Westword, by Alan Prendergast March 15 2016

On an unseasonably warm winter afternoon, Tom Rutter sits on the patio at Bogey’s on the Park, the clubhouse restaurant at Denver’s City Park Golf Course. The regulars are out on the yellowed fairways or tipping back beers inside, but Rutter is elbow-deep in maps, notes, planning documents and iced tea. A loudspeaker announces tee times; Rutter looks up from his paperwork and points at a procession of century-old cottonwoods towering over the course.

“When you dig out an acre of land, the amount of life you’re destroying is phenomenal,” he says. “Any nook or cranny of soil, somebody’s living there. What they’re talking about doing here would be devastating to a piece of Denver that’s at the heart of Denver. This golf course and the park are jewels.”

Rutter doesn’t play golf. But like many central Denver residents, he has come to view the course as an extension of the park, a public space that provides not only solace for weary urbanites, but habitat for foxes, raccoons and coyotes. He rides his bicycle through the course after dusk, cross-country skis there with a young nephew when there’s enough snow. The lack of nearby light sources makes the interior fairways a great place for star-gazing on a moonless night.

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