Inside Arvada

Inside Arvada's Parks and Urban Design Department with Darin DeLay

• City of Arvada • Season 1 • Episode 6

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Arvada is home to more than 100 neighborhood, community and regional parks. But there's always room for more! Learn about the city's current and future plans to expand and improve the City's unparalleled park system from Darin DeLay, the City's Parks and Urban Design Manager. 

Darin explains how his team of landscape architects take projects from visionary concepts to tangible, sustainable realities. Topics covered on this episode include: 

You can learn more about the City's Parks and Urban Design team by visiting the city's website at ArvadaCO.gov/ParkProjects. 

Other news and events:

Visit us at ArvadaCO.gov/Podcast or email us at podcast@arvada.org.

Katie Patterson:

Welcome to Inside Arvada, the City of Arvada's podcast, where we bring you conversations with the people who make Arvada a thriving community. Hear stories about the past, present and future of Arvada through the lens of the city team members who help make it all happen. Explore the complex topics impacting our community, from the roads you drive to the water you drink, the parks where you play to what your neighbors think. Join us as we take you Inside Arvada.

Sean Star:

Welcome to Episode 6 of Inside Arvada, the official podcast of the City of Arvada. I'm one of your co-hosts, Sean Star, and so glad that you're tuning in to today's episode. We have Parks and Urban Design Manager Darin DeLay as our guest Darin began with the city in 2021 in his position as Parks and Urban Design Manager. Before that, he spent 12 years in the private sector as a landscape architect and 12 years in the public sector, including time with Denver Public Schools and their Learning Landscapes program. He's also quite the ultimate Frisbee player and really all around great guy. He's super smart and just fun and insightful interview. I'm joined today by my co-host, K atie Patterson. Hi, K katie.

Katie Patterson:

Hey, Sean. Yeah, today's episode is really awesome. Darn is such a cool guy and it was great to just hear all about the creativity and the placemaking that they bring to every project that they work on. That really helps build a sense of community all the way from the very initial concept to the design and construction of parks and playgrounds and all types of community assets. So let's dig into the interview.

Sean Star:

Hi Darren, Welcome to Inside Arvada. Thank you so much for being our guest today. Let's begin by telling us a little bit about yourself and what you do for the city.

Darin DeLay:

Yeah, thanks, pleasure to be here with you, ean and Katie. My name is Darin DeLay and I'm the Parks and Urban Design Manager with the City of Arvada and I work in the VCN work system Vibrant Community and Neighborhoods and my particular division is Parks and Urban Design, or what we call PUD for short.

Sean Star:

You know you're part of the parks department, as you mentioned, but you're not actually out there maintaining parks. You know, although we work closely with our parks maintenance team, you're not out there mowing and trimming. You know grass in our parks and taking care of our parks. Your team is more on the architecture side. You have landscape architects who are part of your team, overseeing design and planning of our park-related projects. So help us understand a little bit more about that difference of what your team does versus what a lot of our community sees with our park maintenance division.

Darin DeLay:

Yeah, I can work a mower, but I haven't done that since I was like 12. Really, I get tired of mowing now and have a smaller mowing property. But yeah, our team is really about taking capital improvement dollars, park development fees, fees in lieu and managing those funds to manage design consultants, and we'll do that through requests for proposals and take a group of designers across different projects and manage them through the process, the design process, to get to a construction documentation. So from concept phase of design, the big idea of it, getting it, to an executed set of plans that we can then put out to bid to landscape contractors or general contractors to then construct the park, the trail or the asset that we're going to add to the city of Arvada. So it's a sort of nuts and bolts approach to the design taking the big idea and manifesting that in a built environment that you know many of our residents get to enjoy. Then uh on on the weekends and in the evenings and whenever, maybe cutting loose from work.

Sean Star:

So yeah, so it's a lot of the the new parks or the improvements to parks, and not necessarily the the maintenance of existing parks.

Darin DeLay:

Yeah, yeah, so our department does the design of that, thank you.

