Dana Crawford, a developer and preservationist who single-handedly did greater than someone to save lots of Denver’s historical structure, died Thursday night time at age 93.
Lengthy prior to unfashionable used to be cool and historical preservation hip, Crawford fought the present tide that liked destroying older brick structures to make room for contemporary skyscrapers of glass and metal. Whilst elevating 4 boys and juggling a occupation, her earliest and signature save used to be Larimer Sq., which within the mid-Nineteen Sixties used to be thought to be a scruffy row of rowdy bars best possible trimmed with a bulldozer.
It will be one of the restorations and redemptions she would tally up over time.
“Dana Crawford used to be one among Denver’s maximum necessary visionaries. However she used to be a visionary who had greater than a imaginative and prescient — she had the facility to put in force her imaginative and prescient,” stated former Denver Mayor Wellington Webb, who labored with Crawford right through his 12 years in administrative center.
Her talent to peer the worth in structures that others thought to be value demolishing and her industry savvy find financial makes use of for the ones structures to make sure their long-term survival is what set her aside, he stated.
“I discovered so much from her about development preservation and what makes for an excellent spot that folks wish to come to. Her fingerprints are in all places town and we’re at an advantage for it,” stated Walter Isenberg, CEO of Sage Hospitality and a detailed pal and industry affiliate of Crawford’s.
She noticed what might be accomplished by means of keeping up stunning structure, lengthy prior to others did, and within the procedure stored a legacy for town, he stated.
Her paintings with Larimer Sq. broadened into the concept that of Decrease Downtown or LoDo, serving to the realm keep away from the wrecking balls that burnt up such a lot of blocks additional east. In a more moderen town that lacked many historical structures to start with, her hobby and foresight got here at a essential time, Webb stated.
Throughout her occupation, Crawford redeveloped greater than 800,000 sq. toes of historical homes in Denver, together with the Oxford Lodge, Acme Lofts, Flour Mill Lofts, Edbrooke Lofts and Cooper Apartments Condominiums, in step with Ancient Denver, a gaggle she helped discovered.
“From saving Larimer Sq. to redeveloping Union Station, Dana formed the Denver we all know these days,” Ancient Denver stated in a observation. “It’s no understatement to mention that with out Dana Crawford’s affect and force to reimagine and reuse historical structures, our town could be an excessively other position.”
Her persuasive aura gained others to the reason for historical preservation and the motion won momentum to the purpose that it’s now taken without any consideration that issues can have been any other. Webb laments that those that have relocated to Denver over time most likely haven’t any clue concerning the lady liable for the great instances they’ve loved in Larimer Sq. and the broader LoDo space.
She left them a legacy, even though they don’t comprehend hers, he stated.
As a member of the Union Station Alliance, Crawford helped information the $54 million renovation of Denver Union Station, which reopened in 2014. The redesign integrated updates to the Nice Corridor, rebranded as Denver’s front room, and The Crawford Lodge, named in her honor.
Her renovation of the Delight of the Rockies Flour Mill, in-built 1906, added residential momentum to the redevelopment of the Central Platte Valley, a former railyard the place Elitch Gardens had landed within the mid-90s. The Webb management had made the realm a concern by means of organising the South Platte River Fee to construct parks and pathways within the space, however the space wanted greater than an amusement park.
Webb recalled that the Denver Fireplace Division refused to permit the transformed Flour Mill Lofts to open since the site visitors circle in entrance used to be too tight for the turning radius of a hearth truck. Crawford known as him up and stated “Wellington, I don’t know, all they’ve to do is again the (expletive) truck up.”
Webb stated he laughed as a result of he knew she used to be proper. He known as the fireplace leader along with her proposed resolution and the development bought its allow and opened.
“That used to be Dana from the perspective of taking what some other folks seen as problematic issues and arising with very sensible solutions,” he stated.
No longer one to shuffle off right into a quiet retirement, she shifted her focal point later in existence to Trinidad, the place she helped repair the historical Toltec Lodge in 2006 and the Fox Theater in 2018, in conjunction with a number of different architecturally vital structures within the town’s historical business district — El Corazon de Trinidad.
Crawford’s efforts prolonged past Colorado. She had a guiding hand in maintaining overlooked structures, major streets and neighborhoods in additional than 50 communities national. Her paintings led to her receiving the Louise duPont Crownshield Award from the Nationwide Believe for Ancient Preservation.
Born Dana Hudkins in Salina, Kan., Crawford graduated from the College of Kansas with a point in English Literature, now not essentially the most promising launching pad for a long run city developer.
Visits to her mom’s family members in Ohio, on the other hand, had sparked an hobby in outdated structures and the historical past in the back of them. That zeal handiest grew when she attended graduate faculty in Boston, a town with a wealthy tapestry of historical structures and walkable neighborhoods, she stated in an interview for the Rocky Mountain PBS documentary Colorado Enjoy.
After completing faculty, she moved from Boston to Denver to be close to buddies and set to work in public members of the family, in the end assembly geologist John Crawford, her long run husband. The couple had 4 boys.
Denver, like many towns within the post-war duration, struggled with what to do with its downtown, which had fallen out of style as enlargement shifted to the faster-growing suburbs with their single-family houses and buying groceries department stores. Citizens agreed to create the Denver City Renewal Authority and tax themselves to rip down 30 blocks of current structures within the hopes that builders would fill the clean slates with fashionable constructions.
Whilst skyscrapers did stand up in lots of blocks, town used to be additionally left with a large number of empty areas and sprawling parking a lot, to not point out an irreversible lack of its constructed historical past. Crawford, antagonistic to what she thought to be short-sighted ideas of development, scoured town on the lookout for spaces that may be stored and function collecting puts for a couple of generations of Denverites.
As destiny would have it, her automobile overheated and stranded her within the 1400 block of Larimer Boulevard in the summertime of 1964. Even supposing filled with dilapidated structures and vagrants, Crawford learned she had discovered a spot value saving.
“I spotted that the whole lot that made town began within the 1400 block, and it used to be slated to be got rid of,” she instructed Colorado Enjoy. “I distinctly take into account considering I mentioned this so much, now I’ve to do it.”
She would spend the following 22 years seeking to keep forward of DURA by means of quietly obtaining outdated structures, restoring them, discovering tenants and growing the retail and eating place vacation spot now referred to as Larimer Sq.. However it wasn’t simple. Bankers, now not acquainted with backing a feminine developer, rejected her imaginative and prescient, forcing her to show to her friends and family. Town officers noticed her as an opponent of modernization.
She would repeat the development when she got the historical Oxford Lodge, which were running as a flophouse, out of chapter in 1986. Suffering to prevail as a hotelier, she partnered with Isenberg. The pair took the resort right into a 2nd Bankruptcy 11 chapter in 1989, which Crawford, ever the optimist, known as a Bankruptcy 22, Isenberg stated.
They created one among Denver’s premier boutique resorts, with its iconic Cruise Room, which pulls more youthful buyers. That Oxford partnership would release a decades-long collaboration and steer Sage Hospitality on a process hanging boutique resorts in historical structures in towns national.
Isenberg stated Crawford used to be feted this July for her 93rd birthday and he organized a gathering with actor Kevin Costner when he used to be staying on the Oxford Lodge. She used to be in just right sufficient well being to wait the New 12 months Eve’s birthday celebration at Union Station. He visited along with her one remaining time previous this week prior to her passing.
“She is a brilliant spouse and a super pal and a chum of our family members. I beloved her,” Isenberg stated.