(gentle music) - When I got here, the Denver Club had just been torn down and there was a lot of activity going on with building big buildings, and of course the discussion was going on about urban renewal all over the country.

I mean, in a very understandable movement that didn't take into consideration the scale of buildings that people love.

- [Narrator] Between 1950 and 1980, many of America's oldest communities were labeled as blight and demolished.

Some 2,500 neighborhoods in almost 1,000 cities, were literally wiped from the map.

(gentle music) When Dana Crawford arrived in Denver in 1954, the physical toll of urban renewal demolition was devastating.

(explosion booming) Countless buildings that had defined the city just a few decades before, like the original City Hall, or the spectacular Mining Exchange Building had disappeared.

Crawford felt she was looking at a city that in its haste to make way for progress, had very nearly erased itself.

With a tremendous sense of urgency, Crawford began to search through what remained.

- [Dana Crawford] I'd been looking for a long, long time, driving around looking for this area, that I wanted to have a sense of a gathering place, a sense of a place that told the story of Denver.

And after looking at a lot of other areas I discovered the 1400 block of of Larimer, and of course it was slated for demolition and urban renewal.

And I began to do research on the history of the block and then it became a very big obsession, truly, to save the block.

- [Narrator] By 1964, the 1400 block of Larimer St. had become Denver's skid-row, a low-rent district of decaying buildings and dive bars.

But Crawford's research uncovered a remarkable history.

The street took its name from General William Larimer, who built Denver's first house on the street: a 16 by 20-foot log cabin.

In the Civil War era, the 1400 block became the city's first commercial district.

It was home to Denver's first post-office and theater.

For years, City Hall stood on the block and the rooms of Gahan's Saloon buzzed with the fervent chatter of the city's most prominent politicians and journalists.

The question was: could a historic district emerge from the rubble of this run-down block in a way that could make the old buildings economically viable in the new city growing up around it?

Crawford believed it could.

In fact, she believed it could become a major attraction in a part of Denver that most people went out of their way to avoid.

But first, she had to secure the funding and permissions.

In short, she had to win converts among city planners, developers, business owners, civic leaders, bank officers, philanthropists, and tenants.

(energetic music) - [Dana Crawford] There was definitely a prejudice against it and an absolute belief that it was not viable on an economic basis because who in the world would want to go down to those old neighborhoods and go into those broken down old buildings?

The buildings were really pretty much vacant, and I guess I could kinda squint and see, it was a block that was intact, and almost every single building there had been built before the turn of the last century.

I could see it and then I found some investors that could also see it and visualize with the gas lights there and with the traffic on the street, and a few people got the idea.

(gentle music) - [Narrator] Crawford had to rely principally on her own considerable charm, charisma and determination.

But she could also point to a growing number of examples around the country that showed how heritage tourism could drive more sustainable redevelopment than wholesale demolition ever did.

Ghirardelli Square in San Francisco and Gaslight Square in St. Louis were drawing suburban shoppers and tourists back into city centers by offering something suburban malls could not: an authentic sense of place, where the past and present co-existed in dynamic juxtaposition.

- In downtown Denver it changed the face of urban renewal because ultimately, after a very long and strenuous and tough fight with the urban renewal authority, we were able to move forward and win.

And then all of the people that were looking at developing something in the urban renewal area wanted to be next to us because we had lots of people coming and lots of activity and good restaurants and shops and offices evolving.

- [Narrator] 10 years later, it would be hard to find a major American city that hadn't developed a downtown commercial center that hinged on the so called adaptive reuse of historic structures.

Dana Crawford became one of the foremost voices arguing that recapturing the past character of those downtowns was the key to preserving the identity and vibrancy of the cities themselves.

In the era of suburban sameness, of planned developments and chain restaurants, the places that could speak to something authentic in the American identity were historic treasures.

Crawford would go on to lead other creative preservation efforts throughout the inner city, turning old warehouses into lofts and residencies, and breathing new life into a historic boutique hotel.

