All Local, All The Time
All Local, All The Time
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The craft beer business hasn't been immune to 2020. Even the Great American Beer Festival (GABF) was forced to evolve into a virtual version of itself, with the event's highly regarded awards program, now in its 34th year, revealing winners online. Among all of the changes at GABF, one Boulder County brewery with Gunbarrel roots stood tall. Wibby Brewing beat out 110 other entries in the American amber lager category to win a gold medal for its Volksbier Vienna Lager. A slightly crisp but malty...
On March 5, 2020, the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment's public health laboratory confirmed the first presumptive positive COVID-19 test result in Colorado. What followed is well known to Coloradans, but looking back to March, there are some behind-the-scenes heroes from the early months of the pandemic who deserve some added thanks, namely the volunteers and organizations who helped support early mask-making endeavors in local communities. When COVID-19 cases were first on t...
Last week, Renee and Bill McDermid of the Hampton Inn in Gunbarrel needed help feeding firefighters working on the CalWood and Left Hand Canyon fires, as many area restaurants were closed for dining. That spurred a number of Niwot residents into action, and before long, firefighters from Oregon, Nebraska, and elsewhere were well fed and ready to battle the blazes. Niwot Community Association donated $500 to be used towards the purchase of food. The Niwot Cookie Moms also chipped in with home...
Drought and high winds continued to create havoc in Boulder County. On Saturday, Oct. 17, a fire broke out near the CalWood Education Center in Jamestown. The fire quickly spread, and within the first 24 hours, became the biggest fire in Boulder County history. Evacuations were immediate. But within the chaos caused by the fire, there are those who want to help. Lefty's Pizza in Niwot donated pizzas to the Hygiene Fire Department. A quick look on Nextdoor also revealed those who were ready to...
Niwot High School athletic director Joe Brown has found his man in Kyle Bachrodt to take the reins for the Niwot swim team. “I really couldn't be more excited,” Bachrodt said. “Niwot is a very well-known program in all of their athletics (and) all of their academics. I've had a few meetings with the other head coaches in all of the sports and with our AD, and I couldn't be more proud to be working alongside with all of those folks.” Bachrodt, who grew up in Evergreen, attended the University of Colorado Boulder and helped win a national champio...
For five years, Niwotian Rich Anderson has brought nurturing and nutrition to homebound community members through Longmont Meals on Wheels (LMOW). The organization's motto is Delivering Hope One Meal at a Time, and Anderson does that in batches of 12 to 16 deliveries per shift, each one providing greatly appreciated smiles and sustenance. "Being retired," Anderson said, "I felt I needed something besides the activities in life I normally get engaged in. I just can't sit around the house. I...
In 2020, the public receives news from an enormous number of electronic as well as traditional sources. The information onslaught is relentless, can be frustratingly inaccurate, and isn't always able to portray what occurs in a localized area. Local journalists have an important role to fill in this kind of potentially confusing environment. Community newspapers such as the Left Hand Valley Courier tell stories about businesses, schools, parks, open spaces, neighborhoods, local infrastructure,...
While many school and local events have been postponed due to COVID-19 restrictions, the Mwebaza Foundation is getting creative in gathering the community together for engaging, safe activities. On Oct. 29, Proto's Pizza will donate a portion of its proceeds to the Mwebaza Foundation's micro industry development plan at its partner school in Gulu, Parents' Junior School. Pick up a pizza, drinks, and dessert from the Gunbarrel, Longmont, or Broomfield locations and mention "Mwebaza Foundation"...
Locals seem to be heeding the fervent advice of health experts to get a flu shot this year. The King Soopers pharmacy in Gunbarrel went through three batches of flu vaccines by the end of August, according to a pharmacy employee. That doesn't usually happen until early October. Public health experts are advocating flu shots more than usual, worried that the normal seasonal flu hospitalizations combined with COVID-19 patients could overburden the health system's ability to handle both...
