A proclamation recognizing Carol Ann and Paul Rothman for their leadership, advocacy, and support of the Downtown Children’s Playground.
None, Mr. President. Communications. Do we have any communications? None, Mr. President. We have two proclamations this evening. Councilman Clark, will you please read Proclamation 925. Thank you, Mr. President. Proclamation number 16 Dash zero 925 Recognizing Carolan and Paul Rothman for their leadership, advocacy and support of the downtown children's playground. Whereas beginning in 2002, Carol Ann and Paul Rothman provided their initial support, advocacy and leadership for the downtown children's playground. And. WHEREAS, that advocacy and leadership not only continued, but increased exponentially through the completion of the final phase of the playground in 2016. And. Whereas, Carol Ann and Paul engaged, requested, approached, cajoled, and sometimes corralled anyone and everyone, anywhere and everywhere to provide support for the playground. And. Whereas, Carol Ann and Paul brought together residents throughout the downtown and lower downtown communities to help care for and help maintain the playground each and every weekend. And. Whereas, without this tireless, ever present and always positive commitment for this needed recreational amenity, the downtown children's playground would not be a reality now, therefore, be it proclaimed by the Council of the City and County of Denver, Section one, that the Council of the City and County of Denver recognizes Carol Ann and Paul Rothman and thanks them for their tireless and generous advocacy and support for the downtown children's playground. Section two that the Clerk of the city and county of Denver shall affix the seal of the city and county of Denver to this proclamation, and that a copy be transmitted to Carol Ann and Paul Rothman. Thank you. Councilman. Clerk, your motion to adopt. Thank you, Mr. President. I move the proclamation 925 be adopted. It has been moved in seconded comments from the council. Councilman. Clerk Thank you, Mr. President. This was a project that I got to see take shape from the very beginning stages, from seeing an empty field and a huge need transform into just one of the most special places in all of downtown Denver. And it was really special for me because then I this I started watching this all come together before I had children. And then I got to take my kids down and experience that playground from a kids point of view and really understood the impact for our entire city, because downtown is a part of every single neighborhood in our city. But really for the growing number of people who are living downtown and who are raising children downtown, to have this magical place right by the creek where kids can play and can learn and can grow. And just like so many other projects along our waterways, you can point to this project and say that project wouldn't have happened except for except for a lot of times I saw a big foundation coming in to support. And in this case, it really was two individuals who put this this on their back and said, you know what, we're going to will it to be we're going to make it happen and we are going to do everything and anything and just keep fighting and scrapping, not just so that it's there, but so that every little phase of it gets built out. And, you know, we're all in these twos debt for what they've done for our city, for our community and for downtown. And so I would encourage all my colleagues to support this proclamation. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you. Seeing no other comments. Madam Secretary. Rocco. Clark I Espinosa Flynn I. Gilmore, i. Catherine I. Carnage I. Lopez I. New Ortega I. Assessment I. Black i. Mr. President. I. Please close the voting and announce the results. Councilman Flynn. The not working. And. And. Okay, I got it. 12 Eyes. 12 eyes proclamation 925 has passed. Councilman Clark, anyone. That you'd like to bring up? Thank you, Mr. President. There are a few people who I'd like to come up, but I will start by handing it off to the fearless leader of our Parks and Recreation Department, the honorable Happy Haines. And I'll let her pass the torch from there. Thank you. Indeed. Thank you so much. Council President, Councilman Clark and other members of city council. It's my pleasure once again to be here. I have so much fun here. This is so many good things happening last week and this week and every week. And I am I couldn't be more delighted tonight to be here to honor these two incredible individuals. Karellen and Paul Rothman embody the values that make Denver such a great place to live in civic responsibility, social responsibility, stewardship, love and commitment, especially for Denver's families and children. And as a former educator, it's not surprising that Carol Ann's infinite passion for children and her overall wish for children to live healthy lives has inspired her and Paul's work in the lower downtown neighborhood. This all started nearly 15 years ago, when Carol Ann and Paul Rothman shared a vision with Denver Parks and Recreation and the Greenway Foundation to build downtown Denver's first neighborhood playground. And they never stopped. As it is with many of our projects, it took a lot of effort to cobble together the resources to bring to make this dream become a reality. For over ten years, Carol Ann and Paul personally contributed, fundraised and advocated for hundreds of thousands of dollars to fund various phases of the work that was just completed. The final phase was just completed. Located next to the Cherry Creek Regional Trail and in close proximity to many of downtown Denver's wonderful venues the Pepsi Center, Elegies, Coors Field, and the Denver Performing Arts Complex. The Downtown Children's Playground serves both as a neighborhood and regional playground where young and old singles and families can enjoy our great outdoors in downtown Denver. And as the downtown Denver population continues to rise in the number of visitors and workers that continues to grow in our downtown area, this downtown Denver children's playground plays a huge role in helping to create a family