On Morrison Road, a diagonal that slices through one of west Denver’s most hardscrabble neighborhoods, an air of change is unmistakable.

It’s evident in the food trucks that park behind the Kitchen Network Commissary, a collection of commercial kitchens that for 15 years has served as a launching pad for small food businesses and now is being bought by the local business association to support local entrepreneurship. It’s reflected in the vibrant, colorful murals on buildings that used to be tagged with graffiti.

And it’s visible in a Mexican restaurant called Kahlo’s that, while still struggling in its first year on the strip, is a bet by the owner of an established eatery on nearby Federal Boulevard that Morrison Road is primed for a resurgence.

That wager could be a good one, based on a number of community- and government-driven initiatives along Morrison and elsewhere in the largely Spanish-speaking Westwood neighborhood.

A better road, a new recreation center

The 1.5-mile Morrison Road, which runs southwest from Alameda Avenue, is poised to undergo a multimillion-dollar transformation making it friendlier to people on foot and adding new nods to Mexican and Latin American culture, along with other amenities. In another big win for the neighborhood, more than $30 million in city money will build a much-needed recreation center.

The forthcoming projects, to be funded through a $937 million bond package approved by Denver voters last month, join numerous community initiatives. Driven by nonprofit groups and neighborhood advocates, they have addressed other neighborhood challenges, from difficulties facing the elderly to early childhood education to Westwood’s status as a fresh-food desert.

“What I’m seeing is that a lot of people are involved now that wouldn’t have been before,” said Santiago Jaramillo, 44, a third-generation resident of Westwood who has owned a gallery and tattoo shop. “And a lot of people are really hopeful for the change. We felt kind of passed over for a really long time.”

The Westwood neighborhood’s business boosters consider Morrison Road its de facto main street. But if that takes some imagination now — amid sometimes-clumsy intersections with side streets and a scattershot of bars, auto repair shops and small offices — the city bond list, which includes $12 million for Morrison, will nudge the main-street vision closer to reality.

The Morrison Road project includes the slimming down of the road and pedestrian improvements, changing it from an arterial street to a neighborhood connector; aesthetic enhancements and gateways to new districts; five reworked intersections; and, with help from other another grant program, two new community gathering places modeled on Mexican plazas.

Another hard-fought win for Westwood’s mainly Latino residents: $37.5 million for a new recreation center.

For a neighborhood that has Denver’s largest concentration of children — residents younger than 18 make up 40 percent of residents and have one of the city’s highest rates of childhood obesity — the lack of a recreation center long has felt like more than an oversight.

Progress, one paved alley at a time

“What we’re achieving is just leveling the playing field with the rest of the city,” said Paul López, who grew up in Westwood but now lives in Villa Park to the north. Since 2007, he has represented the area on the City Council, helping residents oppose liquor license applications, often successfully, while pressuring the city to pave alleys. “This isn’t whipped cream. This is the cake that we’ve been longing to enjoy.”

The nearly $50 million in bond projects, which haven’t yet been scheduled, are just the latest in a drumbeat of city investments. More than $10 million from the Office of Economic Development has supported affordable housing projects, social programs and local nonprofit groups in the last six years. Last year the council approved a new Westwood neighborhood plan that will guide future improvement efforts.

One city-supported affordable-housing development, called Del Corazon, straddles Morrison near Ohio Avenue and is replacing two mobile home parks. The large project included relocation assistance for the former residents.

Jaramillo, the longtime Westwood resident, painted some of the area’s murals. He remembers the widespread surge of violence in the early 1990s that turned the formerly quiet neighborhood into one of several that still are perceived by outsiders to be dangerous places.

In recent years, crime rates have ticked down steadily in Westwood. Both violent and property crime declined 13 percent in the first 11 months of this year, according to Denver police data. Among 78 Denver neighborhoods, Westwood has improved from having the 14th-highest violent-crime rate four years ago to ranking 29th this year.

Combating decades of poverty and neglect

But few advocates expect the money flowing into the community of nearly 17,000 to be a panacea after decades of widespread poverty and neglect by the city.

And some residents are suspicious of the changes, which already include fast-rising home values — even though Denver’s influx of newcomers has tended to flock elsewhere in the city, largely sparing Westwood from gentrification concerns so far. The most recent census estimates put the median household income in Westwood at just over $34,000 a year, compared to $56,258 in the city as a whole.

There are occasional reminders that life remains more volatile in Westwood.

In May, a bullet fired from a passing car found a 15-year-old girl, killing her as she slept in the front room of her family’s home on the 4200 block of West Dakota Avenue. Police said they believed the house was targeted, and it was the second of two homicides in the neighborhood this year.

