Mile High opens ‘free, positive’ space for kids and teens living on East Colfax

AURORA | A refuge for children and adolescents living in poverty along Aurora’s East Colfax corridor welcomed most of its staff this week and began gearing up for the end of the school year at a new space on Montview Boulevard.

While giving a tour of the colorful, artwork-filled facility — which has been renovated inside and out with the help of millions of dollars worth of grants, donated construction materials and volunteer labor — Anna Miller pointed out the kitchen near the open classroom where grade schoolers will gather for homework help, reading classes and shared meals.

“A lot of times, their last meal for the day is with us, until they’re back for free and reduced (price) breakfast at school,” Miller said. “On Fridays, we send home food boxes for the whole family, because they really just don’t have those resources.”

What was once the Kamsy Event Center has been transformed into Colfax Community Network’s Family Preservation Center. At roughly 10,000 square feet, the space is about eight or nine times the size of the program’s previous home at Aurora First Presbyterian Church and represents years of advocacy and careful planning by its parent organization, Mile High Behavioral Healthcare.

According to Miller, who serves as Mile High’s director of business development and public relations, funding secured for the facility include $1.7 million and $300,000 in federal COVID-19 relief funds controlled by Adams County and the City of Aurora respectively and $850,000 from Colorado Access, a state health insurance exchange program.

The Colorado Roofing Association also put a new roof worth $130,000 on the building for free, while contractors with the Denver Metro Building Owners and Managers Association and the Denver chapter of the International Facilities Management Association donated doors and drywall.

“We’ve been very, very fortunate that the entire community has rallied around this,” Miller said. “And I think once people get in and see it, even more people will be like, ‘What do you need?’”

A grand opening event is tentatively slated to take place later this month. By the end of last week, workers were hanging up bulletin boards and televisions, and putting other finishing touches on the facility’s interior before staffers moved in Monday.

The heavily-urbanized segment of East Colfax that crosses through north Aurora is one of the poorest and most housing-insecure areas of the city, according to data published as part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Social Vulnerability Index.

For local Aurora Public Schools families whose children qualify for assistance under the federal McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act, the Family Preservation Center is billed as a safe after-school environment where students can continue learning, explore creative outlets such as music and pottery, and even receive immunizations and mental health care.

McKinney-Vento protects access to public education for children and youth who “lack a fixed, regular and adequate nighttime residence,” including students sleeping on the street, at a shelter or in a vehicle as well as those sharing another family’s home, staying at a motel or residing in substandard housing.

Colfax Community Network also offers transportation both from schools to the center and from the center to students’ homes.

The facility is split into two sections, with one serving kids up to age 12 and the other serving teens and young adults. Miller said the side serving adolescents sets the center apart among similar facilities across the nation, with one room featuring a recording studio stocked with audio production equipment donated by Boulder Media House.

“It’ll be a ton of experiential therapy, because kids don’t like traditional therapy where they’re sitting in a chair across from a clinician. They don’t share as much,” Miller said.

“We will have guest producers and songwriters come in and work with the kids on turning their trauma and what they’ve overcome in their life into music. … We think that this will just be a great way to encourage them.”

Another room that includes seating and phone chargers opens onto a fenced patio where students served by Colfax Community Network may also perform music. Other rooms will be used as offices for therapists and case managers. The building also includes showers that could be used for youths who don’t have access to running water.

When asked whether the facility would serve the children of families who are part of the recent influx of Central and South American migrants in the Denver area, Rochelle Nadeau of Mile High said those children are generally not Aurora Public Schools students.

“Most of the kids who are in that immigrant flux, they’re not managing them through McKinney-Vento,” she said. “They’re managing them through human services, which is a little bit different, because most of them are not documented.”

However, Miller said the organization anticipates the number of children eligible for help through the Colfax Community Network program will likely increase over the summer. She said Monday marked the start of the second full week in the new center for grade schoolers, while adolescents will be welcomed in about two and a half weeks.

“We’re really excited, because there’s not a lot of free, positive programming for teenagers, right? And they’re getting into trouble after school,” she said.

“To have a place where teenagers want to come, and it’s positive, and they can have their needs met without having to ask, whether it’s a meal, or laundry, or just support, or internet, or things that they don’t necessarily have at home, I think that it’s going to make a really strong impact on this community.”