Darin DeLay:

Our park manages the design process itself to put an element what we call an inventory into the asset of the city's record system and turn that over to them parks maintenance. And so we involve park maintenance through that design process, get their feedback on the types of things, how they're going to maintain, the types of edges that they need to mow, the materiality of it all. If something's hard to replace or reorder, we want to know that up front in the design, as opposed to putting it in the built environment and saying, oh no, now what Like, that's not what we need, that's not what we manage to. So we include them in that throughout that process. So parks maintenance has irrigation division, their maintenance division, the city forester, and so soliciting all of that feedback early on in the design process, along with our own filters of design, is three landscape architects sitting around and managing another group of landscape architects. You get a lot of cooks in that kitchen, and so our ideas are essentially to prep a good meal that is consumable by the Parks Maintenance Division.

Sean Star:

And we wanted to have you on now specifically because, I mean, you're always busy, your team is but right now as we are getting into summer.

Sean Star:

Your team has got a lot going on. Arvada has a very robust park and trail system, but there's always room for more parks and more trails, and so we've got four projects right now that are active construction throughout the city, and so I wanted to just touch on each one of those, beginning with Holistic Health and Fitness Park, which is the placeholder name. We're working on getting an official new name for that park, but it's over there in the Arvada Ridge area, a project that's right across from Red Rocks Community College. Tell us a little bit more about that park and what people can expect from that new park?

Darin DeLay:

Yeah, there's quite a history with that project. That predates me from my three years here at the city. But back in 2015, 2016,. There was some development that happened around that area. I'm trying to remember the rail stop, the TOD Trans-Indo-Orion Development Stop. That's right there to the south of Red Rocks Community College.

Darin DeLay:

But that collaboration identified a need to the 2016 Parks, trails and Open Space Master Plan. Identified a need for a park in that area. Red Rocks owned part of that property. We have a 100-year lease agreement with them to then develop and design a park on that property. Lease agreement with them to then develop and design a park on that property. So DHM, our design consultant, worked with Red Rocks Community College in creating sort of the program elements of that park which are unique to this area, not like all of our other playgrounds where you might see paths, green open space and just a playground. There are a lot of other details that show up, through the yoga pavilions, the reflexology paths, but yeah, those elements all add up to what's happening inside the classroom at Red Rocks Community College and the types of activities and use that they're teaching in the classroom and how they can use that space as an outdoor laboratory in the park itself. So there's some really unique opportunities that you have that take program elements and incorporate them into a profession that's being taught inside the classroom.

Sean Star:

Yeah, obviously Red Rocks has been an important partner in the design of that park, but it'll also be an asset in a regional park really for the the community to enjoy, and probably apex, I would imagine, would have some programming involved there and as well as just, you know, people coming and visiting the park to practice yoga or tai chi, kind of on their own time. I think there's going to be a. Is there a boulder bouldering wall?

Darin DeLay:

Yeah, so instead of a traditional playground equipment which you might see in like slides and swings and and monkey bars, you get a large bouldering, uh element in there that has poured in place surfacing, which we call pip. It's a safety surfacing, and so there's the ability and it's a central element to kind of come in, let your kids play in that area uh, youth climb on that, and so it's a safe place to sort of take in some activities that you can take not too far into the front range then and practice on the real thing yeah, really serving all ages and ability levels yeah yeah, looking forward to seeing that park be complete here later in the summer.

Sean Star:

It's been fun to see that site when it was just dirt and then the progress of that, and so excited it was a field of tall grass Prairie.

Darin DeLay:

So there's there's a large amphitheater there as well which can serve as an outdoor classroom and lab itself for performance and residents can have impromptu types of performances. It's probably going to be a great place to watch fireworks or drone shows from. We have a couple of competing places for that here in the city that I'm sure we'll talk about here a little bit further down.

Sean Star:

But, yeah, great views. And speaking of places to watch fireworks, probably the next park we want to talk about is the Garrison Garden Paseo, which will have a great vantage point for fireworks or just for kind of relaxing and taking in some views of the mountains there. The Paseo is a unique project in that it's like a more linear park and that's going in between 57th Avenue and 58th or slash Ralston same street there just south of Ralston Central Park. So Garrison Garden Paseo has been a project that we're collaborating with the Arvada Urban Renewal Authority and help us learn more about that project and that park.

