The Bustling Mosaic We Never Saw Coming: Aurora

It’s the largest Denver suburb and the most culturally diverse city in the state. One of only two Colorado cities where minorities are the majority, Aurora is experiencing a renaissance. Here, there is no majority culture. The city’s racial profile is so complex that Asian markets, Mexican restaurants, and East Indian incense shops are found on the same block.

I am a member of the first graduating class of Aurora’s Overland High School. At the time, you could count the number of minority students on one hand. Today, minority enrollment is 76 percent and this educational melting pot is making national headlines. Named one of America’s top 10 high schools by Newsweek in 2010, it now boasts a cutting edge Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) facility. Nearly half of all students are enrolled in advanced placement classes.

Dorothy Jones is not surprised. She says she moved her family here in the 70s for a better life. They lived right behind us and for most of my childhood they were the only African American family in the area.

It was not always easy. “When I moved here, my children used to get on the bus every weekend to go back to their old neighborhood in Denver,” Dorothy says, adding they did make new friends because “young people notice race less than adults.”

Don’t get me wrong. Discrimination is everywhere. Her daughter’s friend next door stopped playing with her after Dorothy says she overheard the mother asking her child, “Why do you want to play with that little black girl?”

So why would so many minorities move into what was once the fastest growing (mostly white) city in America? Dorothy is a realtor who’s watched the landscape change. She says the answer is simple:

“It’s a nice place to raise your children. It’s clean, the crime rate is low, our economy is good.” With Amazon getting ready to open a facility in Aurora, the economy is expected to grow even more. As for racial prejudice, she says: “If you don’t encourage your children to discriminate, they don’t.”

Our block, the one Dorothy still lives on, is now largely Russian. The most recent census figures show Aurora is at the center of Colorado’s refugee growth with a sizable population of people from Nepal, Ethiopia, and Eritrea. Hispanics also play a key role in the city’s growth. Over the last 20 years, they represent more than 70 percent of new people moving in. At this point, nearly 31 percent of people living in Aurora speak a second language.

There are no census figures on the area’s LGBT community, but there’s no question the community here is expanding. With the high-end Stapleton development now moving into north Aurora, gays and lesbians are riding the wave into this eclectic neighborhood.

Billy Rediess owns and operates Miters Touch, an exclusive, one-of-a-kind closet building and organizing company. After 30 years in Denver, he recently relocated his shop to Aurora. In addition to the lower rents, he says he’s finding a lot of work in Aurora’s growing number of “extremely high-end homes.” This includes the newer Wheatlands development in southeast Aurora. Billy says people here “will spend $5,000 on a master closet.”

It would be easy for so many different people living side-by-side to have conflicts. Similar cities experience discrimination, fighting, even race wars. In Aurora, the tightly woven cultural mosaic is thriving. Everyone brings something valuable to the table. It’s paying off with good schools, good neighborhoods, a growing economy, and more and more people moving in to enjoy it.