Earlier in the year, a Denver Post photographer encountered Bertha Martinez, 87, in front of her home on Tennessee Avenue. She’s lived in Westwood for six decades.

She was heading outside to make sure her front gate was padlocked.

“Yes, the neighborhood sure is changing,” Martinez said, “but I try not to notice. … I don’t want to be nosy.”

Elsewhere in Westwood, Tim Wortman packed up his belongings from a garage apartment where he had been living in January. He had been released from jail the night before and returned home to find the apartment had been broken into.

He also found an eviction notice.

“I have four days to go somewhere,” he told a Denver Post photographer at the time. “Not sure what I’m gonna do. I don’t want to be white trash, but I guess I am — and there’s no place for a person like me around here anymore.”

Westwood has a high rate of homeownership

Despite a high rate of homeownership — nearly half the homes in Westwood are owner-occupied, according to census estimates — plenty of residents struggle.

López and other city officials say predatory lenders contributed to a high foreclosure rate in Westwood and other West Denver neighborhoods that took hold years before the last recession hit the rest of the city. Only in the last few years has the situation stabilized, partly because the economy improved and in part due to city homeowner assistance programs, said Jeff Romine, the city’s chief economist.

For renters, López says, the upswing in property values introduces new uncertainty as to whether their homes will remain affordable.

In many ways, Westwood’s residents have faced a variety of challenges from the start.

Before it was part of Denver, the area — then prairie — was settled as a “shack town” on the city’s outskirts during the Great Depression, according to an old neighborhood plan produced by the city in the 1980s. The unincorporated area’s population boomed during World War II because of its cheap land and because it was near an ordnance plant. Westwood briefly incorporated as a town of about 7,000 before its 1.5 square miles were annexed by Denver in 1947.

In subsequent decades, the working-class neighborhood on Lakewood’s border developed a rich cultural fabric. It became a strong draw for Mexican immigrants and other Latinos, who now make up 79 percent of the population.

Among the plans under development is the creation of a Mexican Cultural District on Morrison Road. The eastern border of the neighborhood, along Federal Boulevard, already is known as “Little Saigon,” because of the strong presence of Vietnamese restaurants.

“When I look in the future and see where Denver is going, I think Morrison Road is in a perfect spot to do business. I see the potential,” said Noe Bermudez, 41, who grew up in Uruapan, Mexico, and moved to the United States three decades ago.

He has lived in Denver for 25 years, first working for more than a decade as a restaurant manager. Twelve years ago, he opened Tarasco’s New Latino Cuisine on Federal. And in the last year, he added Kahlo’s on Morrison.

Bermudez knew the first few years of a new business can be tough. So far, customers have streamed through the doors slowly at Kahlo’s, he said. But he remains optimistic.

“It’s still a good Spanish community,” he said.

Business community has planned for upswing

Bermudez is not alone in Westwood’s business community, which has planned patiently for this moment.

The Morrison Road Business Association, formed 31 years ago, is now known as the BuCu West Development Association, with the first word combining “business” and “culture.” It has received more than $550,000 in city support since 2011, according to the economic development office.

The organization previously worked to install a median with plants in the central area of Morrison Road, said Jose Esparza, its executive director. Though it has developed a detailed streetscaping plan that would cost upward of $19 million, the project was pared back to $12.2 million in the city’s bond list process before the November election.

“We were lucky enough to be in that conversation, so we’re very happy with our compromise — to reconstruct the northern and southern ends of Morrison Road,” he said, building on the earlier improvements in the central section.

A group called Re:Vision has helped residents plant hundreds of backyard gardens and started the Westwood Food Cooperative at 3738 Morrison Road last year. So far, 290 members have signed up during a pilot phase, the group says. But it has work to do to reach the 1,000 members seen as necessary before it builds a full-service grocery in a couple years.

During the summer, the co-op sold produce grown in an urban farm out back.

Jaramillo, the mural painter, is working on designs for one of the new plazas, called Plaza Meshika. He’s also working with Re:Vision on starting a new gallery and artisan “maker” center. Both efforts received a boost with the recent awarding of a $350,000 grant from ArtPlace America’s National Creative Placemaking Fund.

Among several other organizations working in Westwood is the Urban Land Conservancy, which purchased and tore down an abandoned Thriftway store on Morrison and installed a temporary pocket park while it solicits ideas for permanent “community-serving” redevelopment.

As López, the councilman, looks at the neighborhood where he grew up, the changes underway amount to “a new chapter” for Westwood.

He reflected on the neighborhood’s changes last year, just before the council approved its new neighborhood plan.

“Twenty years ago, if I were to walk around and say, ‘I am from Westwood,’ I would have hung my head,” López said. “It was typical for us to hang our heads. Well, that game has changed.”

Denver Post photographer RJ Sangosti contributed.