- And while it's a commitment of passion, it's also tempered with common sense, with reality, with, okay, what's the complexities of the financing and the incentives and the acquisition prices and the real pieces?

How do you put the gritty details together to make that happen.

And there's not a kind of cheerleader for preservation in the country who's as effective as Dana Crawford.

(bright music) - The preservation movement obviously is light years ahead of where it was in the middle '60s.

And urban renewal authorities as in Denver have become preservationists themselves.

So there's been a swing.

But it's something that one has to be ever vigilant about because within the past year or two, Larimer Square itself under new ownership has proposed demolition of some buildings, a 40-story building on one side of the street, a 20-story building on the other side of the street.

The whole concept of Larimer Square was to be erased, and there were actually city council people who believed that it was gonna be good for the city.

- Larimer Square is nationally significant to the preservation story itself, how historic preservation came to be and in many ways still is today.

It is the family jewel for the city of Denver.

And thankfully, now everybody, including the developers, I think, realize that.

And it was wonderful to see the turnout and support of Larimer Square wasn't just coming from people my age, or older.

But it was really coming from younger people, people who work there.

It really was understood to be a family jewel by everybody.

Preservation doesn't just happen once.

Something we save today is gonna have to be saved again 30 or 40 years into the future.

- The millennials are very turned onto placemaking and have an understanding that downtowns across America have a lot to offer in terms of being great places for people to live and work and play.

- [Narrator] And almost 50 years after saving Larimer Square, Crawford spearheaded the development of Denver's Union Station into a mixed used icon, awakening what was once the most vibrant building in town to recapture its former glory.

- So you've got one of the key components, which is an elegant example of architecture.

Another component, of course, is a philosophy of the developers to make it a gathering place, and certainly when you are working with a transit center, you have a natural reason for people to gather.

We were able then to bring in the idea of comfort in a lot of different uses in the great hall, and surround the great hall with Colorado's best shops and restaurants.

So the aesthetics are extremely appealing and if it's appealing then the people come and then if you have the right kind of tenants and the right kind of restaurants and the right kind of special events and activities, then the economic success follows.

(cheerful street music) - [Narrator] The work of Crawford and others like her laid the foundation for today's preservationists, and set the stage for a renewed debate about what to preserve and what to destroy; a debate that will determine not only the built environment of cities, but also whether citizens can remain connected to their history.

This local preservation work can fill in the gaps of knowledge that have left the country with a poor understanding of its own past one story at a time, by pushing back against the urge to forget, to oversimplify, to glorify, it may be one of the best tools to create common ground in America.

Most American cities have not had preservationist leaders with the vision and charisma of a Dana Crawford.

Urban renewal-style demolition has remained far in a way the most popular strategy for dealing with aging neighborhoods.

But for Crawford, the fact that most Larimer Squares are already gone simply increases the urgency to find and save those that remain.

- The Brookings Institute statistics over the next 15 to 20 years demonstrate that a state, particularly like Colorado that's growing so quickly, has big demands on the land use and the land use may have historic buildings there, and what do you do?

If you have to grow and accommodate a lot more people in a living area, how do you protect your historic buildings?

And I think that there will have to be some pretty big summits pulled together to figure out the solutions to these really serious questions, because we don't want to end up with a lot of shopping centers and plastic and plywood housing.

Never in my life did I ever imagine that I'd have to be working on saving Larimer Square again, again.

- So, Trinidad was founded in 1878.

It was one of the first towns in Colorado to be founded when Colorado became a state.

It was one of the two locations in the running for the capital.

During the 1880s and 1890s, Trinidad had over 30,000 people living in the city and had over 100,000 people living in the surrounding communities and along the Santa Fe Trail, because Trinidad was a main place for commerce between Santa Fe and Missouri.

- And then we just went by the Trinidad Hotel Lounge Club 190 building, which is completely ready to open as a bar.

We've been looking for an honest bartender, if you know one.

And I bought it without knowing that the men's room was full of pornographic tiles.