Darin DeLay:

Yeah, so that project was starting in concept phase, just as I began here as well with Confluence Design and Oren. So looking at kind of the concept on that, really it was already sort of operated as a pedestrian corridor, but that's really all it was was just a corridor, a walk that went through there. There's so many moving parts with this design, with the Swadley Ditch that runs below it, the Ralston Gardens development project there, some existing infrastructure and businesses there at the base with the Taco Bell and Kentucky Fried Chicken, and so connecting 57th to 58th and then Ralston Central Park across the street. How do we improve that space and promote placemaking there through design? So what you see now is kind of what operates as kind of a slot canyon. Now it's kind of a what operates as kind of a slot canyon. So it's sort of like a cut back through this space adjacent to the overlook area that is Arvada Community Gardens and the partnership that we'll have with them and so the elements of a winding path through here that you're still going to have to move pedestrians through this cut through space in this neighborhood of sorts and to do that in a meaningful manner and maybe make them want to stay. So there's lots of little elements off of that path for them to interact, for kids to climb, to go up to the overlook there that has a shade structure and look back to the front range it. It really is a beautiful view from from up there and then you know, and back behind into the gardens is to see that sort of aspect of community, uh, making food and and building relationships with one another in that space. And so within that we'll also have within the Paseo itself, we'll have demonstration gardens, uh, that show some of the things that you can grow in garden beds and so, and the Arvada Community Gardeners Group will be managing those beds for us and they're sort of at the base of the Paseo, the low point, and then with the Swadley Ditch, trying to show some of that storm infrastructure in our natural water features to try to show what those a lot of those are sort of channelized in cities. That's not uncommon.

Darin DeLay:

Across the US there's been a sort of reemergence to go back to open those canals. You'll see a lot of this happening around the region. For sure, denver is doing some of this in City Park, but doing as much of that as we can. So there's a winding channel that we also live in a very arid climate too. We don't get a ton of rain here. So this isn't Pacific Northwest or the South. So you know that's going to be a dry creek bed and we want to replicate that a little bit in that design.

Darin DeLay:

But in large storm events and in particular maybe some overflow events, uh, where the swathi, dead shift is not able to handle that capacity in the, in the pipe system, we have that where it can come up, overflow and and wind through, uh, through that channel. It's a low flow, you're not going to have a big high creek flowing through that site, but, um, you know, just addressing some of those natural features that happen in in our cities but, as we've developed, disappear. They're there, they're just disappear and they're underground, and so it just sort of creating an awareness and an education about that to to the public, to remind them. That's again, that's the idea of sort of opening back the earth a little bit and letting you pass through it, so, so the channel or the terracing of the stones there too.

Sean Star:

Yeah, it's been neat to kind of drive by there and look over and see the progress there of that terrace wall that's coming along and there'll be kind of the main path right that people use but then also like the elevated path right next to the Arvada Gardeners and then that leads to the shaded overlook where know provides the great view. So really fun.

Darin DeLay:

um, another fun project that I think people will be excited to to see come on yeah, I think you'll see the honeycomb features in that and on the fence, uh, the, the notion of we need bees, right, bees, keep everything uh moving, uh, so to speak. So, uh, yeah, so you'll see some of those details just sort of replicate themselves throughout the design language of the space.

Sean Star:

Yeah, Looking at late fall-ish on. I think Paseo being finished.

Darin DeLay:

Yeah, yeah, fall continues well and we don't continue to get rain like we're getting right now.

Sean Star:

Yeah, never know, yeah. And then the next one is the Stanley Lake Library Trailhead. So that's obviously over there by the Stanley Lake Library. That's under construction currently, and so what we're doing there is we're building an accessible trailhead for the Rocky Mountain Greenway Trail there that connects there underneath, I think, 86th Avenue to Stanley Lake Regional Park sort of statewide project that is connecting what there's several different national wildlife refuges in the state, at the one over there in the east by the airport, the Rocky Mountain Arsenal, and then two ponds here in Arvada and then up to Rocky Flats to the north of us, and so it's part of that sort of larger statewide project. But what are some of the features of that trailhead that people can look forward to enjoying?

