WALKING THE LINE: Day 1

Sunrise threw lengthy shadows as we gathered at the Auraria West light-rail station, and the tallest shadow cast was that of 6-foot-8 Dennis Cole.

That seemed appropriate on this first morning, as Cole will soon be something of a new trail boss in this part of town.

Within the next 12 months, an army of contractors working under Cole's direction will start here and build a rapid transit system stretching more than 12 miles west to Golden, the first new line to be built as part of the voter-approved $6.1 billion FasTracks program.

First, and perhaps, toughest.

The West Corridor project is the most challenging of the 10 FasTracks corridors in terms of how it fits into its surrounding communities.

Think for a minute of the T-REX expansion of Interstate 25, with the new light-rail line built right alongside the busiest freeway in the region.

Now think about putting that same train between your backyard garden and your neighbor's fence.

That's the West Corridor, a $634.3 million mega-project that threads tightly through Denver and Lakewood neighborhoods, following the path of an old trolley line opened in 1890 and closed in 1950, before reaching the open spaces of the Denver Federal Center and the Sixth Avenue Freeway.

A lot is riding on RTD's performance here, with nine future FasTracks corridors remaining to be built.

Homeowners, businesses, neighborhood groups, local governments and other so-called "stakeholders" will be watching anxiously as the agency sets the tone for a grueling process that will ultimately result in billions of dollars worth of tracks and concrete snaking through seven counties.

There is only one way to begin telling a story of this magnitude.

Walking the line.

Boots on the ground for the entire length of the West Corridor, we're the Rocky's urban corps of discovery.

We'd like to invite you to join what ? over the course of six days ? became an amazing journey.

Along the way, we'll take you through some of the most culturally diverse and richly historic parts of metro Denver.

Multiethnic neighborhoods that have held their own from long ago, parks that bring the country into the city, horse properties that even today keep the country in the city, and a fabled street that until the interstates came along was one of the region's premier tourist routes.

We'll stir the ghosts of figures who spent time along the West Corridor route, from notables such as Jack Dempsey, Golda Meir and Jack Kerouac, to an infamous leader of the Sand Creek Massacre, to the sickly hordes who sought relief here from the scourge of tuberculosis.

We'll knock on doors of homes and businesses along the walk, stop joggers and cyclists, and talk with people in their backyards along the tracks. We'll learn of a complex mixture of great anticipation, anxiety, apprehension, angst and even anger for the coming four years of construction.

Ready for a walk, everyone?

The starting point

Cole was nice enough to get up early the first morning and meet us in order to walk us through the complex engineering issues in this gritty, grimy industrial area near where Denver began.

The light rail needs to get over, under or around highways, businesses and other railroad tracks just to get out of downtown.

And the first big change happens at the station itself.

The Auraria West station, east of Fifth Street and north of Curtis Street, is five years old and serves thousands of college students each day.

But it's in the wrong place to start the West Corridor. It would force the new trains to go too far south before turning west, clogging the already jammed Colfax Junction where the current light-rail trains bound for downtown and Union Station split up.

So RTD will demolish this station, rip up the tracks and build a new station a couple hundred feet west. That will allow the West Corridor to share the station with the Union Station trains and begin with a straight shot toward the Colfax Viaduct.

As we set out from the station walking south, an overpowering stench surrounded us.

It was coming from the Frozen Pet Ingredients factory in the former Colorado Cold Storage building on Lower Colfax Avenue, where workers take animal parts and break them down for dog and cat food manufacturers.

We hastened on, coming across the first of three businesses that will be affected by the project.

There was a time when a warren of tracks laced the river bottoms area under the Colfax Viaduct. Some are still poking through the asphalt or lying askew across weedy, trash- strewn vacant lots.

One of those extinct tracks goes right down the middle of the parking area at Jones- Heartz Lime Co., which fronts on Lower Colfax.

Owner Cordon McClurg has a steady stream of customers ? building contractors, remodelers and the like who buy his drywall, stucco, plaster and other supplies ? pulling into the lot, driving over these disconnected steel relics of a bygone era.

The West Corridor tracks will go under the Colfax Viaduct right at the rear of McClurg's lot. In fact, Cole needs to start the ramp for a light-rail bridge smack in the middle of McClurg's parking area.

"I was just flabbergasted and thinking, 'What am I going to do?' It would just cut me in half," McClurg said, while looking over a site map from RTD.

Jones-Heartz has been in this neighborhood since 1909. McClurg went to work there in 1983 and bought the company from Jones' sons in 1989.

The company used to be a few blocks east, just on the other side of Rio Court. But in 1991, RTD's original light-rail project forced them to move. McClurg is trying to find a way to save his business from having to move again.

Jones-Heartz is the only property that will be served by turning Lower Colfax into a cul-de- sac to accommodate the new light-rail bridge. Why not, McClurg suggested, abandon that part of the street and swap it to him as part of the deal to put light rail through his lot?

That would give him the room he needs to get big semitrailers in to deliver his goods. He hasn't yet discussed this with RTD.

"I'm just waiting to see what they come up with," he said.

Fighting RTD

The bridge that will begin here will be quite a sight to motorists up on the viaduct, as the trains climb and go into a sweeping curve to the west. It has to be high enough to get over the Consolidated Main Line, where rivals Union Pacific and BNSF Railways share tracks and schedules, then fly over Umatilla Street before going into a dive to get under Interstate 25.