(group giggles) (light music) - [Narrator] Crawford's present-day involvement in the dramatic turnaround of Trinidad, Colorado, may offer more inspiration to today's new generation of preservationists than even her Denver achievements.

In Trinidad, Crawford and others have had to overcome a local culture with limited appreciation for the benefits of historic preservation.

An important Spanish trading post along the Mountain Branch of the Santa Fe Trail before the Civil War, Trinidad was home to legendary Western figures like Doc Holliday and Bat Masterson.

With the arrival of the Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad in 1878, Trinidad evolved into the coal mining capital of Southern Colorado.

As a result of this prosperous era, it's downtown historic district contains the largest collection of late 19th century and early 20th century buildings in the state.

Still, an impressive past doesn't necessarily make the case for preservation, as Trinidad's leaders discovered to their dismay in 2012.

When the Trinidad City Council attempted to create a historic preservation commission to restore the city's historic assets, the townspeople rose up against the idea.

A ballot referendum calling for repeal of the preservation commission ordinance passed, the only time in the town's long history that an ordinance has been repealed by referendum.

- I think it was in the early '90s, they tried to get gambling here, and of course a lot of people came in, bought up the buildings and of course, nothing ever happened.

People felt like maybe the old buildings were a detriment to our economy.

- [Narrator] The second half of the 20th century has been tough on rural America.

A growing concentration of jobs and investment in major cities was accompanied by a massive decline in rural investment.

Today, more than a third of rural counties in the US are losing population.

Few places have been hit harder by this trend than the Great Plains area where Trinidad lies.

Less than 10 years ago, it's population had declined to just 10,000 people from a high of 30,000.

The downtown vacancy rate was 65%.

And then things got really bad.

A sudden decline in the price of natural gas snuffed out the brightest light in the regional economy.

Some 1,200 jobs related to oil and gas production disappeared almost overnight.

The turn-around of Trinidad was an unlikely one, and it took many surprise developments to bring it about.

Most who work in Trinidad development acknowledge that the scale of their success is hard to imagine without the sudden infusion of tax revenue and tourist traffic generated by Colorado's legalization of recreational marijuana in 2014.

As the first stop across the border from New Mexico, Trinidad became the preferred shopping destination for pot enthusiasts throughout the region.

But the revitalization really began with a preservation project; one whose goal was not just to save a building, but to save the soul of a community.

In 1990, Colorado Springs car dealership mogul Jay Cimino got a distressing phone call.

His mother was gravely ill, and she'd been admitted to the hospital of his home town: Trinidad, Colorado.

When Cimino arrived at his mother's bedside, he stress was compounded by what the doctors had to say.

They simply did not have the capacity to treat his mother's illness.

She was going to die, and the doctors didn't even have the latest drugs available to dull the pain.

Cimino immediately drove his mother 120 miles to the hospital in Colorado Springs, where doctors were able to save her life.

The incident became a turning point in Cimino's life.

He made it his personal mission to ensure that people in his home town would have access to quality health care regardless of their ability to pay.

(gentle pensive music) He also sensed that Trinidad needed more than philanthropy backed health care: it needed a way to restore its sense of community pride.

- So we started by restoring the church in 2007-2008.

The church roof was caving, and some people felt very strong about just letting it go, let it die like the rest of the community.

I believe that the town needs to get its soul back.

And you can't get your soul back without renovating buildings and putting great services in those buildings.

- [Narrator] Built in 1907, Mt.

Carmel was the church Cimino himself attended as a child.

But when he bought it in 2007, it had been abandoned for 10 years.

Cimino invested more than $10 million of his own money to see the church renovated and converted to a community clinic.

The Mt.

Carmel Health, Wellness and Community Center opened its doors in 2012.

In addition to bringing health care to the underserved community, a popular outdoor garden space and a chapel for weddings, funerals and religious services, was included.

Just seven years later, Cimino's Downtown Trinidad Development Group has successfully completed five restorations of some of Trinidad's most iconic historic buildings, including the Marty Feeds building, the Delmonico, and the Trinidad National Bank Building.