Darin DeLay:

Yeah, Chad Hollingsworth, one of my senior landscape architects, is managing this one, and I should mention also Maki Boyle managing Holistic Health and Fitness Park, and then the last project we'll talk about. But so without those two, I can't do this, so I should acknowledge that as well in this process.

Sean Star:

Chad. I work closely with them and they're great. We should have had all three of you on.

Darin DeLay:

Yeah, yeah, much love, Maki and Chad. Let me know if I've said anything wrong here, but yeah. So the Rocky Mountain Greenway Trail that is essentially a non-exclusive access easement that runs along the Farmer's Highline Canal. There, farmer's High Line or Croke, those two run along each other. It's one of those canals but connecting, creating a trailhead from that parking lot that the Stanley Lake Library also has transit RTD routes that sort of provide access of people getting off there or putting their bikes on RTD routes and then offloading there and able to connect to the Rocky Mountain Greenway Trail.

Darin DeLay:

Here this project was also in partnership with a Jefferson County Open Space grant. I think it's something maybe $300,000-ish that we got from Jefferson County Open Space. So they're helping fund that project as well as some of the other fees that I talked about prior. But the connectivity to the trail itself and so the trailhead is sort of the wayfinding marker that's going to have a shade structure again there Trail maps to sort of show where you are in the city, what some of the trails, whether the Rocky Mountain Greenway, connecting the Van Bibber or Ralston Central, this larger regional trail system with a lot of our local trails, and so giving you an idea of where you want to go and some of that is kind of a landing place and a starting place for trail users to decide to go, sort of North or South uh from that.

Darin DeLay:

From that point, um, working closely with the library, there was a lot of community engagement uh again prior to me coming here, but sort of what they would like to see in that, and so that had really good turnout uh from kids and parents, uh and grandparents giving feedback on what makes uh that kind of trailhead successful, trying to be a good neighbor with that trailhead to the adjacent houses that border the Stanley Lake library itself and making sure that you know we're not creating high impact park use that's going to invite a lot of play and potentially noise in some of those communities. You want to be mindful of that and that approach. So this is yeah, it's been a good partnership with Stanley Lake. Perry Gardner's, the project manager with that group. So DHM is again the design consultant on this one, and so you know it took a couple years to sort of get this project up and going and now it's under construction. Design Escapes is our contractor there doing a wonderful job on that.

Sean Star:

So yeah, we've got project pages for each of these projects on our website. We can link in the show notes if you're looking for a little bit more information and kind of more specific timelines and then. So the final project we wanted to hit on is Marge Roberts Park, and so I think initially that started off as just a basic playground renovation, but then I guess, as we learn more about what all that entailed and some of the needs of that park, that's turned into a larger project than just a new playground. Tell us more about Marge Roberts.

Darin DeLay:

Yeah, we'll talk more about our Taking Lasting program, as I understand, a little bit later. But yeah, so we have two to three playground renovations that we do as those become dated, and Marge Roberts was identified as one of those older playgrounds. So in looking at that and moving forward with design on that, we also looked at the rest of the park that had some ADA concerns with the circulation and the existing concrete there. It needed an updated irrigation system. The tap was too small to run the irrigation efficiently. So a number of those funding sources that we have in our holding accounts allowed us to sort of go into this park one time, as opposed to four or five different times, to update those elements in the park. And so, again, working closely with parks maintenance, identifying what we wanted to do here, we put out an RFP to our design consultant Stream is the design consultant on this one and at keeping the, the, the sort of history that was behind the park, and not redesigning it entirely but giving it a major update and overhaul there, uh, and what that might entail, and so, um, what you'll see is a lot of the same circulation patterns, but you'll also see reduced amount of of Kentucky bluegrass out there, which is the green lawns that we see all over Colorado and that you don't really want in Colorado because they're not water efficient in the high plains desert Took a lot of that out and 60% maybe and replaced that with native seeds. So short grass prairie that takes a while to establish, creeps, leaps right, so on a native seed.