Have you recently stepped outside to the smell of a campfire? Or been surprised to find your car covered in white ash? Or been shocked by the size of the setting orange sun? It's not the apocalypse, although the orange light does seem a bit eerie. It's simply the end of a hot, dry summer in Colorado. According to the U.S. Drought Monitor, as the summer of 2020 comes to a close, the entire state of Colorado is currently experiencing drought conditions. For the first time since 2013, 100% of the...
Before the coronavirus pandemic, the commercial real estate market in Niwot and surrounding communities in Boulder County was robust. While some properties such as the former Colterra restaurant have remained visibly vacant, generally the commercial market here sees low vacancy rates and high demand. The Courier checked in this week with Jim Ditzel, co-owner and founder of Summit Commercial Brokers in Niwot, for an update on the local commercial market. Summit Commercial is a full service commer...
The craziness of 2020 can be quelled a wee bit with the reverent calmness of Chris Doyle's sunset serenades. The long comforting notes of his bagpipe feel like the entire community is taking deep healing breaths. We asked Doyle some questions to learn a little about his life story. Left Hand Valley Courier (LHVC) – What was your hometown and how did Niwot become home to you? Chris Doyle (CD) – I grew up on the east side of Cleveland and finished high school in Chesterland, Ohio. I went to Mus...
Need is everywhere. To fill that need, and as part of its ministry, Shepherd of the Hills Lutheran Church's pastor Janet Kettering said an important part of the church's history is feeding those in need. Kettering said that there are many people in the Gunbarrel community who, while not part of an organized worship group, still want to help. In 2017, that energy was put to good use with a food drive. Pardes Levavot, the Jewish Renewal Congregation that also worships in the church building on...
Gunbarrel resident Julia Williams has been an artist her entire life. A graphic design major at CSU, she has been wanting to paint a portion of the north side Lookout Road underpass for a long time. An opportunity to create her dream piece presented itself, "courtesy" of COVID-19. As the Courier reported in a July 15 article, The City of Boulder through its Boulder Creative Neighborhood Murals Program offers grants to support public art, especially local artists. Williams submitted several desig...
This "beautiful" sunset belies a very dangerous fire. Taken on the Cottontail Trail in Gunbarrel, Saturday Sept. 10, the Cameron Peak Fire exploded to over 34,000 acres, growing over 10,000 acres over the weekend. Saturday's 101 degree temperature, added to the already tindery dry conditions. The fire, which started on Aug. 13, shot smoke and ash 40,000 feet into the air. Area residents have experienced extremely poor air quality, breathing issues as well as falling ash....
Since the COVID-19 crisis began, area churches and synagogues have responded with incredible nimbleness, creativity and generosity in meeting the heightened spiritual, communal, and practical needs of their parishioners. Many congregations quickly transitioned to live streaming their services to parishioners and the wider community, and some even have experienced an increase in attendance as a result. One local pastor attributed this increase to the fact that there is no travel time to and fro, and to the fact that now parishioners can...
Boulder Country Club has been moved to the list of resolved COVID-19 outbreaks by the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, CDPHE. The Gunbarrel club had six positive cases, including employees working in the restaurant and a lifeguard. If an organization has two or more cases within a 14-day period, it must report that to the local health department. Boulder County Public Health was notified when the first two positive cases turned up in late June. The health department did contact tracing and worked with BCC on how to manage,...
Thieves made off with a van and food cart from Sancho's in Gunbarrel and then drove it to Safeway in Longmont and shoplifted, according to owner Shawn Camden. He said the vehicle was parked behind the restaurant in the Gunbarrel Shopping Center when it happened early Saturday morning, Aug. 15. "Our infamous food trailer goes around the community selling food. Now that we don't have that, we can no longer operate that business. It's a fairly big tragedy for us," Camden said. The restaurant also...
The scramble for a viable plan to reopen schools amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has forced many area parents to weigh their students' health and safety against the quality of their education. But officials at private schools Boulder Country Day and the Dawson School say they've found a way to provide families with both for the 2020 fall semester, and are eager to welcome students back for full-time, in-person learning later this month. "In general, school leadership teams are not made up of...