In the middle of that curve sits another longtime Denver business whose location will be wiped out by the West Corridor.

CustomArt Industries owner Gordon McKeeta greeted us along with his Chow-Akita mix, Missy, a stray that started hanging around his shop 11 years ago and got adopted.

"We call her a giant Corgi," McKeeta chuckled. "She's an alpha female; she doesn't get along well with other dogs."

McKeeta does custom fiberglass creations for architects and designers, such as the bar top at Venice Ristorante and the planters and trash cans on the 16th Street Mall.

McKeeta was perplexed over RTD's designs. A few years ago, it sent him a map that showed the light-rail bridge curving east and south of his land and building at Shoshone Street and 14th Avenue. Later, new maps came out showing the bridge going straight over his building and a new freight track into Union Pacific's Burnham Yard crossing under it.

"Demolishing this building and removing the debris would be quite expensive," McKeeta said, while noting the vacant property just across the street.

He has doubts he can find another suitable location for his delicately balanced forming tables and make the move, even with RTD's help.

But he's decided to get the best deal he can for a new location. RTD has to pay moving and relocation costs for displaced businesses, as well as homeowners.

Next to McKeeta, another landowner is fighting RTD.

Rick Patten of Quadrant Properties spent time and money acquiring a huge chunk of blighted industrial land here ? the entire 22 acres behind the pet food plant down to 13th Avenue, plus the old Rocky Mountain News newsprint warehouse across Rio Court along the tracks.

He wants to put up a mixed- use development of residences and businesses there to kick- start the rebirth of the Lincoln Park neighborhood, one of the city's oldest. It would capitalize on RTD's existing 10th and Osage light-rail station as well as Auraria West.

That new freight track RTD will build through McKeeta's building, however, also will bisect the block that Patten bought. Patten's attorneys filed a voluminous protest with the Federal Transit Administration in an effort to get RTD to do more work on how it is affecting Lincoln Park's chances for redevelopment.

'I'm an American'

The light-rail bridge, meanwhile, will turn west while still in the air and cross Umatilla Street before heading down to ground again.

There, we approached an underpass below Interstate 25. It's a dirt road with a freight spur track that Denver calls Myrtle Street. The spur is needed to deliver tanker cars to Siegel Oil Co. on the west side of the highway.

As we walked under the bridge, we came across a village of homeless people on either side of the overpass.

Tucked up into the space where the embankment meets the girders, there were little cubbyholes with mattresses, dressers, cardboard shelters and personal belongings.

It looked like a little Mesa Verde cliff dwelling, made not of stone but of castoffs and debris.

Kurtis Shown, 46, was the spokesman, sort of, for the 15 to 20 people living there. He'd been there a year, after being evicted from an apartment in Englewood. He stayed under the girders through the harsh winter storms. He gets by, like a lot of homeless do, salvaging scrap metal and selling it.

On the west side of the bridge, Shown put together a garden in the gravel and dirt consisting of an aspen tree, blue spruce and ponderosa pine, all plastic and retrieved from area dumpsters. Arranged below them are a U.S. flag and a Colorado flag, plus a yellow ribbon for the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Shown choked up and wiped tears from his eyes when we asked him about the yellow ribbon. "I'm an American," he said after a long and emotional pause.

We found out later, after we had walked through this area, that Denver police came by and served "eviction notices" on the homeless. When RTD starts building the train through this underpass, it can't have people living here.

Xcel has major electrical lines going under here, as well, and it needs to move them to the sides. It will cut back the sloping embankment the homeless used to climb up to their perches under the girders. RTD said it plans to install a chain-link fence that would keep anyone who returns from falling down onto the track area. Shown and the others left within three days, with only what they could carry on their backs.

Resurrecting an old line

After we left the shelter of the underpass, we came to Zuni Street and straight toward Xcel's Zuni power plant.

This generating station on the east bank of the South Platte River has been here for more than 100 years.

It's on city plat maps from 1904, where this tired neighborhood's heyday can be visualized on every corner, from the municipal paving plant in the vacant lot next to McKeeta's building to the stone-cutting warehouse, lumber yard and smokehouse up near Colfax ? all now gone.

One building on the plat maps is still here. It's an old trolley-car barn attached to the north side of the Xcel plant. It once serviced the Denver and Intermountain Railway line to Golden that the West Corridor will resurrect.

We followed the path the old tracks took toward the riverbank, bathed in the historic atmosphere. An old engine house was located here for the old Golden trolley's maintenance equipment. The Zuni plant has been here since 1901.

We knew from reviewing ancient city plat maps where all the departed businesses had been located, that I-25 wiped out a whole swath.

We walked a bit more toward the river, but we couldn't go on.

The wooden bridge that once carried trains across the river was missing, washed away in the mammoth 1965 South Platte Flood, and never rebuilt.

So we halted our first day's trek.

We'll catch you on the other side of the river Monday morning.

About the series

FasTracks kicks off in earnest next year when crews start building the 12-mile light-rail West Corridor line through diverse and history-rich neighborhoods from downtown to Golden.

All eyes are on this first line, as it will set the tone for the nine other corridors to be built in the massive $6 billion transit system approved by voters in 2004.

To begin telling this story, the Rocky's team of reporter Kevin Flynn, above center, photographer Darin McGregor and videographer Laressa Bachelor trekked the length of the West Corridor. We invite you to come along, and experience our amazing urban journey of discovery.

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