Darin DeLay:

And so I looked at the play equipment and then the transition of the play equipment into natural play too, so not just sort of the metal structures that you see, uh, that were done, you know, past 30, 40, 50 years, um, using natural elements boulders, stones that teach kids about balance and creative play, and so if they can find that kind of creative play in parks and you don't overly prescribe the way kids need to play, this park is going to do some of that, and that's not to say one of those things is right or wrong.

Darin DeLay:

It's that the more that you can sort of create that type of network and circuit type play that you know the kids are going to benefit, so that there's a lot of that happening there too. There's a central shade structures kind of overlook, which is a great place for having those features, and this was kind of pulling from the learning landscapes concept that I learned with Lois Brink back at UCD and Denver Public Schools previously is that having that central, elevated place for oversight on kids is good and it creates a safe environment. It's just a good way to sort of keep an eye and not have to maybe parent too hard, uh, so yeah, so that's what you'll see sort of at marge roberts there.

Sean Star:

Yeah and that's over right north Stenger of Sports Complex, right across from Stenger. Yeah, yeah, um, yeah, I mean excited to see that you mentioned the natural native grass that'll be going in there. That relates to a pilot program that we have on some other park locations throughout the city and I'm glad that you mentioned that. It's quite a period of establishment for that native grass. So even though you might convert it to native one year, it's going to take several years for that native to finally come through and look really full and lush. But at the end of the day, you know, it saves us a ton of water, saves us on mowing, saves us on maintenance and it's the type of grass that should be growing here and not the Kentucky bluegrass that takes so much to maintain.

Darin DeLay:

Yeah, that's what I was sort of saying, that sleep, creep, leap. Mindset of native is that at first, when it sort of goes in, it's sleeping, that native seed low disturbance, needs time to seed itself, establish, spread. That second year you start to see it creep up a little bit and you're like, oh, you know what's happening here. And then that third year really you can start to see that stuff leap and become what it and establish what it needs to be and it helps weed out literally some of those invasive weeds, so and it doesn't take a lot of water. There's challenges when we do that with uh, with ian mcdonald or city forester, like how to irrigate trees and native, and so we work through a lot of the details and the finer fine tuning, so to speak, of the design when we get into installing these types of elements and doing conversion within our parks, which, yeah, Do people have to stay off of that grass for that amount of time, or how does that part work?

Darin DeLay:

No like. So those grasses can take sort of abuse that maybe sod doesn't take right away or what we you know here's maybe Steve Gustafson, our parks manager, talk about you know the fields kind of needing to rest and pulling people off of those fields. The native can handle that abuse and that's what it's meant to do. There will be some seed establishment period where you'll see some of that orange snow fencing that keeps people off in parentheses. Those fences don't do much but but it does. It does not need. It needs a little bit of time to establish, but it's after that it's fine, yeah.

Sean Star:

And then, so you know, we talked about all the projects that are active construction, but those are kind of, from your perspective, the tail end of a lot of your projects. A lot of them are the design phase, and so let's learn about some of those projects that you're working on that people can look forward to seeing, you know, in the years to come. Starting with Gold Strike Park there we did a lot of community engagement in 2023 and trying to revitalize that park there over on the southeast part of town. And so where are we at with Gold Strike Park after all the community engagement and the recent, I think, final site design that we released earlier this year?

