Birdseed Collective Forced Out of Globeville Base After Parks & Rec Rejects Lease

The City of Denver is booting the Birdseed Collective from its established home in the Globeville Recreation Center despite support from the community, according to Anthony Garcia, the nonprofit’s executive director.

“It’s just really upsetting they didn’t ask the community about what they need, what they would like to have. Our whole community is sad about this change,” Garcia says. “I don’t know what the next organization is going to bring in. Hopefully, they’ll be able to listen to the community and help them out as much as possible. That would honestly be a huge weight off my shoulders, but I don’t think they’ll be able to provide the gym like we did.”

Management of the Globeville Recreation Center at 4496 Grant Street has changed hands multiple times since it was built in the 1960s, Garcia says. Globeville is the only rec center that Denver Parks & Recreation leases out, and the agency has always had the final say on who gets to lease it.

Garcia and his mother grew up in Globeville and Elyria Swansea, two neighborhoods that form a historically Latino, working-class area north of Interstate 70 and east of downtown Denver. He says families in Globeville and Elyria Swansea have relied on services and donations out of the rec center for multiple generations in the area, and the Birdseed Collective’s goal when it took over the lease in 2018 was to continue meeting the community’s needs. Although the Birdseed Collective took over the lease in 2018, it started offering programming out of the rec center in 2010.

The Birdseed Collective used the facility to pack and give away food and groceries, host bingo for seniors, give Aztec dancers a place to practice and provide teenagers a safe place to be after school. Kids came from Garden Place Elementary and Bruce Randolph, which serves both middle and high school levels, to make art, play sports or video games, or hang out in a lounge and learn about topics such as pollution in the neighborhood. The rec center hosted classes and practices for Zumba, hockey, basketball and yoga, as well as funeral receptions, birthdays and debates by local political candidates, Garcia says.

“It’s families, too. It’s not just kids,” Garcia says. “It’s a mother and her five kids. She knows this is a safe place. The kids are able to get snacks, run around. It’s just a nice hub.”

Having started the Birdseed Collective as an art group, Garcia had the interior of the building covered in dazzling murals during the seven years his nonprofit held the lease. Garcia estimates that $1 million worth of art is painted on the walls of the Globeville Rec Center.

Some of the murals have political messages like “the cost of one police officer’s riot gear is enough to pay for forty students’ art supplies.” Others depict La Virgen de Guadalupe, totem poles, eyes and colorful geometric patterns and fractals. One of the most imposing murals is a portrait of Carlos Castañeda, who leads Grupo Tlaloc, a local group of Aztec dancers that has been in Denver since the 1980s and that practices in the rec center.

The Birdseed Collective was originally on a five-year lease that was extended due to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, Garcia says. In July, Parks & Rec opened a request for proposals (RFP) process for other organizations, including the Birdseed Collective, to bid for a three-year lease to use the rec center. Parks & Rec stated in the request that it’s looking for groups that can offer arts, sports, language assistance, social services and other types of programming for a variety of ages. The Birdseed Collective had been providing that programming, but Garcia still felt nervous about losing the bid.

“At one point, I went to [Parks & Rec] and asked them about an exit strategy because we didn’t know if we were going to get it this time around,” he says. “And they assured me that nothing like that was going to happen, that we’re going to get it. And that ended up not being the case.”

After an open bidding process, Parks & Rec awarded the lease to the Denver Dream Center, part of a national network of Pentecostal nonprofits based in Los Angeles. The Denver Dream Center, which started in 2014, works with people recovering from homelessness, addiction and incarceration, among others, and gives food out of a small building in the Ballpark District at 2165 Curtis Street.

Denver Dream Center CEO Bryan Sederwell says the nonprofit has a presence in the area and intends to meet similar needs with the new space. The Denver Dream Center will focus more on youth while still handing out food and groceries from the rec center, Sederwell says. However, he doesn’t want to give away too many details.

“Our hopes and goal is to expand resources and services that are specific to the need of the Globeville community,” Sederwell says. “We’re basically expanding what the Dream Center does with its location downtown, but this being more specific around youth.”

The Denver Dream Center has been hosting events at Argo Park in Globeville for more than a decade, according to Sederwell.

Sederwell sympathizes with the Birdseed Collective, recalling contracts that the Denver Dream Center has lost before, like one to operate as the ambassadors for the Ballpark GID, which was instead given to the Kentucky-based Block by Block.

“That was never obviously an intended consequence,” Sederwell says of the Birdseed Collective. “Our hope is that we can find some way to work together. We are a huge fan of partnership. Our intention is not to come displace an organization that’s doing good.”

“We’ve been on both ends,” he says. “We understand the pain, the hurt.”

Local Support Didn’t Make a Difference

City Councilman Darrell Watson, who represents Globeville and Elyria Swansea, describes the Birdseed Collective as “an organization of great trust from the neighbors that surround it.” The rec center hosted his debate when he ran for council office in 2023, and the Birdseed Collective quickly proved to be a positive force in the area, he says, such as helping prepare a Radisson hotel in Globeville as it was converted to a homeless shelter.

