It was a cold and rainy fall morning on October 30th, 2024, when the first small group of Englewood residents got together to talk about our vision for our community and to launch the organization known as Vibrant Englewood. From that first small group, we’ve now grown to have a name that is recognized in Englewood as being a strong voice for our mission and the safe, thriving, and inclusive community that we advocate for. Today, October 30th, 2025, is a beautiful sunny day and a great time to reflect on the last year, and the hopefully many years yet to come for Vibrant Englewood.
My Path to Founding Vibrant Englewood
A year or two before that first coffee meeting, I had started attending events and doing rides with the Denver Bike Lobby. As a regular bike commuter who worked in Denver, I wanted to get involved with advocacy to improve conditions for cyclists and others who want to get out their cars. We had an Englewood sub-group in the DBL Slack, and DBL was where I got to know Christine, who ended up being at that very first coffee (but not in the photo – sorry, Christine!). Unfortunately, what I quickly learned was that there wasn’t much I could do on the “lobby” part of their work because I didn’t live and vote in Denver.
So, I started to look around in Englewood and the South Metro area to see what similar kinds of groups might exist down here. I didn’t find anything in Englewood, but I did find a great group doing work I believed in down in Littleton. That was Vibrant Littleton. With leadership from the incomparable Patrick Santana and a dedicated group of volunteers, Vibrant Littleton had established themselves with the city staff and city council, and had become a force for good in the community. Even though I couldn’t participate in much of the local advocacy with them either, I started showing up and learning with the hope of replicating their success in Englewood.
Through Vibrant Littleton, I found out about DRCOG Civic Academy, a sort of bootcamp program on local government issues in the Denver Metro area. At the end of the program, each of the participants pitches an “action project,” something they intend to do to make a difference back in their own community with what they’ve learned in the program. My action project was none other than Vibrant Englewood. When my Civic Academy sessions wrapped up in October 2024, I had my plan and I was ready to take the first steps toward launching Vibrant Englewood.
Vibrant Englewood’s First Year
It is an understatement to say that I was not ready for how this took off. From that humble beginning, our second coffee meeting only two weeks later had doubled in attendance. Right away, new people were coming to check it out based just on word of mouth from their friends and neighbors, not because they knew me or knew anything about what we were trying to do. Even before 2024 came to a close, it was clear that Englewood had a lot of people who believed in safe transportation, abundant housing choices, strong public schools, and a vibrant local economy. But most of those people didn’t know where to get started in being advocates, because there wasn’t something like Vibrant Englewood to focus that energy toward a collaborative approach.
We got to skip right over the growing and building part, and we were able to jump right into real work to have an impact on the city. By February, we had hosted our first public event, a Q&A with City Manager Shawn Lewis. Shawn has been a big supporter of our work from the start, and we were happy to have him agree to headline our first event. Since then, we’ve brought school district officials to speak at our coffee meeting, we’ve hosted tables at Englewood Earth Day and the Englewood Block Party, held a transportation town hall event with Council Member Joe Anderson, and most recently co-hosted Beers & Ballots with Western Sky. Between those events, we shown up at City Council meetings and project open house events, built our email and social media presence, and even knocked on doors this election season to share our voter guide with our neighbors. Not bad for a one-year-old.
The Current Moment and What’s Next
I am beyond proud of what we’ve done in the past year. But if I’m being honest, the last week or so has been tough. We made the decision that we wanted to get involved in the local elections, and that has led to a level of petty abuse of complaint processes that I did not expect. I had assumed that as long as we were careful and worked hard to do things right, we could speak our minds in the local elections alongside the many people in Englewood who may disagree with us. Apparently, I was wrong.
Over the last couple of weeks, I have been in near constant contact with the Englewood City Clerk, the Secretary of State’s office, and the Englewood Herald about any number of frivolous complaints that have been filed against us. While I try to hold my head high and remember that being attacked just means that people think we are having an impact, there’s still a lot of stress in dealing with these things. I also started our Vibrant Englewood Nextdoor account this week to respond to a post that was getting a lot of traction fearmongering about a “group calling themselves Vibrant Englewood,” even though the author of the post knows very well who we are. It’s just really unfortunate that some people can’t disagree without being disagreeable, and especially around the election, it’s been a lot to deal with.
In a few days we’ll be on the other side of the election. Regardless of the outcome, we are still going to be here making our voices heard on the issues that matter to us. If anything, the vitriol and mudslinging has just elevated the recognition across these divides that we are a group that can have an impact. I would say we’ve already had an impact. And we’re only going to continue to grow from here.
Thank you, Englewood, for this incredible first year, and I can’t wait to see where the future will take use as we continue to build this movement.
Last modified: October 30, 2025
