Students Propose Bold Solutions to Help Make Downtown Denver More Sustainable—And Compete to Win $20,000 

Ever wish you could change the city you live in? For the first time ever, five teams of students competed for a $20,000 prize to bring their visions for a more sustainable downtown Denver to life. The competition was the first-ever Blair Gifford Mile High Sustainability Impact Challenge, a new Shark Tank-style opportunity for learners.

The program was open to students across Colorado-based universities, and the participating student teams were encouraged to partner with local organizations. From an innovative composting service to a new app that would help neighborhood residents make an impact together, the teams created pitches for businesses or public infrastructure projects that they believe would make downtown Denver a better and more sustainable place to live, work, visit, and, of course, study.

Director of Sustainable Business Programs and Associate Teaching Professor Robert Hobbins, PhD, created the program and helped mentor the students who participated in it. “One unique thing about having students propose solutions to real-world problems is that they’re not in a particular way of thinking,” he said. “In my opinion, they have a lot more ability to come up with innovative, out-of-the-box ideas for how to solve problems.”

The effort exemplified synergistic partnerships between the CU Denver Business School’s Sustainable Business Program and the Denver business community. The idea came from Hobbins, was co-sponsored by the Downtown Denver Partnership and members of the CU Denver Sustainable Business Advisory Business Council, funded by Professor Emeritus Blair Gifford, PhD, and benefitted from the collaboration of community businesses and organizations that worked with students on their proposals.

The winners were Nathan DiMartino, Kiana Kea, and Emmett Booth, who proposed a project to create a micro forest in a pocket park on Colfax. “I think they won because they delivered a highly feasible and scalable proposal that aligns with existing momentum along Colfax … they had a great pitch,” said David Vega, the initiative’s program manager. Vega saw many strong ideas in the program, though. “In many ways, this challenge itself is like a micro forest. It brings together a dense mix of ideas, disciplines, and people in one place, where those ideas can take root quickly and begin to grow with the right support.”

Read on to learn about the five teams’ innovative ideas presented May 1 at the Jake Jabs Event Center.

Growing a Micro-Forest on Colfax

What if an underutilized pocket park along Colfax Avenue was transformed into a native forest? This group of students envision bringing residents together to enjoy nature in a shady environment that can grow sustainably while helping to beautify the area. Their proposed project would help with heat reduction, water retention, and pollinator habitat restoration, and they say it integrates well with the city’s existing revitalization efforts in the area.

Creating Energy with Compost

This student-led team partnered with a CU Denver alumni and his businesses, Ghostprint Eco Lawn & Tree Care and Compost Kingdom. The businesses already provide landscaping and lawn services, compost collection, and zero-waste services across the Denver metro area. The team’s proposal utilizes an innovative modular biodigester system designed to convert organic waste into electricity. They believe it can help power some downtown operations and be built at a significantly lower cost than comparable units on the market today. Their plan would cost about $25,000 to get started, and that’s what they hoped to put their winnings toward.

Improving Transit in Five Points

These students want to actualize a voter-approved extension of RTD’s L light rail line to improve connectivity with the W line in Denver’s Five Points neighborhood. They have partnered with the advocacy organization Greater Denver Transit for this proposal. Their goal is to improve transit usefulness in a neighborhood that, for years, has paid taxes intended to help fund a project like this, without it ever materializing. They’d use their winnings to fund an implementation-oriented study to evaluate what it would take to complete the extension.

Building High Efficiency Residential Units

This team aims to increase transit-oriented housing in Denver by building high-efficiency studio apartments along the West Colfax transit corridor in vacant retail buildings, which would require a zoning change. They hoped to use their winnings to fund financial modeling, partner alignment efforts, and preliminary legal and structural feasibility studies that they’d leverage to apply for state and other grants to fund the project.

Launching a Map-Based Social Platform for Community Engagement

Ever see something on your block—like a pile of trash that’s not being picked up or a broken tree branch dangling into the road—and wish you could rally your neighbors to do something about it? Vent would be an app designed to help local residents connect with one another to tackle neighborhood needs on their own. Rather than prioritizing discovery based on one’s social media feed, like common social media apps, Vent would focus more on introducing users to happenings in their immediate surroundings.