Voice
LONE TREE 1.3.13
Lone Tree
Douglas County, Colorado • Volume 11, Issue 51
2012 MADE A SPLASH
January 3, 2013
A Colorado Community Media Publication
ourlonetreenews.com
Mall’s impact remains strong
Park Meadows strains infrastructure, but taxes fund amenities for city By Jane Reuter
jreuter@ourcoloradonews.com
In one of our Images of the Year, a shepherd mix lunges for a tennis ball at the Wag ‘n’ Romp event at Cook Creek Pool in Lone Tree in September. Turn to Page 7 for more photo highlights from 2012. File photo by Deborah Grigsby
Girls bring home world robotics medals Lone Tree, Castle Rock students join creative forces By Jane Reuter
jreuter@ourcoloradonews.com Ashley Kim and Audrey Menzer love working with robots; getting medals for doing so is icing on their electronic cake. Kim, of Lone Tree, and Menzer, from Castle Rock, won a silver medal during December’s International Robot Olympiad in South Korea. They were the first Americans to win a silver medal at the 14th annual competition, traditionally dominated by contestants from Asian countries. No one is prouder of the duo than Randy Menzer, who not only is Audrey’s father but the team’s coach, and founder of the organization through which it was created. “I’m elated,” he said. “I was actually the person who awarded the medals for this particular category. So I was up on the stage and awarded the medals to (Audrey and Ashley). It was fantastic.” Menzer started the nonprofit Ameribotics in 2010 to help students learn the components of STEAM — science, technology, engineering, arts and math — in a fun, interactive way. Menzer aims to draw students from across the country to the program, founded in Douglas County. Slowly but surely, that’s happening. In past years, Olympiad participants were from Douglas County alone. This year, he also took students from Cherry Creek and Littleton schools. Kim, who lives in Lone Tree but attends Dry Creek Elementary, represented Cherry Creek. At 10, she also was among the competition’s participants. “I’m really surprised we got a silver medal because it’s my first year, and I was the youngest in our group,” she said. “But we did the best out of our whole American team.”
Castle Rock’s Audrey Menzer, left, of Mesa Middle School, and Lone Tree’s Ashley Kim, of Dry Creek Elementary, accept awards for their robotics project during December’s International Robot Olympiad in South Korea. Courtesy photo
The girls learned lessons not only in STEAM and competition, but also in compassion. The contest’s theme centered on designing a robot to help the elderly, and then transforming it all into a movie. “We had the robot help grandmothers,” said Audrey Menzer, a 13-year-old Mesa Middle School student. “If they forgot something, the robot would remind them they had a dentist appointment, or that they needed to go somewhere. It also helped them by communicating with their family members. If they fell, the robot could call 911 or an emergency room.” The movie’s main character was Louise, a 75-year-old woman dealing with loneliness, and her robot, Halbot. “One out of six elderly people aged 65 or older suffer from loneliness or depression,” Kim said. “We wanted Halbot to stop depression. They developed a sewing club.
Halbot also has Skype and a cell phone, so that way you can talk to family members. We had Halbot help her, using different tools.” Menzer’s delighted to see his passion extend to others. A robotics fans since the 1980s, he sees it as a perfect learning tool. “You can go from a virtual world to an actual physical world, and it’s so meaningful to the kids to be able to see something that was just an idea become a reality,” he said. “Things don’t always work like you would expect either, so it’s a real challenge.” While the competitors enjoyed traveling to Korea, their 2013 journey won’t be quite as far or exotic. The International Robot Olympiad will be held in the western hemisphere for the first time in 2013 — at the Colorado Convention Center in Denver. For more information on Ameribotics, visit www.ameribotics.org.
On Black Friday, Lone Tree grew in mere hours from a city of 11,000 to more than 211,000 with shoppers who swarmed Park Meadows mall and surrounding stores. That influx of visitors temporarily made Lone Tree the fourth-largest city in the state. That doesn’t happen without impacts. Even on an average day, about 30,000 people flow in and out of Park Meadows. Their SUVs and sedans tangle city streets, require additional police staff and patrols, frustrate local drivers and leave nicks and dings on the city’s infrastructure. But the benefits, city officials agree, far outweigh what they consider minimal drawbacks. “The mall traffic can be brutal,” Councilmember Jackie Millet said. “I just don’t go over there on weekends. But the advantage to living here is you can make a quick trip at 7 at night and avoid it.” The mall also requires a relatively high level of city employees. “When you’re looking at staffing and providing resources for the city of Lone Tree, you can’t just look at the population,” Millet said. “You have to look at the number of people who come here. We are a destination because of the mall.” But Lone Tree’s residents are exceptionally satisfied, according to a recent city survey, and Millet believes the mall and the surrounding retail it’s attracted are tightly tied to that. “Residents are very happy with the amenities that are provided in our city,” she said. “Without that very healthy sales tax base, we wouldn’t be able to provide them.” The Lone Tree Arts Center, reconstructed Cook Creek Pool, Tennis Center and adjacent playground — all funded by a 2008 voter-approved sales tax increase — likely all would be just daydreams without Park Meadows. “Things as mundane as resurfacing asphalt streets, we probably do on a schedule that is shorter than what you would find in areas that don’t have that big retail advantage,” City Manager Jack Hidahl said. “Even the medians. They have a big impact on not just the atmosphere but mitigating traffic speeds, and width of roads. Our property values, the safety of our community — I would identify all of those as being enhanced by the retail advantage Lone Tree has.” Lone Tree foresaw the mall’s impact years ago, and took steps to both offset it and ensure the center’s long-term success. When voters agreed to annex the mall in 2006, they also approved a 30-year revenue sharing agreement that splits annual sales tax revenues into two buckets: One for the city, the other for the Park Meadows Business Improvement District that operates and maintains the mall. In 2011, the city collected $9.3 million in Mall continues on Page 5
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