A proclamation honoring Dr. Charles “Chuck” Brantigan as he retires as Chair of the Healthcare District Design Forum.
Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you for being here. Councilman Lopez, thank you for bringing this forward. All right. We're going to move on to our second proclamation of the evening. Councilman Brooks, will you read Proclamation 166? Yeah. Thank you, Mr. President. I am honored to read Proclamation 166 honoring Dr. Charles Chuck Brannigan as he retires as chair of the Health District Design Forum. Whereas Dr. Charles Brannigan has recently announced that he is retiring as the chair of the Uptown Health Care District Design Forum after more than 27 years of volunteer service, of working tirelessly and selflessly on behalf of residents, businesses and health care institutions of the Uptown Neighborhood. And. Whereas, he and other neighborhood leaders branded, banded together and collaborated with several Uptown hospitals and other health care institutions in 1993 to persuade City Council to establish a specific hospital zone district and to prevent hospitals from creeping into the destabilizing, destabilizing residential neighborhoods. Under Dr. Branigan's leadership for 27 years, the forum has fostered friendly communications between registered neighborhood organizations and health care organizations. In Uptown worked with Denver Planning Office to develop an Uptown Health Care Design District and helped shape the expansion of the Presbyterian St Luke's Hospital, the redevelopment of the former St Luke's Hospital into a mixed use area, the acquisition of the Saint Joseph's Hospital and the Children's Hospital campus, and the construction of the new Saint Joseph's Hospital. He's met with many developers to comment on the improve various new projects in the neighborhood and and fought crime and other problems within the neighborhood. Whereas Chuck has conducted a successful medical practice from the La Langley Restored Gilbert mansion, he has also affiliated with many Denver hospitals and gone to Egypt. Yes, he's been in Egypt for two weeks for the past 17 years to train Egyptian military surgeons. He served as the chief of surgery at Presbyterian St Luke's Medical Center and is currently serving in a volunteer capacity at the University of Colorado Medical Center, Department of Vascular Surgery. And. Whereas, he and his wife Kathy have restored several Victorian homes and worked to have their block designated as the Lafayette Street Historic District in the Find District nine. Their current historic passion is the restoration of the narrow gouge roundhouse in Carmel, Colorado, to a working roundhouse and a museum complete with historic steam engine restored the railcars from the original South Park and Pacific Line. Chuck has received numerous awards for his efforts and historic preservation. He also founded the William Lang Society and has done much research and education about Denver's premier early architects. And. Whereas, Checking Kathy are also the founders of one of Denver's finest cultural organizations, the Denver brass, a 14 member. Brass musical ensemble that performs many concerts every year. And. Whereas, in all of his service to the Uptown community, Denver, Dr. Branigan has earned the respect and loyalty and admiration of those who have worked with those he's worked with, including residents and neighborhood organizations, health care institutions, developers and city council members. We all appreciate and celebrate his past and continuing services to the Uptown neighborhood and to all of Denver. Now therefore be a proclaim that the Council of the City and County of Denver, Section one, the Council of the City County Denver, hereby expresses its sincere appreciation to Dr. Charles, who we call Chuck Brannigan for his dedicated work and tireless efforts on behalf of the residents, businesses and health care institutions of the Uptown neighborhood. And that the city and the Council for the City and County of Denver, Colorado, hereby officially proclaims February 25th, 2019 be known as Chuck Branigan Day. Section two that the Clerk of the county, the city and county of Denver shall attest and fix a seal of the city in County Denver and this proclamation be transmitted to Dr. Branigan. Thank you. Councilman Brooks, your motion to adopt. Yes, I move that proclamation. 166 be adopted. It has been moved and seconded comments by members of council. Councilman Brooks. So this is I mean, this proclamation said it all. But this dear leader in our community who I've never called Chuck. By the way, Dr. Branigan is he's an institution for northeast Denver. Many folks do not remember the days, and I don't remember the days because I wasn't here. But when the hospitals were running wild in the neighborhoods of City Park West and Uptown, there was a leader. There was someone who, you know, who who said, you know, I'm a I'm going to go outside of my normal duties as the doctor of this area and start to be a caring neighborhood leader and see if I can start to coalesce and bring some collaborations to make sure that these hospitals understand that they are in a neighborhood and they're in our neighborhood. And so Dr. Brennan gets