“It would have been my hope that the Birdseed Collective would have won this contract because of their long tenure of work within the community and the collaborative process I’ve had with them,” Watson says. “From my office, they have been the one organization that all the groups within GES have supported, that they go to and that they support without contention.”

Watson says that he wrote a letter of support for the Birdseed Collective to win the RFP process, but councilmembers are limited in how much they can urge city agencies to prefer certain groups.

“I can’t call DPR and say, ‘Hey, I think Birdseed should be the top organization,’ but I told Anthony to use my name and that of the office as a reference, stating our long and collaborative relationship,” Watson says. “We’ve had no greater partner than Birdseed Collective in all the work that we’ve done in GES.”

Garcia says that he sent Parks & Rec letters of support from other Globeville and Elyria Swansea community members and organizations, and he thought that would have made his nonprofit a shoo-in.

“We had letters of support from all the neighborhood organizations, we had letters of support from our councilman, we had neighbors and business owners. Everybody had given us letters of support,” Garcia says. “Considering the amount of letters of support and our history in the neighborhood, I felt pretty comfortable with us remaining in this space.”

Garcia says that Parks & Rec officials told him they can’t offer details on why his bid was denied because contract negotiations are ongoing. Likewise, Watson said he doesn’t have much insight because his office wasn’t involved in the process.

“One of the decisions I’m certain had to do with what sort of resources, funds an organization has to be continually successful and to scale programs,” Watson says. “I’m certain that was part of it, but my focus is on making sure Birdseed can stay.”

Watson says he asked Parks & Rec to give the Birdseed Collective more time after it was told to leave by November. The organization now has until the end of the year to leave the rec center; Watson says he negotiated the rent Garcia had to pay for the extra time down from $1,000 a month to about $200.

In a statement to Westword,  Parks & Rec spokesperson Stephanie Figueroa didn’t address specific questions about the bid process, but says everyone was given a fair shake.

“The City issues RFPs to provide all interested vendors with equitable access to bid on opportunities provided,” she says. “Firms were evaluated based on the criteria outlined in the RFP. Birdseed Collective’s proposal was not selected. DPR is currently in the process of negotiating a contract with the community organization whose proposal was selected.”

According to Figeroa, Parks & Rec “is working to ensure food support will still be incorporated as part of the programming.” Watson says that from his “brief conversation” with the Denver Dream Center, all he knows is that the organization plans to increase free food and grocery distribution out of the rec center.

“Having the Dream Center can be a positive,” Watson says. “If they have resources that the Birdseed Collective doesn’t have, they can leverage those in a collaborative way to make sure the things the community wants has support.”

Denver Nonprofits, Look Out

Garcia and volunteers for the Birdseed Collective have already started packing up and moving out of the rec center. Garcia expects he’ll end up in a smaller space, but the organization plans to stay in the Globeville and Elyria Swansea neighborhood.

“That’s the population that we serve,” Garcia says. “We couldn’t just up and leave, and then go serve another community. I grew up in this center, my mom grew up in this center. It’s important for us to stay in this community and help out our families.”

Watson says it’s unlikely that the Birdseed Collective finds a space as good as the Globeville Rec Center, but he wants to keep them in the area.

“I don’t know if there’s a space as good as that community center,” Watson says. “I’m going to do everything I can to make sure they can stay in Globeville.”

The Birdseed Collective’s experience comes after the Volunteers for Outdoor Colorado (VOC) lost its Washington Park home of thirty years at the Dos Chappell Bathhouse. Chris Nesset, executive director of VOC, said that Parks & Rec declined a renewal bid without offering much reason or public input — and despite the nonprofit investing $1 million to renovate and maintain the facility, which new tenants will get to enjoy for free, similar to the artwork on the Globeville Rec Center.

According to Nesset, she got the impression Parks & Rec had its sights set on converting the facility into a retail space. Watson’s husband is on the board of VOC, and says Parks & Rec should consider more carefully how its decisions impact local nonprofits.

“The folks at DPR should sit down with their leadership and talk about the leases they have with nonprofits. Look at what other impacts may be coming down the pike for nonprofits across the city,” Watson says. “These have been long-standing nonprofits in these centers, VOC in Wash Park and Birdseed Collective in GES. These decisions have a long downstream impact. There’s an opportunity for DPR to have a broader dialogue.”

Garcia doesn’t like Parks & Rec’s decision to kick him out, but he’s more upset about how the decision was made. The first time the Birdseed Collective competed for the Globevill Rec Center lease in 2018, the RFP process took more community input, he remembers. He’s confused why the conversation seemed to happen behind closed doors this time, and without hearing from Globeville and Elyria Swansea residents.

“When we had our first go around, they had councilmen, they had neighbors, they had community members and organizations, all part of that selection committee. And they didn’t do that this time,” Garcia says. “They didn’t ask the community what they needed or how they felt about a new organization coming in at all. They just kind of did their thing. I just wish it could have been different.”