Darin DeLay:

Yeah, yeah, a seven acre. We call this our marathon project for lots of reasons. We, you know, we looked at sort of expanding the footprint and the size of the park and so we're going to stay focused on where we are and evaluate that maybe in the future and evaluate that maybe in the future. But Gold Strike is really when you look at the confluence of bodies of water. So the Ralston Creek and Clear Creek, that's really pre-any of us. You know the settlement patterns that you'll see that in Denver at Confluence Park, right with the South Platte River and Cherry Creek, sort of the energy that those spaces are for settlements. That's why Denver is where it is and the confluence of these creeks is a lot of why Arvada is where it is. And then you know the finding and striking of gold along these bodies of water as well, and so this park is complete through schematic design, sort of the big idea that we did with Link and so we finished that report and study is also online on our website and so the big idea in developing what we want to tell the story of this park in this place is not just about the gold strike, is not just about the gold strike, it is about all the indigenous peoples that were here prior to us and telling their story as well and intertwining those stories for that storytelling of the place there. And so Wink has put together very thoughtful features in that design and sort of that master plan of sorts. Prior to that it had other master plans done by previous consultants, so capturing the energy of where we are right now. We've applied for a large grant to move into construction documentation administration over the next several years and the federal grant was an outdoor recreation legacy partnership grant, one of the larger grants I think the city has applied for through the Parks Department, at least in a very long time. We hope to get that. We'll know that in a year or so. But right now we have three proposals in for the contract to award for the design documentation of that park. So we'll award that here over the next couple of weeks after some interviews and then begin documenting this design and developing the aspects of that.

Darin DeLay:

So you'll see, connecting people back to the creek that's a big part of this Stormwater management, wetland management. There is some play, there's large gatherings, so we'll have events. Movies in the park is an opportunity here. Updating those parking lots and access and the circulation patterns around that, connecting people to what feels like a bit of a disconnection to the large spire bridge in the park, now Connecting people to the art that's within the park and maintaining those elements and keeping those as well.

Darin DeLay:

So, through some very thoughtful stakeholder engagement internally and externally, I think we're able to take some of these next steps into adding this, really this gateway to Arvada. That isn't really seen well currently and so this is sort of going to be a regional park large draw park. You have Clear Creek Valley Park just on the other side. That is not our park, but this is. It will be different. There's, you know, the idea of smaller bike park in this, in this, in Gold Strike Park that may be a smaller pump track for younger to sort of grow into bigger bike parks and those types of activities throughout the Front Range.

Sean Star:

Yeah, it'd be great to see that area evolve and hopefully over the years, if we can activate that space and see that area transform. Yeah, we've mentioned the Taking Lasting Care program a couple times in our playground renovations. So we refer to it as TLC for short ground renovations. So we refer to it as TLC for short, and that's a capital improvement program that we use to make improvements to our parks and trails system. Each year Most notably, or most visibly, I would say, is the playground renovations. You know we go to the community, we ask what sort of elements and features they like in their playgrounds and then you know we go ahead and make those improvements. Hillside and Creekside and McEvoy are some of the recent completed projects. Curious to learn more about how we decide which of those parks and playgrounds we're going to, you know, do next for that program.

Darin DeLay:

Yeah, so we have a list of I think it's now 71 playgrounds. Somebody will tell me if I'm right or wrong on that, but it's close. Maybe I should have said plus or minus 70. 71 playgrounds Somebody will tell me if I'm right or wrong on that, but it's close. Maybe I should have said plus or minus 70. So we look at the date of when they were installed that's just a data point, that's really all that is and the lifespan really for equipment in terms of safety and then use and whether it's still fun and applicable to the neighborhood. It's generally plus minus 20 years and so we look at that, cycling that out. So we have two to three playgrounds we do a year. We'll put out again the RFP and consultants will look at that.

Darin DeLay:

So, sorry, step back to the selection of the projects. So we look at the date of it, we look at if there's other, like I talked about with Marge Roberts, are there other things we need to be doing in that park that might elevate the need and or prioritize and necessitate replacement of it sooner than later. And then, from an equitable standpoint, looking at the city as sort of the three areas that we have area supervisors for through parks maintenance is trying to sort of make sure all of our activity and design and construction isn't happening in one particular region of the city and so that we're serving all of our residents and all of our communities sort of as best we can when we can. Uh, so we'll use those sort of um, those filters to to elevate or move projects down, those filters to elevate or move projects down, and then take a handful of six to eight projects that might fit that criteria and that time span and then we'd sort of dive into those playgrounds a little bit and then we generate a community survey.

