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Rhinoceropolis gets a $20,000 grant from sister DIY venue Meow Wolf.

After more than seven months of discussion, the city presented its Safe Occupancy Program proposal for DIY spaces and other unpermitted facilities at the Denver City Council meeting on Monday, July 10. And despite that seven months of discussion between various city agencies, activists, artists and other stakeholders, councilmembers got an earful from people who didn’t think the proposal went far enough, or who were concerned with certain provisions.

As a result, city officials held more meetings with reps from Amplify Arts Denver, All in Denver and others this week, to consider possible amendments to the proposal. (Read the original Safe Occupancy Program proposal, billed as a “voluntary path to compliance for existing spaces [that] would ensure safety, avoid displacement.”) And by July 13, they’d agreed on a few fixes.

For starters, the activist groups wanted the proposal to “include spaces previously shut down and vacated by the city since December 1, 2016,” a reference to Rhinoceropolis and Glob, which were closed by the city December 8 and have yet to reopen.

The city’s response? “Yes, however we would like to be very clear in the language on this item to allow it only for those that have received an order to vacate due to unpermitted work and/or no valid certificate of occupancy issued since December 1, 2016.”

The city also agreed to amendments that would extend the time frame of the Safe Occupancy Program from 24 to 30 months, and offer a “six-month grace period to allow any space that might be inspected and cited after passage of the bill to come into the program.” As originally written, only spaces that came forward voluntarily could be part of the program.

The groups had requested changing the time frame for completing required work from 270 days to 15 months; the city is willing to compromise at 365 days, with the possibility of extensions beyond that on a case-to-case basis.

The city also agreed to a review of the program every six months, and also suggested a sunset review at the end of the trial.
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Read the rest of the article here:
http://www.westword.com/arts/safe-occupancy-program-for-dyi-spaces-will-be-amended-before-denver-city-council-hearing-9250585

By Patricia Calhoun

Patricia Calhoun co-founded Westword, Denver’s News and Arts weekly, in 1977; she’s been the editor there ever since. She’s a regular on the weekly Colorado Public Television roundtable Colorado Inside Out, the former president of the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies — a post that got her an unexpected interview with former President Bill Clinton in front of a thousand people (while she was in flip-flops) — and played a real journalist in John Sayles’s Silver City.

[Thank you to Alex Teitz, http://www.femmusic.com, for contributing this article.]

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