A virtual town hall was held in late July regarding a concept proposal for a 268-unit development on Gunbarrel land currently zoned as light industrial. The 9.8-acre parcel in question is located just to the west of Spine Road and east of Celestial Seasonings - the owner of the property - and south of Sleepytime Road, up to the current single-family housing development there. Gunbarrel residents recognize this area as open space that the tea company designated as a prairie dog preserve in 1999,...
The State Highway 119 First and Final Mile Study, facilitated through transportation non-profit Commuting Solutions, is seeking input on how to make multimodal transportation more accessible to commuters along the Diagonal Highway. The study seeks to complement a Regional Transportation District study, finished in 2019, that considered Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) as a way to improve commuter traffic along SH 119 (https://www.rtd-denver.com/projects/state-highway-119-brt-study). RTD found that with projected increases in traffic along the highway,...
About now, Clarence Kneebone would be setting up the last metal corral panels, straw bales and exhibit tables at the Boulder County Fairgrounds. For more than 25 years, he's been the man behind the scenes, making sure the grounds are set up so the 4H kids, animals and fairgoers can have a great experience. But the 87-year-old volunteer got his work done a week early this year. There just wasn't much to it with the fair curtailed by the coronavirus pandemic. "It's going to be a whole different...
A new group has formed in Gunbarrel to go along with the decades-long conflicts between the City of Boulder and the inhabitants of the unincorporated areas to the north of the city itself. The Gunbarrel Community Alliance (GCA) started the process to become a non-profit organization earlier this year after some homeowners received a flyer notifying them about a proposed development on land that they believed was designated to be open space and a preserve for prairie dogs in 1999. The concept proposal, which at this point is only out for public...
Gunbarrel Estates photographer Tim Benko captured Comet Neowise from the top of Rocky Mountain National Park on Trail Ridge Road Thursday, July 24. Discovered on March 24, Neowise, or C/2020 F3, stands for near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer. With an orbital period of 6,766 years, this was a once in a lifetime photograph....
It has been about three weeks since the primary elections in Boulder County. This election, 55% of Boulder County residents came out to vote. While this may seem like an impressive number-and it is an increase from the 2018 midterms-Boulder County Clerk and Recorder Communications Specialist Mircalla Wozniak was quick to point out that voter turnout depends on many variables and is very localized. For the June 30 primary, there were reportedly 95,610 Democratic, 29,744 Republican and 1,978...
The local food scene in the Left Hand Valley is normally thriving in the summer. Things are more complicated this year. In the past, farmers could depend on connecting directly with their customers face-to-face at Boulder County farmers markets, in addition to their own community supported agriculture (CSA) programs. Kids in the 4-H program would spend months or even years raising livestock that they knew they would sell at the Boulder County Fair in early August. Other local food producers...
The City of Boulder first passed the Community Culture and Safety tax in 2014, and the funds from this tax went toward supporting local cultural projects--many of which were related to public art and public open spaces such as Boulder Creek, Chautauqua and others. The original tax expired in 2017, but was renewed for a four-year period. The funds still support city facilities and infrastructure as well as cultural projects; one such project is the Community Neighborhoods: Murals Program. This pr...
Several weeks ago, Gunbarrel Estates residents noticed several workers, along with their trucks, marking up the street. Thoughts immediately turned to street repair and the hope that Boulder County finally was going to do something about the deterioration of county subdivision roads. Unfortunately, actual road repair is not in the current picture, according to Communications Specialist and Public Information Officer for Boulder County Public Works Andrew Barth. "We like to keep an eye on basic q...
GOLF Kelsey Webster (Fairview) of Gunbarrel was named to the Women's Golf Coaches Association All-American Scholar for the 2019-2020 season. Webster, a sophomore psychology major at the University of Colorado, posted a 77.58 stroke norm for 12 rounds. To be eligible for WGCA Golf All-American Scholar status, a golfer must have a cumulative grade point average of at least 3.50 (on a 4.0 scale) and must have played in 50 percent of the college's regularly scheduled competitive rounds during the...