Darin DeLay:

When we select our top priorities, we'll put out a community survey through is that speak up, yeah, and with Emily comb and yourself and sort of work through that and see what the community needs or wants and or thinks that they want. And then we trust our experts, which you know, ourselves and our design consultants in that RFP, giving them that feedback that we received designed to this program statement, and then we look through that, score those, pick a winner that seems to best fit and meet those needs and add some variety of play areas throughout the city, and so that's kind of a little bit of the curtain. That happens on the TLC projects, and then they take anywhere from about four weeks from demo to completion. So playgrounds aren't incredibly difficult until you have to relocate or create new play pits, and then there's just a little bit more that happens and you need a landscape architect and not just the play equipment vendor to do what we call the R&R remove and replace.

Sean Star:

Yeah, you mentioned kind of our park maintenance districts and so we have three districts and it's essentially east side of Arvada, kind of centralish Arvada, and west Arvada and we try to make sure we get a variety of those districts as we're selecting those playgrounds for renovation.

Darin DeLay:

Yeah, and our team is just about to make some selections here within the next probably month on what the next ones will be with Robbie Ferafino. Robbie Ferafino will be one of those, and then we'll have two others that sort of go in with that. So coming out of this big construction of four big parks all at once which is careful, what you wish for those playgrounds will feel a little bit easier for us. And then we'll have Danny Kendrick's Park that we'll be going in. So we'll be managing a lot of playground replacements here, which will be a smaller shift in terms of scale for our team.

Sean Star:

I was going to put you on the spot and ask you what playgrounds are next, but you already answered that you can't get me to make it up on the fly. Okay, so with that, I'll turn it over to Katie for the lightning round.

Katie Patterson:

All right, let's do it. So first what is your favorite thing about Arvada?

Darin DeLay:

It's between Old Town and Bird's Nest. I love to play disc golf. Bird's Nest is a fun place to sort of get out on the front range and in that tall grass, but probably Old Town just as a whole, because when I moved here 25 years ago it was a different place. But that integrity is still holding through the character and watching it developed at the pedestrian-centric streets. So I'm a people watcher. I love to see how people interact with space. It's probably annoying to most, uh, maybe terrifying. So, uh, old town, lets me engage and watch. Watch how people use space and see the space was well designed or not.

Katie Patterson:

Yeah.

Darin DeLay:

It's good to be judgmental there.

Katie Patterson:

Great people watching area, yeah.

Darin DeLay:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like I I say, I say people watching, yeah nice.

Katie Patterson:

Uh, what was your first, last or best concert?

Darin DeLay:

uh, gosh. Uh, well, I can answer all three. Uh, oakridge boys was my first concert when I was about six. Uh, big fan of mbop. Uh, and then, uh, the last concert was, I believe, billy Strings, and it will also be my next last concert Friday. Big fan of Billy Strings and best concert gosh. In the early 90s, when I saw the Grateful Dead for the first time at Deer Creek when Jerry was still with us, and so that was a unique experience. A lot of the fans at Deer Creek and Noblesville, indiana they couldn't get in, didn't have tickets, so they stormed the fences that night, tore down the big cedar fences and came in and everybody was pretty happy until we realized that the next night's tickets probably weren't going to be any good because they didn't have secure fencing. And sure enough, they canceled the next night.

Katie Patterson:

So, yeah, that's a wild story to be a part of, yeah yeah, every time. Yeah, what brought you to the city of Arvada?

Darin DeLay:

no-transcript. And so, being that sort of connection and that link to a city that's well run, that has funding to build great places and trying to bring in the best consultants and the contractors to build those, and, you know, be responsible for that thumbprint that we're leaving behind in design and in parks in this short time that we have here.

Katie Patterson:

That's awesome. I really appreciate that very thoughtful answer.

Darin DeLay:

Thank you.

Katie Patterson:

And we're glad to have you. What was your first job? Thank you, and we're glad to have you.