Along the way, Trinidad has gone from a town with no interest in preservation to a town that puts preservation at the center of everything it does.

- We are now a certified local government that can process its own historic preservation tax credits.

We rehabilitated the Urban Renewal Authority.

We passed legislation to deal with dilapidated homes.

We redid the building codes so that you could use the international existing building code.

The National Historic District is known as El Corazon de Trinidad national historic district.

So out of all of the foundation that the city laid to diversify the economy came an opportunity through Colorado Creative Industries.

- [Narrator] In the summer of 2015, Colorado Governor Hickenlooper named Trinidad as the demonstration for Space to Create, a project that aims to restore three more of Trinidad's abandoned but beautiful buildings by converting them to live/work space for artists.

In addition to housing some 40 artists, doubling the number of people living downtown, Space to Create will feature 20,000 square feet of community space, where tourists walking along the Trinidad's historic streets and alleys can pause to check out the artists' work.

- Trinidad had more sort of undiscovered historic assets per capita than any place we've ever seen.

So it is amazing how much of the infrastructure was still in place and that was very enticing.

It was a combination of having leadership in place with their creative district and having an active Main Street community as well.

And those two factors came together in addition to local leadership at the elected level that was interested and willing.

We're certain it has already been a catalyst for other investment in this community and I'm sure that that will continue.

And the catalytic activity that will come about as a result of this project, I think, is particularly important for Trinidad.

- [Narrator] Perhaps most ambitious of all, the city has partnered with Dana Crawford to rehabilitate its historic Fox West Theater, a grand palace that first opened it doors in 1908, but has been shuttered and falling apart now for decades.

Crawford has now staked her reputation on the city in dramatic fashion: she's committed to raising the dollars needed to renovate the theater to serve as a world-class music and entertainment venue.

If Trinidad's recent success is any indicator, Crawford's gamble may pay off.

- In 2012, when we began this journey, there were three commercial real estate sales that year.

In recent years, we've seen more than 30.

In 2013, the commercial building permits at the city equaled about 1.2 million.

This last year, they were over 7 million, and we're anticipating about 12 million.

The number of business licenses has increased exponentially.

The lodging tax has increased almost 70% and the vacancy rate within the downtown now is about 22%.

- [Narrator] Another boon for Trinidad is being planned around the symbol that identifies the city in the landscape: Fisher's Peak.

With 19,000 acres, Colorado's newest state park promises to be another magnet drawing visitors to Trinidad.

Today, Trinidad's greatest strength is the very thing city leaders always regarded as their Achilles heel: a history that no one wanted to talk about; a downtown that remained frozen in time.

All over the country, the towns with unique historic and cultural amenities are positioning themselves to thrive in the decades to come.

- One of the great things that is changing in my opinion, is more and more people can live where they want to live now.

Because of technology, people will start making locational choices because of quality of life issues.

So what used to be seen as soft economic drivers are now gonna be larger drivers.

So if you look at some rural communities, many of them have solid building stock.

It's affordable, it's attractive to people who want space, and now if you can make a living through the internet and you don't have to report to an office, then all of a sudden, this becomes I think a highly desirable way to live.

(gentle music) - [Narrator] But if preservation is one of the best downtown redevelopment tools around, it begins with inspiring people to appreciate their own community history.

And if this was a hard road in Trinidad, it is many times harder in parts of the country where there are dramatically different ideas about which past needs to be preserved.

We find ourselves, as Americans, like the protagonist of a novel, a few pages before the final climactic event that reveals all: disoriented by a profound feeling that all is not as it had seemed, that some critical piece is missing.

We feel for the first time how much we don't understand about ourselves; how much of our true history we have failed to appreciate.

- Well, to me, the universal driving factor is the collection of historic buildings and stories, and the location on the entrance into the state of Colorado.

We need jobs and we need better education and we need a whole lot of pieces of the puzzle, but the primary thing is the beauty of the geography and the magnificence of the built environment.

Happy to argue about it.

(light pensive music)