Nonprofit Brothers Redevelopment’s crews at work on the ground in GES

*CDOT awarded Brothers a $2 million grant to preserve the historic GES neighborhood amid Interstate-70 expansion

**Brothers’ Home Modification and Repair is fixing what’s broken!

***Paint-A-Thon volunteers making a difference here!

DENVER, April 25 — Alongside the disruption of construction and the tangles of traffic with I-70’s overhaul, good things are also happening for residents in Globeville Elyria-Swansea, as nonprofit Brothers Redevelopment Inc. works to preserve and stabilize their neighborhoods.

Beginning in mid-March and building momentum this April, Brothers has begun protecting and prettifying GES homes with its volunteer-powered Paint-A-Thon exterior makeovers and its Home Modification and Repair pros.

This Saturday, April 27, the Peña home at 4975 Steele Street in Denver gets a shiny coat of paint from a Paint-A-Thon volunteer team made up of alumni from the University of Central Florida. Mr. Peña has been a real team player, and we’re grateful to him for helping us get the word out that Brothers is on the ground to help out homeowners in this distinctive historical neighborhood.

Richard and Mary Ellen Pena have lived in their GES neighborhood their whole lives. They love their home, yard, garden and neighbors. Richard worked in the trades his entire life until a serious back injury disabled him. 

Between blizzards in March, Brothers harnessed the power of students on spring break to paint the Montoya home in a GES Paint-A-Thon. We have another GES  project already on the books for May 18 with 25 volunteers leaving the bench and bar for a Saturday Paint-A-Thon. When not sprucing up homes, this volunteer crew, the Rhone Brackett Inn of Court, promotes ethics, skills and professionalism in the legal field.

Brothers invested almost $10,000 to make over a bathroom for Mrs. Medina, a senior resident with a long history in this neighborhood. And, elsewhere in the area, HMR is hard at work improving overall conditions and safety in the basement of another elderly neighbor’s home.

This is just the start for Brothers. We are planning more projects, tapping the $2 million grant that the Colorado Department of Transportation awarded us to help prevent displacement of GES residents.

Brothers is part of the GES Affordable Housing Collaborative, a partnering with community members in the GES Coalition and the Colorado Community Land Trust (CCLT).

• The generous $2 million CDOT grant awarded Brothers is for mitigation of impacts due to the expansion of Interstate 70 through the neighborhoods. It enables the collaborative to acquire single-family homes for placement in the neighborhood land trust, by which residents may own their dwellings and even resell them, while the land itself remains in trust for the community.
• The partners will set aside an estimated $300,000 to rehabilitate houses and preserve the hard-earned equity of existing homeowners.
• Other portions of the grant will be applied toward new construction/redevelopment of parcels/properties that also will provide affordable housing for dozens of families in the neighborhood.