Construction, Demolition, and SWAT training grounds

So, a month or so ago, I left my apartment to see a demolition crew tearing down an old abandoned house that has been sitting on the edge of a weed-choked vacant lot next to my complex for years. I felt a small pang of nostalgia but mostly relief; the place was an eyesore and probably some kind of publica hazard, and at least I would no longer have to give friends directions to my apartment by telling them, "Go past the junkyard and the abandoned house and my driveway is the next one on the right. If you get to the trailer park, you've gone too far." It makes it sound like I live in the ghetto and for what I make in income and pay in rent, I don't really like feeling that way.

I was blown away when the house was not only totally torn down but also hauled away by the time I got home from work that evening. There were also the makings of a crude parking lot for...what? Within the next few days, a pedestrian crosswalk had been erected, the kind with flashing lights to alert traffic to pedestrians crossing the street. While there was a fair amount of foot traffic in my part of town it was hardly downtown Boulder, and the whole thing remained a mystery until construction crews turned up across the street from my complex and, it seemed, turned the parking lots for the Shady Hollow East complex as well as the public works building nearby into rubble. The crude parking lot across the street was laid down so that residents would have somewhere to park their cars until the area looked a little less like this:
(Photo credit: Jeremy Baggs.) This was taken from my complex's lot...as you can see, there's not really anywhere for Shady Hollow residents to park there anymore, and what's been interesting to watch is how they, almost as if in some sort of passive rebellion, refuse to use the crosswalk. They'll be ten feet awat from it but refuse to press the button, activate the flashing lights, and cross in the actual crosswalk. An act of defiance, I suppose, in some form. Anyway...

The trailer park is also being demolished. I don't even want to know why, really, but I was really rather entertained to hear that due to the fact that it was slated for demolition the Boulder Police Department SWAT team, never one to miss an opportunity for any kind of staged-real-life practice, was going to descend upon the fenced-in trailer park for tactical training on Wednesday, March 25. On Monday we residents ofTwoMile Creek Condominiums were greeted by the following notice posted at all of the external entryways:
Presumably, we were warned so as not to be concerned about the myriad explosions and gunfire that would be quite audible, not to mention the dozens of armed cops clearly labeled with SWAT across their backs. I wish I'd called in sick from work, though I'm sure I would have been shooed away from any kind of snooping I would attempt. With my luck, I'd be arrested for disturbing the cops who were disturbing the peace. My indomitable boyfriend, never one to miss a photo op, shot a couple of quick digital pics from his car as he drove by and one of them looked pretty interesting:
(Photo credit: Jeremy Baggs) It's really probably a good thing I wasn't home. I wouldn't have been able to keep my snooping to myself.