friendly downtown area. Today, Carolyn and Paul remain actively involved with the ongoing operations of this downtown children's playground. As you heard earlier, organizing and leading community cleanups and making sure that the free little library stays fully stocked with children's books. So members of Council I, on behalf of Denver Parks and Recreation and the citizens of Denver, I want to express my sincere gratitude to Carol Ann and Paul Rothman for their dedication and commitment over the years to make downtown Denver a better place to live, work, play and thrive. Congratulations to you, and thank you so much from the bottom of our hearts. I would like to turn it over to an extraordinary individual who is an amazing partner of our cities. And you, we are probably going to be tag teaming a lot because in nearly everything that happens in downtown and lower downtown I the Greenway Foundation is is an an incredible partner. And I'd like to introduce my great friend and partner, Jeff Shoemaker. Thank you. Happy? Mr. President, we have to stop meeting this way. Thank you, members of Council. Thank you. Councilman Clark, President pro tem. This one is very, very personal to me. Happy mention. 15 years and she's. Right. That's when the work began on this. But the vision. Of this started. Five years prior to. That. And it just never got off. The ground until this. Spark, this. Passion, this zealous advocacy. In the names of. Carolyn and Paul Rothman came on board. They have invested their financial, their personal, their neighborhood, their residential, their regional advocacy and passion for this project. And I will tell you that without Carolyn and Paul Rothman and you can take this to the bank, there would be no downtown children's playground, no brag. Just a fact. And I'm going to turn it over to these two amazing people. And I know you have. Good work. To do tonight. I don't want you to be too jealous because the Shumaker family is going to take the Rothmans to the chop house and we're going to close the place down here in a little bit. But I want to introduce and recognize two significant individuals within the Parks and Recreation Department without whom as partners three way partnership. Imagine this public, private, philanthropic and to I mentioned the word last week skipper every project has, you know, a good skipper, a good general. And the two generals of this project are here tonight, Mr. Mark Bernstein and Mr. Tom Hockey, and they had the challenge of dealing with Shoemaker on a daily basis. But without them, this project again would not be possible. And it is my honor, it is a personal. Privilege for me. To introduce to you this amazing couple, Carolyn and Paul Rothman. Thank you. Well, I want to thank you. This is really a wonderful honor for us. And I guess what I'd like to say is back in 2002, we had no idea of how to build a favorite playground. And I guess, as Jeff mentioned, for five years of $10,000 had been raised and we had just gotten a rejection letter for a grant. So we sort of started from the beginning, and I think none of this could have been done ourselves alone. So I'd wanted to thank those who really share in what we are receiving here tonight. We could not have done it without them. So first I'd like to single out Mark Bernstein at Parks and Rec and others who we worked with over the years, and especially our councilwoman, Judy Monteiro, who was always there for us whenever there was a need. The Greenway Foundation sort of helped us along the way, who we should contact, how we should get things done. And we had great support from ARCA, Tara and Andy Deford, who designed the things for the playground. But most of all, I think in sharing this award with others, the biggest group that I would single out would be the people in our community. When we were told that in order to get a go code grant, we needed to show broad based support from the community. We got contributions from literally hundreds of people, some very little, some larger, and that really got us going and on the way. So although we both stand here today, many, many people share in this honor and made it possible. And again, thank you very much. Thank you, Carolyn. Thank you. It was a long, long journey, much longer than we anticipated and as any long journey. There were highs and lows. But now that the three phases are finished and the three little children's library is there, we can see so many special things. And I love to go down there and see mothers having coffee together and the children playing. I love to see often on a weekend you'll see fathers taking over with their kids and at lunch time you'll see office workers from all over having lunch there. We also see people that don't have anyplace else to go. And I think some of the highlights have been when they've seen us down there cleaning up with one of the crews and thanked us. So that's been very special. But I think the most special thing for me is I was down there and this is an example of it last week delivering books. And this little boy was with his mother probably four or five, and he was all over the place and having a wonderful time. So he saw me putting books in and he came up and he wanted to know what I was doing. So I explained how we could take one or he could read it there, and if he. Had any at home, he could bring them another time. And I said, Do you like this playground? And he said, It's my secret and it's my playground. And I think that's the biggest difference for me. You mentioned the dirt and nothing, and it was like that. It was just dirt. And now you go there and it's green and lush. There are people using it and having a good time. So thank you for giving us the opportunity to do this. And it's been a long but fun journey and we've learned a lot. And I have to say, I admire the city when I think how many years it took 15 years to get this playground together. I have no idea how the big projects happen. I really don't. So thank you. Thank you so much. I love it when our head of Parks and Rec says she likes to come in here because it's so much good happening here. We don't hear that very much, but thank you. I appreciate it.