The Uintah Gardens shopping area fills the lands and streets around West Uintah Street and North 19th Street on the west side of Colorado Springs. The entire complex is a few blocks west of the Uintah Street interchange on Interstate 25.
This largely unplanned commercial area has grown steadily and thrived financially ever since the Uintah Street/I-25 interchange was installed around 1960.
Uintah Street and Uintah Gardens are named in honor of a Native American tribe — the Utes — who roamed throughout Colorado and Utah before they were “resettled” on reservations in southwestern Colorado and in Utah. We believe the word “Gardens” was merely a marketing gimmick.
There are nearly 36 businesses in the Uintah Gardens Shopping Center and on adjoining shopping streets. In the mix are a progressive co-op children’s nursery school, a soon-to-be-operating recreational marijuana shop, and a gathering center for people who like to play the card game bridge.
Sadly, Cy’s Drive-In, a nostalgic 1950s-style drive-in hamburger joint at Uintah and North 19th, just closed and the building will be demolished.
Other popular businesses, both inside and out of the shopping center, are King Soopers supermarket (noted for its great produce section), Ace Hardware, the much-loved Arc thrift store, Big-Five sporting goods store and the popular Mountain Mama’s natural food store. Blackjack Pizza, American Lock and Key and a 7-Eleven are nearby.
The well-run Rick’s Nursery was one of the first and most notable landmark business establishments.
The Ruth Washburn cooperative nursery school on North 19th occupies a much-renovated old farmhouse. It has, since the early 1960s, educated thousands of preschoolers, and has a rich tradition and a loyal fan base. Parents do some of the teaching and supervising.
There are also several apartment complexes right by Uintah Gardens, most notably the well-run Knolls Apartments and the more challenged Wind River Apartments a bit north of the Arc store.
The Colorado Springs Bridge Club has a small warehouse-type building, filled with bridge tables and chairs, at the end of North 17th Street. Their better players travel to competitive bridge tournaments in other cities.
One relatively new business is worth watching. Native Roots Cannabis Co.’s Uintah Gas and Grass is located at West Uintah and North 17th streets. It currently dispenses medical marijuana but may soon be selling recreational marijuana as well.
The desk officer at Gas and Grass told us they are very excited about this prospective new business. They qualified to sell recreational marijuana because of a recently passed ballot initiative and by not being within 1,000 feet of a public school.
A second new installation coming to this varied neighborhood is the Launchpad Apartments at 819 N. 19th St. It has been built and will be owned by Cohen-Esery, a corporation from Kansas that specializes in using federal subsidies to build low-income affordable housing.
This project will be run by a local nonprofit called The Place. It will house up to four dozen “at-risk” young people between 18 and 24.
Many of these young people have experienced homelessness. They must pledge not to use illegal drugs and to use the facility’s skills training and job placement services.
Spokespeople for the Launchpad Apartments view their nonprofit as a place where at-risk young people will be given a “second chance” to rebuild their lives and discover new opportunities to grow and thrive responsibly.
Launchpad Apartments hopes to partner with several of the businesses in the Uintah Gardens area for full-time job placement or part-time employment for their young residents. We note the irony of this place for at-risk young people and a recreational marijuana shop opening the same month two blocks away. But that is the way it is.
One of the challenges for the Uintah Gardens Shopping Center and its neighboring shops and apartment complexes is that nearly all of them are owned by a variety of out-of-state businesses and real estate developers.
The billionaire Kroenke Group, which also owns the Denver Nuggets basketball team, the Los Angeles Rams football team and shopping malls, owns much of the business property in Uintah Gardens. Kroenke is based in Columbia, Mo. Local stores here say Kroenke has good local management.
But the larger point is that there is no local neighborhood association, either business or residential, to look out for the neighborhood or work to improve the neighborhood. Most of what takes place in Uintah Gardens is dictated by distant nonlocal investors with little knowledge of or concern for the local situation.
Meanwhile, a dozen or more people we interviewed who work in this commercial/residential area say that drug use, homelessness, shoplifting, and trashing the area have probably tripled in the past few years. Several encampments of drug-consuming homeless have caused fires in nearby neighborhoods adjacent to Uintah Gardens and farther down on West Uintah and up on Mesa Road.
Local shop owners, especially near North 19th, complain that every morning they come to work and must pick up a mess of drug paraphernalia that has been left out overnight by local drug addicts.
Others working in the area say they have seen drug dealers riding on mopeds making the rounds of local homeless encampments to make drug transactions.
One business manager says police outreach on homelessness and drug use is helpful, but he also notes the officers often come a few hours too late to be of much help.
There is also the problem that the police are handicapped by the weak laws and weak penalties for shoplifting and encampment practices.
Bottom line: There are severe challenges in this neighborhood. It is a strange combination of successful businesses along with drug use and homelessness.
Local businesses complain of shoplifting occurring every day, and often in an increasingly brazen manner. Bigger businesses have hired security officers. The Kroenke group even has a patrol car.
Most of the stores now have restrooms that require a special key or combination number. Older people feel less safe in the neighborhood. And recreational marijuana and dozens of at-risk young people are soon to arrive in the neighborhood.
There was no response to a letter to the mayor asking for city action on local fires started by homeless campers on drugs. Many people complain that the fines and jail sentences for many of these problems are too low to be practical. Obviously, mental health issues are a big part of the problem.
A local citizens’ group, Westside Cares, is doing a great job trying to work on some of these problems but they need help. Here are a few suggestions:
• There needs to be a plan, Mr. Mayor, to make this part of town, a vital neighborhood, safe and attractive. It would be the same kind of plan that some residential neighborhoods have adopted to improve themselves The mayor’s office has the authority to convene all these out-of-state landowners and apartment owners and come up with an imaginative new approach.
• Developers: How about a small garden in the middle of Uintah Gardens, perhaps with some tables for chess and checkers? Rick’s could provide seeds and Launchpad residents could donate community service in exchange for the public and charitable subsidies they are receiving.
• Unlike University Village and the Shops at Briargate, there is no good restaurant in this shopping area. We don’t think you can even find a decent milkshake anymore. Explore getting a place like Bonefish or Ted’s or something? Both Cy’s and the Subway shop closed.
• The out-of-state developers and owners need to spend more money on safety and on making the area free of potholes, more protected from fires, and they should contribute to drug prevention programs.
Uintah Gardens is a critically important economic enterprise on Colorado Springs’ west side, but it is now a challenged area. Many of us who live nearby are disappointed with both our elected officials and the out-of-state owners for the conditions that currently exist there.
We realize shopping centers are challenged here and elsewhere, but Uintah Gardens is worth saving and serves dozens of neighborhoods here.
Help wanted. Leadership and imagination, too!