Tonight the city will hold the fourth and final session in its initial round of community forums regarding next year’s convention. This one takes place right here in District 9, just across the river from the convention site (the Pepsi Center), at the REI Flagship store. It lasts from 6 to 7 p.m. and will be hosted by mayoral advisor Katherine Archuleta.
“We’ll provide an overview of what’s going to happen during the convention,” Archuleta says. “Most people don’t know how a convention works — how it’s structured, who the partners are. We’ll explain those basics, then open it up for questions.”
Archuleta says most of the questions at the first three forums had to do with street closures, business access, and neighborhood impacts. “We’re going to work with the neighborhoods very closely,” she says. “We don’t know the exact footprint of the security boundary yet, and we don’t know what the exact transportation corridors will be. But we do know that nothing will be shut down for an entire day. The plan is to do rolling street closures, so that nothing will be shut down for long periods of time. The priority is to minimize the impact on neighborhoods and businesses. We won’t be able to eliminate that impact entirely, but we’ll be able to minimize it.”
Archuleta adds that the city will be hosting additional rounds of community meetings as the convention nears. No part of town will be impacted as heavily as District 9, and good communication between residents and the city will be critical to good management. Tonight’s a good opportunity to get that conversation started.