a lot of credit for that. But as you see, he's one of the most talented individuals you've ever met before. Not only is he fixing hearts, which would be enough in life, he's playing instruments. He's saving historic buildings. He's leading in communities. And he's been doing it for many, many years. And I just got to say, as a young city councilperson, newly elected, who didn't know a lot about the history of Dr. Branigan in 2011, he really took me under his wing and said, this is how we do neighborhood revitalization. This is what historic preservation looks like. Here's our history. And. I invite you to be a part of this? He wasn't judgmental, which he could have been like. You know, young city council person. I won't tell you a thing or two about what this neighborhood is all about. He was loving. He was kind, but always educating. And so it is an art is what a great honor and privilege that we get a chance to recognize Dr. Brannigan today. And there are many just to show you his influence. You know, when I tell people all the time, first of all, we got a packed house because there's a couple of issues going on neighborhoods. But I tell people all the time, if you pay for parking, come through security and sit in these benches, it's because you really love the city and it means something. So if you are here for Dr. Brennan, I just want you to stand up right now. You mean something, Dr. Brannigan, to all these people. So thank you very much. Thank you. Councilman Brooks, knock. Hold on just a second. Hold on just a second. We saw that Duvall is going to be reading facts. Hold on. Hold on just a second. We still have a few things to get through, including voting. Real quick. So if you just hang tight for just a second. You can just you can have a seat right there. There you go. Thank you, Councilwoman Ortega. Thank you, Mr. President. I just wanted to add some accolades as well to Dr. Branigan's years of service to not only the neighborhood community, but to the health care community for your many years of service, the work you have done, not just in Denver, Colorado, but across the globe. One of the titles I would give you is an R.A. activist title, because you really did play that role. I can remember many meetings and many times when you would meet with members of city council to talk about so many of the changes that were happening in the uptown neighborhood. And you were that catalyst that would pull the community together and and help make sure that we as a body city council were listening to the voice of community as those changes were coming forward. So I just want to thank you and your wife Cathy, for your years of service to the Denver community and for making the Uptown community a better place for everybody, including the hospital complexes that still exist there. So thank you very much. Thank you, Councilwoman Ortega. All right. Let's make this official, Madam Secretary, roll call. BROOKS Oh, yeah. Black All right. Flynn. I. Herndon. All right. Cashman. I can eat. I. Lopez. I knew Ortega. I just knew. Right. Mr. President. I. I'm. I'm secretary. Please close voting. Announce the results. 11 Eyes. 11 Eyes. Proclamation 166 has been adopted. Councilman Brooks, is there anyone you would like to call up to accept this proclamation? Well, I tell you what, we're just excited to talk about Dr. Brannigan tonight. So we have two people tonight. We have Mr. Jim Wiseman, who's been in the neighborhood for a long time. And then we also have Dr. Branigan. So if you guys can make your way up, Mr. Weisman, you can go first. Thank you. You'll have to excuse me. I'm. I have a profound hearing loss, and they all over here poked me, and I thought, oh, that's my cue. So. And I've got a terrible head cold. So I'm really profoundly hard of hearing tonight, but I'm gonna have a few notes here I'm going to read from primarily because I'm so emotionally invested in this whole thing that I don't trust myself to do otherwise. But ladies and gentlemen of the Council, I'd like to thank you. Councilman Burke, thank you very much for this opportunity. I'd like to thank community members, particularly Mike Henry and Marty Jones, who were instrumental in helping move this event forward. I'd like to bring special attention to Kathy Brannigan, Chuck's wife, who has been his most important coconspirator and supporting cast member in so many of these things. Kathy raised her hand there, and most importantly, the man we are all here to honor tonight, which is Dr. Charles Brannigan. He's back here. So where are you, Charlie? Oh, hey. Snuck up on me anyway. My name's Tim Weissmann, and having had the pleasure of working with Chuck for many, many years, I am honored and humbled to be able to have this opportunity to speak tonight. There are too many things to address here tonight in terms of this man's contributions, the co-founding of the Denver Browns with Cathy restoring the Roundhouse and rail facility at the historic Como, Colorado, and other historic work volunteer surgical training in Egypt. And much more than that, the profound event that precipitated this recognition tonight with Chuck's retirement, as we all know at this point from the AMP Town Design Forum, a little historic