SIDE STREETS: Longtime resident fears Ivywild in death spiral

Clara Robinson has lived her entire 80 years in the Ivywild neighborhood south of downtown. 

She’s seen it change from a rural suburb of Colorado Springs to a busy little working-class neighborhood to an urban ’hood with a mix of long-time residents, renters and transients. 

With the near simultaneous closings of the Ivywild Elementary School and the Ivywild Community Church, Robinson issues a sad proclamation: “Ivywild is dying.” 

It’s hard to argue. The closings leave a huge void in the little neighborhood west of Cascade Avenue along Cheyenne Creek. 

“Up until now it’s been a quiet and safe neighborhood,” Robinson said. “I don’t know what will happen to Ivywild.”

 She sees the decay in the rundown motels along South Nevada and the clusters of ex-convicts and sex offenders in low-rent apartments along Brookside Street. And she fears it will spread into Ivywild.

 “South Nevada is not a desirable end of town,” she said. “It will just deteriorate more. I’m just hoping and praying it doesn’t deteriorate and reach this end of the neighborhood.”

 It wasn’t always undesirable. Robinson fondly recalls the old Ivywild, a fiercely independent, unincorporated suburb until it was annexed in 1980.

 She proudly tells how her father, Daniel Kennett, attended the original Ivywild Elementary School, founded in 1901. It was twin bungalows until 1916 when they were moved to make room for a new brick building.

 One was moved across Cascade to become the Ivywild Presbyterian Church, later the Community Church. The other went to Ramona Avenue and today is the Edelweiss restaurant.

 Kennett’s family left to homestead near Cortez when he was a teen, but he returned as an adult to raise his family in Ivywild.

 “My parents lived on Navajo Street,” she said. “It was open pasture all the way to 8th Street.”

 She loved attending the new school, opened in 1917. And her son and daughter followed her footsteps. Her daughter entered kindergarten in 1959, after new north and south wings were added to the building.

 Robinson still lives in the house she and her husband built in 1951. It’s across from Ivywild Park where kids used to play after school. Now it’s vacant on school days.

 “They finally put the park in,” she said, “and now the kids are gone.”

 Her father stayed in Ivywild until his death in 2004. His funeral was held — you guessed it — at Ivywild Presbyterian.

 Robinson plans to stay just as long. “They’ll have to carry me out of here, feet-first,” she said.

 But she wonders what will happen to a neighborhood with no school to attract young families and no church to attend.

 “I miss the kids,” she said. “It’s quieter now. Too quiet.

 “It’s a dying situation down here. I feel very sad about it.”

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 See Clara Robinson on my blog at
 gazette.com/blogs/sidestreets