Gunbarrel has seen what some might consider more than its fair share of triumphs and trials in the restaurant scene over the past few years, coronavirus aside. That is especially true for the spot most recently known as Dannik's Gunbarrel Corner Bar in the Gunbarrel Shopping Center on Gunpark Drive. In a Gunbarrel restaurant review blog in February 2018, Marc Rochkind wrote positively about Dannik's, saying, "There were a couple of previous restaurants in the Dannik's space, something like a...
We've all been at home a lot in recent months. And perhaps you have used some of this time to clean out your closet or go through your basement and clear out old home goods or extra appliances that have been collecting dust. But once you have collected your unwanted and no-longer-in-use items, the question is what should you do with them? Before you toss any of it in the trash, consider this; In 2017 the EPA, citing information from the U.S. Department of Commerce's Office of Textiles and...
Thursday, July 2 saw the Plein Air Artists Colorado practicing their outdoor painting skills along the Cottontail Trail in Gunbarrel. According to coordinator Carolyn Bradley, the group meets every Thursday in various Boulder County locations to celebrate the love of outdoor painting. The "paint outs", as they are called, are open to everyone regardless of skill. For more information go to pleinairartistscolorado.com/Boulder....
Boulder County is home to 22 individual fire districts, but that will soon change when two districts merge next year. Rocky Mountain Fire District (RMF) was formally created in 2007, but has its roots in the Cherryvale Fire Protection District east of Boulder that originally formed in 1958. Mountain View Fire Rescue (MVFR), meanwhile, has its roots in the Longmont Rural Fire Department and has since incorporated other areas of Boulder County and Weld County. "It's been a history of...
Cyclists don't have to stop and open gates anymore on a section of the LoBo Trail in Niwot. Boulder County is installing cattle guards and re-doing the gates at two places on the stretch of trail between Highway 52 and Monarch Road, west of 79th Street. The arched, metal slats allow cyclists, or people with big enough feet, to pass through without bothering with a gate or touching a public surface. They are next to the regular gates for pedestrians and vehicles, which are still in place for peop...
There are, according to CoStar (a primary information exchange of commercial real estate data in our market) approximately 12,644,300 square feet of total commercial real estate (office, industrial warehouse, and retail) in the Niwot, SW Longmont, and Gunbarrel markets. Broken down by category, the square footages look like this: *Office 2,900,000 sf *Industrial 5,484,000 sf *Retail 4,260,300 sf Of these square footages, current vacancy rates average 12 percent for office space and approximately...
We at the Left Hand Valley Courier would like to express our sincere appreciation to the Boulder County Commissioners for the Small Business COVID-19 Relief Fund Grant we received last month. In April, the spread of the pandemic and subsequent "stay in place" regulations led us to the difficult decision to stop printing our weekly newspaper and move to an online only subscription model. This prevented the news from getting to many elderly and low-income readers who may not use a computer or mobile device or may not have reliable access to the...
The fireplace in the great room is cold. The chatter of afternoon cheese and crackers get-togethers has been silenced. "It's just different now," said Cornelia Sawle, owner of the Niwot Inn. Business came to a halt in March when the coronavirus pandemic forced the state to issue stay-at-home orders. More than two months later, things aren't looking up much, even as the economy slowly opens. "We watched every weekend in April cancelled, all the way into October," Sawle said. "We have lost all...
Electric bikes, or e-bikes as they are commonly known, have begun to make significant in-roads in the cycling industry. Eric Bergeson, owner of Niwot Wheel Works, said that in his three years running the local bike shop, he has seen e-bikes grow in popularity. E-bikes, which come equipped with a battery-powered electric motor, come in a variety of makes and models, ranging from road and mountain bikes to hybrid bikes. Per the Boulder-based national cycling advocacy group, PeopleForBikes, there...
Budding O'Keeffes and Monets will soon have paint brushes in hand at Sunflower Art Studio in Gunbarrel, though there will be fewer campers than in year's past. Owner Lika Gitis has cut the number of campers in half. She'll take seven kids a week when she opens June 15. She hopes to slowly increase her numbers as the summer unfolds. Colorado allowed summer camps to open this month with limited numbers and lots of rules. Camps that are primarily indoors can have no more than 10 children at a time...
