opening on Feb. 3-4 (see related story).
But there’s more.
In a way, Carmichael Park was started while the former Adams County Administration Building was given a facelift, new, energy-efficient windows, a new heating, ventilation and air-conditioning system and was remodeled on the inside to create a new City Council Chambers on the first floor and to convert the sixth floor hearing room into a venue for study sessions.
As the city downsized the parking area in front and on the sides of the former county building, it created a more environmentally friendly parklike atmosphere by replacing asphalt with stone, grasses and trees.
In mid-December, the City Council approved a contract to finish the park east of City Hall.
What had been Campbell Park – a sticker-riddled, clay expanse with weeds and some grass, a baseball backstop and a roller-hockey rink –will be a green oasis between Jessup and Southern Streets in a site that was once the county fairgrounds. A series of public meetings seeking input on uses led to the design of the new park, named for one of Brighton’s founders, Daniel Carmichael. Trees will surround the park, an all-dirt baseball field will be replaced by an all-purpose green area that will accommodate soccer or other sports, but can just as easily serve as an open meadow. Outdoor basketball courts will be located near the east end of the renewed park. The roller-hockey rink will remain. Construction is expected to be completed in June, in time for the July 4 (125th anniversary) celebration.
Construction also is likely to begin early this year on a new senior apartment complex on the east end of the park, on property that was formerly the site of the Rangeview Library District’s Brighton branch. It will become the 28-unit Libretto apartments, an effort of the Brighton Housing Authority with the intent of housing people who will have to move out of Brighton Manor so the second phase of the rent subsidized Brighton Village senior apartments can be built at that site on Southern, west of Main Street. Libretto is expected to be completed at the end of the year
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