Darin DeLay:

What was your first job? I was a paper boy back in Greensburg, indiana, delivering the Greensburg Daily News and then the Indianapolis Star on Sunday. Sunday papers are big, thick papers, by the way, so I had 90 to 100 customers so I would have to get up. Newspapers were delivered on my porch at like five in the morning. I had to roll them, rubber, band them and, if it was raining, slip them in a bag, stuff them in my bag over my shoulders and I had it to where I could take half the papers, come back, load the other half, and I had to do all that before I went to school. So it was, but it was. It was a way to make money, it was a way to pay for the baseball half, and I had to do all that before I went to school.

Darin DeLay:

So it was, but it was. It was a way to make money. It was a way to pay for the baseball cards. It was better than mowing grass. So I did that. And I remember they gave you a special bag. I got news carrier of the month one time, so you get this bright yellow bag and it says as much on that. And then they gave a $200 check, which then. I'm 49 now, so you just go way back. It was a lot of money to me and my parents said you can do whatever you want with it. It's your money. You earned it, and so I bought a pair of Air Jordans and a Nintendo, so it was like it already paid for the job, took care of itself. It was great so very cool.

Katie Patterson:

I love that. What was your favorite project that you've done with the city so far?

Darin DeLay:

Oh gosh, maybe, maybe the Paseo, because it's it feels the most urban to me. So I like to think of of myself as country mouse, growing up in rural Indiana, uh, but I'm really drawn to cities, so there's a little bit of city mouse there too and and that one feels the most sort of country mouse, city mouse to me where they can sort of meet and and be, uh, uh, be at one with one another. So it's been difficult with, you know, unforeseen, through construction and some of the design, but I don't like typical days, so this has been a not typical day and a not typical project. So I respect that challenge At the end, when we can look back and that you both can go to the park and not know anything that I know that happened through that. Then we pulled it off, and so I think this one will be that, with all the challenges that that has gone through, it's going to be great and wonderful when it's done and it's going to be central to Arvada.

Katie Patterson:

Yeah, I'm glad we got to hear about that one. I'm excited to see that that whole area is just having a lot of activity, so it'll be great to see it all come together before too long. Well, darren, thank you so much for coming on with us today. We really appreciate it.

Darin DeLay:

Thank you both. Could talk all day, but that's not what we're here for.

Sean Star:

Thank you, darren, appreciate it. Yeah, appreciate you. Before we let you go, I wanted to wrap up with our news and other events segment. As always, you can submit feedback to the show and questions that can be answered on a next upcoming episode by emailing the show at podcast at arvadaorg and coming up on Saturday. July 13th is Arvada on Tap. It's our annual craft beer and barbecue festival and it benefits our community service partners. Be sure to buy your tickets ahead of time at arvadafestivalscom to save you $10 per ticket. And then on July 19th we'll have our Movies Around Town event at Lake Arbor Park where you can catch the movie Jaws. And then I know, katie, it looks like we've got a waste hauling update for City Council coming up as well.

Katie Patterson:

Yeah. So the city team has been working for the last couple of months on sharing information about the updates to the recycling and trash services rates and fees that are contracted through Republic Services. So they're allotted an annual increase through their contract each year. That's approved by City Council to go into effect for customers in July. So just have that on your radar if you're a Republic customer. And then we just want to say thank you again to our guest, Darren DeLay. It was great to have him on today.

Katie Patterson:

Be sure to listen to our next episode. We'll be featuring Evelyn Rhodes, who is the city's water quality administrator. We're going to be talking to her about all things water and water quality, including the city's lead service line replacement program. So stay tuned for that and be sure to stay in touch with us. In the meantime, you can visit our website, arvadagov slash podcast, where you can subscribe to the show or send us an email at podcast at arvadaorg. Ask us questions to be answered later on. Thank you so much to all of our listeners. We encourage you to subscribe, rate and review the show, Share it with a friend, a neighbor, a person you meet at your local park. And today's episode was recorded and edited by Arvada Media Services. Producer James Long and Sean. Hit us with your fun fact.

Sean Star:

The history of Arvada Park dates back to 1919, when Ms Clemency McAvoy deeded her home and the three acres surrounding it to the town of Arvada with the understanding that it would become our first park. Now, more than 100 years later, we've got more than 100 parks Whoa.