When longtime Gunbarrel resident Lori Highfill left Colorado on Saturday, March 14, for a week's vacation in her home state of New Jersey, she never thought that it would turn into a two-month ancient Greek, Homer-esque odyssey. But instead of finding danger with the one-eyed Cyclops giant, she found her trip imperiled by the microscopic Coronavirus. The original plan was to be gone for a week, returning to Colorado on March 23. The first sign that things might not go as planned was that...
The future of the fields south of Twin Lakes in Gunbarrel is still up in the air. TLAG, Twin Lakes Action Group, had requested a land use designation change to open space to protect the fields from being developed as a site for affordable apartments. The Boulder Planning Board refused to consider the request as part of the mid-term update of the Boulder Valley Comprehensive Plan, which determines future land use and development. "I think it's extremely disappointing that the board didn't...
When the state of Colorado issued its Safer at Home” guidelines allowing in-person dining at restaurants last week, Edward Vanegas was thrilled. He immediately went to the Next Door app to tell his Gunbarrel neighbors that his popular bistro Aperitivo and its "resort-like" patio would be open for dine-in service on Wednesday, May 27. However, his pronouncement would turn out to be only half-true, as bringing his small indoor space into compliance with the new regulations took more work than h...
In 1969, Mo Siegel made his first herbal blend that would eventually launch his career in the tea industry. Celestial Seasonings was born, and it wasn't long before its one and only factory was built in Boulder County. Since then, it has become a local landmark. But that iconic Boulder County view could soon change. As reported first in February and then again in May, there are proposals for an apartment complex to be built near Celestial Seasonings. At this time, Celestial Seasonings, as part...
The fields south of Twin Lakes Open Space are quietly doing their thing; growing green grass, hosting nests for meadowlarks, supporting voles and mice and the things that eat them, such as raptors and foxes. Kids are racing over mounds and dips at the mini BMX track, people are walking their dogs and admiring the view of the Flatirons. Nothing has changed on the surface, but the long-term fate of the fields is still unsettled and the fight over the status of the land is bubbling back to life. Th...
Staying occupied has been a challenge for many during quarantine, but not for 11-year-old Simon in Gunbarrel. Simon has remained productive by writing and distributing a newsletter for his neighborhood. Over 300 copies of the inaugural Gunbarrel Herald hit the streets on April 24. With now two issues under his belt, Simon has touched on a variety of subjects including neighborhood businesses, reading and outdoor recommendations and local birds. His intentions were to simply shine a little...
The pandemic has been especially hard on local business, and the "Left Hand Valley Courier" wants to help. Starting next week, the "Courier" will feature the Best of Niwot and Gunbarrel businesses. But rather than turn it into a popularity contest, the feature will highlight what customers or clients say is "best" about the business. We will start with some of our advertisers. Feel free to chime in with your comments at editorial@lhvc.com. Tell us what you like Best about Wya...
Make a float out of your car and come celebrate with a graduation parade. That's what a mom in Heatherwood is telling graduates of any age or school in the area. She's organizing a car parade for May 9 in the Heatherwood neighborhood of Gunbarrel. Kathy Kester's daughter, Sara, is graduating from the University of Colorado. Kester said she wanted to do something to mark the occasion since colleges and schools aren't doing in-person ceremonies. "I felt bad that they aren't going to have any...
Aegidien ( "Giddy the Kitty") turns 13 years old last month and is enjoying a quiet quarantine in Gunbarrel. He was born in Germany and was brought to Colorado in 2008 where he encountered squirrels for the first time. We look forward to seeing your pets in our Spotlight. Please send your photos and a brief description to editorial@LHVC.com...
Timing and relationships have been key to the success of several local small businesses that received loans in the first round of funding from the federal Paycheck Protection Program (PPP). The $350 billion fund dried up within days, leaving some businesses empty handed and hoping to get a piece of the $310 billion second round of funding that is funneled through lending institutions. "It's been a chaotic process for everyone," said Kate Head of Pebble Jewelry. She got on the phone with her...
Gunbarrel resident Margaret “Margo” Tucker died April 20, 2020, at age 96. No service is planned at this time....