context I'd like to pass on. About 30 years ago, there were 44 residential property owners in an area we we came to call the island, which was a group of homes that were sandwiched between a number of the hospitals in the uptown area over here. They were being negatively and unjustly impacted by the hospital encroachment with no legal options. This was two blocks from the Branigan's historic home and the historic district that they had established with his empathy and compassion for these neighbors and his position in the health care community. He was uniquely positioned to help. Chuck jumped in with all four feet and was involved and instrumental in working with all the parties to create a process and the resulting redress an equitable buyout for all of the properties in the island area. It was huge for any of you that we might remember a great councilman named Hiawatha Davis. He was also intensely involved with us in that process, in developing that policy out of this two year process. We did come up with that new and all important hospital zoning, H one and H two, which present which we have today , which is instituted through city wide. I'll just be another 30, 40 seconds here. But at any rate, at that point, the Uptown Hospital District Urban Design Forum was established with Dr. Branigan being considered the founder, and that was a carryover from what we had developed over that two year period. And it was so successful and Chuck did such a great job with it. We're going, Chuck, you got to keep this thing rolling. So he raised his hand and he he volunteered to chair and he's been there for 27 years. That's crazy. His unique skill set and on the balance, moderating has kept all of the parties, the hospital community, the city and the affected neighborhood groups willingly participating and highly effective for almost three decades. And one of the reasons this is so crazy is because in in any normal situation, these people would all be adversaries. But here they've all come together over all this time to be so effective. So, Chuck, I just want to thank you from the bottom of all of our hearts for the selfless and dedicated work you have done for our community all of these years. Thank you so much. I don't know what to say. It sounds like my head's getting bigger and bigger. The more I hear people talk about me here. City council. I can't begin to tell you how much I appreciate the honor that you've bestowed on me. I'd like to mention a couple of things that are I think are important. Of all of the things that I've done, the Hospital District Urban Design Forum, I think has been the most important. That was created as an inspiration of two city planners, Leslie Lipp. Stein And. That's the trouble. I just lost my thought. I can see his face. In any case, they're the ones that inspired. Inspired us and had the vision to create an urban design plan. City Council then joined in and approved it, and that gave us some official standing for the Urban Design Forum, which has persisted to the present. It's true that when we started, it required some real skill to keep the meeting together. We had hospitals that were in mortal competition with each other. We had hospitals that were in competition with neighborhoods. We had people, real estate developers, who were in conflict with everybody else. And we got to the final point where. It was clear that everybody really wanted the same thing. The hospitals wanted a safe, stable neighborhood for their customers. The people who lived here wanted a safe, comfortable space to live in. And once we got everybody on the same page, it was possible to begin to bring all these diverse organizations together. And the remarkable thing is that over the years, we've seldom had to vote on any issue. We've managed to build the consensus between the people that have conflicting interests. Sometimes we've been in favor of people and sometimes through organizations of have met our disapproval. But overall, the group has functioned by consensus, and that's been the key. I'm. I have mixed feelings about stepping down as the chairman of the forum. It seems like that's been part of my life for most of it. I'm not going to disappear by any means, but it's time for me to turn the gavel over to somebody else. So, again, thank you very much for the honor that you've bestowed on on me. And there's this other city planner that I mentioned was Dennis Swain, Dennis Swain and Leslie Lipski and had the idea of putting together an urban design plan which would be passed by city council. And that's been what's been the glue that held the organization together and the support from the various issues we've brought before. City Council has been great and the support that Albert Brooks has provided us has been wonderful as well. So I will begin by saying that if you wish to live in the inner city, you must be proactive. And that's the way I began my career in downtown Denver and in inner city Denver. And I believe that piece of wisdom to those who follow. Thank you very much. Thank you. All right. That concludes our proclamations for this evening. That brings us to the bills for introduction. Madam Secretary, will you please read the bills for Introduction.