A list of hundreds of potential new names for Denver’s Stapleton neighborhood, which currently carries the name of a former mayor who belonged to the Ku Klux Klan, has been whittled down to nine finalists.
The nine are: Central Park, Concourse, Meadowlark, Mosley, Park Central, Peterson, Randolph, Skyview and Tailwinds. The significance of each name is detailed on the site run by the neighborhood association Stapleton United Neighbors. Some honor local historical figures of color, and several feature nods to the area’s aviation history.
These finalists were selected from a pool of 331 proposals by an 11-member advisory board with diverse representation. Stapleton property owners voted just last year against changing the neighborhood name, but Black Lives Matter protests reignited the conversation last month, and now a change is imminent.
“We appreciate the work and thoughtfulness that the advisory board put into narrowing down the list of hundreds of names to these nine options,” said Liz Stalnaker, chair of Rename St*pleton For All, an advocacy group in favor of a name change. “Now it’s time for our neighbors to bring that same thoughtfulness into voting this week, bringing us one step closer to a new community name that we can all be proud of.”
There will be three rounds of voting, the first of which is live now online. Anyone over 18 years old who rents or owns in the community is allowed to vote. Business owners are not allowed to vote, though a member of Greater Stapleton Business Association served on the advisory board. This round of voting ends Saturday at 2 p.m., with the top four vote-getters advancing to another voting round that likely will begin July 20, Allshouse said. That second round will produce two leading finalists, one of which will be crowned Aug. 1.
The board for Stapleton United Neighbors (SUN), a registered neighborhood association, will tally the votes and certify voters using names and addresses, according to its president, Amanda Allshouse. Two years ago, SUN members voted against changing the neighborhood association name to Central Park United Neighbors. Allshouse said she did not take a position on the name change in either of the two previous votes, but that “it’s evident we as a culture are in a different place now than we were previously.”
“We are part of a larger movement that’s happening across the country, and the importance that is being given to issues of inclusivity are really just where we want the focus to be at the end of all of this,” she said.
This may be the first in a series of high-profile name changes to come in Colorado; the governor earlier this month created a new advisory board to consider renaming some symbols of racism in the state, including Mount Evans in Clear Creek County, Redskin Mountain in Jefferson County and Squaw Mountain in Clear Creek County, among others.
