Perfect Murder, Perfect Town - Lawrence Schiller [115]
My parents came to Denver in 1947, when I was ten, to start the Julius Hyman Company, which produced the nastiest, most dangerous insecticides. Eventually they sold the firm to Shell Oil, which continued producing the same pesticides for a long time. If I had a personal bumper sticker, it would read, “Here longer than most natives.”
I remember that the moment we got off the train in Denver, I was disappointed—no cowboys and Indians. But I soon discovered there were lots of fields to play in, an airport where you could watch planes, and an irrigation ditch you could tube down. All that was wonderful.
In 1960 I applied to Stanford and didn’t get in. So I ended up at CU, which had been my third choice. Actually it was a kid’s dream. The university was a kind of magic place. It had either the largest or second-largest number of astronauts among its alumni. Robert Redford used to be a waiter at the Sink. I studied history as an undergraduate and science in graduate school, but I really majored in student activism. I have to point out that I opposed the Vietnam War back when public opinion polls showed that only 1 percent of the country favored withdrawal.
Boulder was much more isolated than Denver, although the Denver-Boulder turnpike had just opened. Boulder had the main hallmark of a boomtown, the feeling that all things are possible. In those days there were lots of transient hippies and drugs. One anti-Vietnam protest on U.S. 36 turned into a kind of bloodbath. There was lots of tear gas. The liberals didn’t seize the government until 1971, when I was thirty-five, and the present establishment wasn’t locked in until the 1976 elections. Back then, I was always in the minority, but it didn’t bother me. I understood things were changing.
The Danish Plan was my big contribution to Boulder and was adopted by referendum in 1976. It determined the growth rate for the town by controlling the number of building permits issued every year, with just a few exceptions and grandfatherings. The number of permits allowed was based on certain criteria, like the birth rate. The city had already voted in a height limitation for new buildings. There was also the “blue line,” a zoning law which said that a building above a certain elevation couldn’t get town water. Now, of course, the city owns almost everything up in the foothills. It’s a wonderful place to live. I live just six blocks from the Rocky Mountains.
—Paul Danish
The city of Boulder became an island with a moat of undeveloped land around it, isolated from the other communities in Boulder County and from Denver and its surrounding municipalities. One former county commissioner called Boulder “twenty-eight square miles encircled by reality.” The restricted growth of Boulder’s residential areas led to steadily rising real estate prices. In the late 1990s, an average home cost $337,994.
Adding to Boulder’s good fortune is the presence of a federally funded scientific research institute at the University of Colorado, whose students and staff constitute almost a third of Boulder’s population. Over 36 percent of the city’s adults have a college degree, and 26 percent have five years or more of higher education. Seven of ten Boulderites own bicycles. The result is above-average prosperity and relatively few residents whose lives are desperate enough to turn them to crime.
I’m now the director of public information at the University of Colorado in Boulder. I used to be the city’s flack. I ran the press office. I could see everything that was happening in city government; I attended every city council meeting. The first mayor I worked for was Ruth Correll, and during her tenure the character of the town changed. Paul Danish was pushing slow growth, which attracted attention that this town had never had before. And I saw it all from the inside.
I helped promote the green belt. We built this buffer zone around ourselves