There’s not much to look at among the single-story warehouses that sit just east of I-25 before it curves around downtown Denver. The structures are prosaic; there’s no one around. The only real sounds come from the highway and a few trucks that pass by on the street, ignoring the speed limit.
Spiderwebs glimmer in the corners of the doorway to a brick building on West 12th Avenue in the La Alma Lincoln Park neighborhood. Inside, it’s dusty. Near the center of the featureless gray room stands an easel with four images: renderings of Las Bodegas (the warehouses), a proposed 14,000-square-foot community art space with a recording studio, multimedia art room, classrooms, and a cafe. The drawings are step one in building a vibrant cultural campus that ultimately will span three central Denver locations, each dedicated to showcasing and nourishing the Latino experience through arts, culture, and history.
The Latino Cultural Arts Center (LCAC) is an idea already 10 years in the making, and it could take another two decades to fully come to fruition. When it does, the nonprofit’s executive director, Alfredo Reyes, believes the sites will become a major destination for people from across the Americas. Right now, though, one needs a vivid imagination to envision what the 32-year-old in woven huarache sandals sees: a bustling venue filled with people of all ages creating art, attending workshops, and mingling at community events.
Reyes wasn’t an obvious choice to lead the protracted process required to build one of the
