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About Senate District 18No doubt about it, you'll get a great view when you spend time here in Senate District 18.
Photo courtesy of the University of Colorado But there's more to our district than its stunning natural beauty, and I hope you'll take the time to learn more about what we have to offer. OUR WONDERFUL DISTRICT Just click here for maps of Senate District 18, or here for interactive maps of Colorado's Senate and House districts. The district basically includes the City of Boulder, including Gunbarrel, along with the towns of Niwot and Hygiene and several portions of unincorporated Boulder County -- east of the City of Boulder to 95th Street, north of Boulder but west of Longmont, and north of Longmont but east of Lyons. We're blessed here in District 18 with a number of wonderful features, including the University of Colorado-Boulder campus that was established in 1877. CU is one of the district's most significant economic engines for many reasons. Its researchers create cutting-edge products that lead to new enterprises; the campus itself employs roughly 7,000 people; and many local businesses cater directly to CU's 30,000 students. Certain firms locate in Boulder at least partially because they can take advantage of CU's facilities, researchers, or a workforce that may have been educated at the university.
Photo courtesy of the University of Colorado Also, CU provides tremendous social and cultural opportunities. People flock every year to the Conference on World Affairs, the Shakespeare Festival and/or classical music presentations at Macky Auditorium. Athletic fans root for the Buffaloes in Big 12 Conference contests at Folsom Field or Coors Events Center, while CU's cross country running and ski teams frequently contend for NCAA championships. District 18 also includes branches of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), as well as the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). The federal labs in Boulder conduct world-class research in their respective fields, from climate change to space weather to atomic timekeeping that is already accurate to one second every 80 million years. The district is certainly blessed with great natural beauty. Thanks to visionary leaders and willingness of the voters to support tax measures, the City of Boulder and Boulder County have protected thousands of acres as Open Space. Recreationists have hundreds of miles of trails and bike paths in their back yards, and naturalists can still find a wide diversity of plant and animal species in lands not far from a city of 100,000 people. District 18 includes rich agricultural land that supports many organic farms, and while most of the mountains to our west are technically not in our district, they form our visual backdrop and they're within minutes of our homes. Back to business - our district is the home of the Boulder IBM campus, which recently announced the completion of a new Green Data Center. We also boast Celestial Seasonings Tea, the pharmaceutical firm Roche Colorado, Ball Aerospace, Amgen and a regional office for Whole Foods Market. Shoppers can stroll the pedestrian Pearl Street Mall or the relatively new Twenty Ninth Street retail district in Boulder. Locally owned businesses such as McGuckin Hardware, Video Station and Boulder Book Store hold their own in competition with national chains that sell or rent similar products. Last but not least, we have a very unique populace that includes entrepreneurs, political and social activists, contemplative and religious souls, business leaders, visual artists, musicians and poets, world-class athletes, herbalists, physicists and philanthropists, to name just a few groups. It's never boring around here, and many of us like it that way in Senate District 18. |
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